23 November 2025, New York
On Sunday afternoon, with a couple of hours to fill between a very enjoyable lunch with the charming and always-erudite Chris White and a glorious Evensong at the St Thomas’s Fifth Avenue, I spent time at MoMA in West 53rd Street, New York’s world-leading museum of modern art. It’s the Met on Fifth Avenue that has been my ‘home’ during these two months in the city, partly because at $90 a year, their ‘Global Membership’ allowing daily entry (not ‘free’ but ‘included’!) is a steal and available to anyone living more than 200 miles from NYC), and also because – honestly – at heart I’m more comfortable in the world of art and artists that predates the 1880s, which is when the MoMA collection starts. And on Sunday I might have gravitated back to the comfortable and familiar, but instinct drew me to MoMA instead. And you should trust your instincts!
In literally stark contrast to the Met’s rich period interior, moody lighting and considered vistas, MoMA is a ‘white cube’ gallery with white walls, bright light, minimal labelling and with works set each in their own space and allowed to ‘speak’ uninterpreted and uninterrupted. Last time I was there, well over a decade ago, the guiding principle that dictated how works were displayed was their genre and chronology; in the 1920s the founders of MoMA wanted both to define the canon of modern art and to demonstrate that the story of modern art was one of progress through innovation, moving from realism to abstraction – and so the gallery was laid out to tell that story. The then-visitor’s steady perambulation through the collection would demonstrate to them how 19th century realism was undermined or enriched (discuss!) by the desire and need to be more freely expressive, and about how, in pursuit of this, artists dispensed with convention and dismantled form, allowing abstraction to replace representation.
But in 2019, in what was a significant philosophical pivot and a departure from a century-long set of conventions, a major rehang of the permanent collection saw different media mixed up, brought into the same space and grouped by theme or context – a photograph with a piece of sculpture and some paintings, together because the have some theme in common. And to my mind, the result is overwhelming. No longer did I feel that I was being asked to walk through a lesson in the history of art, but rather was being invited to view works on their own terms, and in relation to other works with which they resonated. And whether it was the result of the slipstream of good lunchtime conversation, or the fact that thanks to my sabbatical break I’m better rested right now and probably more awake (intellectually and spiritually) than I have been for a while, the experience of resonance was almost overwhelming, with so many “ah ha!”moments and lots of spontaneous smiles and even at one point laughter (“who is that strange man over there, laughing to himself, step away!”). There is something almost magical about those moments in life when the synapses spark and in the heart and mind connections are made, and when previously unconnected things come together, creating newness. Those two hours in MoMA on Sunday afternoon were such a precious moment.
Room 410 at MoMA is entitled ‘Good Vibrations’ and brings together the art of Bridget Riley and Jesús Rafael Soto. In life they never met, she being from Britain and he from Venezuela, but here in New York they meet through their art and enter into dialogue. In the 1950s they explored the optical effects created by juxtaposing lines and curves, creating images that seem to vibrate on the flat surface or in the space between planes. I’ve always liked Riley, and I was transfixed by my encounter with Soto’s; his ‘Double Transparency (1957)’, two sheets of painted plexiglass held in three-dimensional relationship by metal bolts, is a work that flickers as you look at it and that made me stand and stare. In the old MoMA, Soto and Riley might well have appeared side by side, but doing so here in the new MoMA, their theme of visual resonance and the energy between objects seems to be emblematic of the whole new ethos of the place: ‘Good Vibrations’ could be the title not just of Room 410 but of the whole museum. Visit when you can, and if your experience of art museums is that of feeling ’taught’, prepare for something entirely new. And fresh.
Leaving the museum and walking along 53rd street to Choral Evensong I felt more fully alive than I had for a long time – probably as it should be as my three months out of the parish comes to an end. Next Sunday I’ll be back in Knightsbridge, with 43,000 miles of travel, seven countries and seventeen cities visited, and a thousand random conversations with strangers and friends (some of the former happily now the latter) just a treasured memory. I am so grateful to everyone whose generosity has made this time and travel possible, not least colleagues back home who have held the fort. I promise I’ll try to land back sensitively and usefully and not trample on what may have emerged!
The theme of resonance and ‘good vibrations’ could also be the theme of my sabbatical journey. In 2016 in his insightful book about the challenges of modernity, ‘Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World’, Harmut Rosa addresses the speed of contemporary life. He says that the ‘speed’ at which we love to live results in a deep alienation. I think I identify with the sense of having embarked on this three months as someone not just a bit weary from running hard and fast but perhaps more fundamentally disconnected from who and what I feel I am meant to be. And this is, therefore, for all of us, a crisis of vocation. We are here, created in love by God with a purpose, and living into what we are meant to be is the deepest and most noble task in life. I certainly notice that I have ‘slowed down’ in this time away from London, and I feel the better for it. But it is not just about slowing down to reduce our speed. Nor is it just remembering to be a bit more social; we feel, Harmut says, that the answer to alienation is ‘warm and fuzzy’ stuff, creating opportunities for being closer to one another; and of course if you’re lonely that is probably no bad thing. But in truth the answer to alienation, which is altogether more deep and dehumanising than mere business or loneliness, is not just stopping briefly, nor the addressing of social distance (the “let’s have a party!” instinct), so much as the creation of opportunities for ‘resonance’ – that is creating and curating places and experiences where we are brought into responsive, living relationship with the world beyond us. We too-quickly detach and retreat and ignore life’s resource, its richness and complexity. Harmut suggests that the ‘fixes’ for our detachment and alienation may involve spaces where ‘awe’ is possible (we call them ‘holy’ places), and where there is encounter with music and art (even, and perhaps especially art and music that challenges us), and friendships (not the anodyne ‘nice to have’ sort, but the ‘new and/or need-to-work-at’ sort) and just being intentionally in place and in nature. All of these create resonant places where there are ‘good vibrations’. And they allow us to be who we are meant to be.
Thinking about it today, the measure of how successful this sabbatical will have been will, in the end, not be how much distance I have covered, nor the number of people I will have met, nor even the number of books I have read, thoughts I have had, nor pages I have written, but rather the extent to which life going forward will be more resonant and beset and shaken by ‘good vibrations’.
Let’s see how it goes!