I’ve never hooked up at Union Pool but I have definitely Fucked the art at MoMA

Patrick Vermillion
Pickle Fork
Published in
7 min readFeb 1, 2018
yeah i fucked a bunch o’ art here

In 2015, I moved to Brooklyn from [INSERT AMERICAN SUBURB] leaving behind my parents who patiently agreed to pay for my $3500 One Bedroom in Williamsburg while I went off to forge a career in improv comedy. For this kindness, I — unable to withstand the emotional discomfort of acknowledging my enormously privileged upbringing — tortured them by going to the MoMa every weekend and calling them to say things like, “I am fucking the art” Or, worse, texting them, digitally slurring, “If I’m fucking the art am I now part of the art?”

These parents had never lived in New York and only visited a handful of times — but even they knew what it meant to “go to the MoMa.” When they cut me off, about 27 minutes later, they were surprised that I cried and resisted. “Why did you keep fucking art at the MoMA and telling us about it if you actually wanted us to support your improv comedy career?” they demanded. “Please stop fucking the art

Ah, yes. In a few short years, the lore of the MoMa — free on Friday nights for people like me who pretend they’re poor but are actually extremely rich — had spread to pretty much every other NYU student. And in the immediate hours of my trust fund cut-off, I went back to MoMA for the exact reason everyone knows to go to the MoMA: To fuck the art. That night, I met an Andy Warhol video tape from the late 70s, and got thrown out of the Museum for breaking the MoMA’s only real bylaw: Fucking the Art.

According to founder Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, back in 1929, when MoMA opened under on 52nd street, nobody wanted to go because the art was genuinely terrible. But it was also one of the only Museums around [that wasn’t fucking trash like the MET], and, as such, the grimy corner it occupied became a den of sin at a time when the only person having sex with art was Al Capone (probably). The booze was cheap because it was Prohibition. The bands were cool because no one could tell if they were installations or buskers. Everyone knew that everyone else would go there, largely because there was nowhere much else to fuck art. Thanks to early write-ups in local publications, word of mouth, stories of how fun it was to fuck art, and a museum vibe that matched the general lawlessness of the area at the time, by 1935, MoMA’s mythical status as a place to fuck art rather than see it was well established (This predated neighborhood favorites like The M&M store) Rockefeller would go on to become immortal using lamb’s blood; and bands that played small, pre-fame shows at MoMA, like the Beatles, would go on to define a golden era of sixties rock. The MoMA remained a horny Neverland.

I personally have been going to MoMa for the express purpose of fucking art without much effort since 2006. That was when, during my junior year of middle school, my much cooler, more culturally advanced friend The Fat Jew (@thefatjewish on insta) recognized a post-breakup funk and announced he was taking me to a place where I could “fuck art.” I put on some mesh shorts, rode a cab for like ten minutes, and finally we stood at the museum and looked over the installations. It was like Mufasa standing with Simba on Pride Rock and explaining that everything that the light touches would be his, except in this case @thefatjewish pointed to the wall that everyone signs with sharpies and said go forth. And it was grody and great and plentiful. Now, at 25, I’ll still sometimes demand my friends “take me to the place where I fuck art” Only on weeknights, though. After seeing the two pieces of symmetrical blank construction paper parallel in a frame, I’ll go home by myself by 12 — but still, an itch is scratched.

I am not alone. Most people within a certain New York demographic — the demographic with a lot of money but doesn’t like it to be acknowledged — also have a Art fucking story, and if they don’t, then a friend, or a friend of a friend, or a co-worker, or Daniel Day Lewis’s Son has one.

People report going there in times of sadness (“he fled to the Hamptons, ended our forty-year marriage and I went straight to The MoMA”), in times of desperation (“My family kicked me out for fucking art so I went to the MoMA”). Some people go to find beautiful new pieces for their collection; some people bring their own; and some people start the night with one Maria Abromavic performance piece and leave with another — like my new hero, Wallace Shawn, an actor I think. He recently went to MoMa for the first time, as part of a benefit. “Showed up, it was a benefit, typical charity stuff I don’t give a flying fuck about ,” he explained in an email. “So I’m like, cool, I’ll fuck art and then deliver the speech. And surprisingly everyone was down”

Others report nights they’ll never forget, nights that ended in various sorts of “only when you’re incredibly rich in New York” calamity. Like Paul Dano— who wishes to remain unnamed, because his current girlfriend might be mad but fuck that guy I hated him in that oil movie. He recalls, “It was a running joke that MoMA always had ‘a lot of art you could fuck’” — meaning, he explains, that “you could be there chilling and want to fuck art — what would happen next would be up to you.” On one memorable night four years ago, he arrived with friends, “and it was pretty standard fare: music blasting, expensive wine flowing, and sculptures flying around. So, we got in there and started to fuck the art” They had a look around, invested in some high-risk portfolios, and wound up in that one place where there’s no light and it’s like a sensory thing.

The MoMA hookup is a young, rich, New York rite of passage.

“They were playing some good music and I break it the fuck down on the dance floor, so I was into it.” And then, he writes, “There she was: this Salvadore Da’li piece with a clock that almost made me cry tears of joy. I locked in, and started throwing some vibes around heavily.” A familiar story: The two went home together. But on the way to its place, Paul Dano left his phone in the cab, and — hookup complete — he was obliged to spend about six hours the next day in the middle of central park with an art piece worth like 6 mil, waiting for his cabdriver to come back from Queens and drop it off. “The classic fucking art New York hookup story,” J writes. “Provided by MoMA”

“The morning after I went home with a young audio diary from MoMA for the first time, [my roommate] said to me, ‘hey dude did you fuck that art?,’” remembers Ansel Elgort, 30. “The MoMA hookup is a place for rich people to have actual sex with art

In a city where it can be surprisingly hard to fuck art and be rich, even just for the ephemeral purposes of fucking art in front of people who aren’t as rich , MoMA has provided a consistent service to the fine people of Manhattan for about 85 years now.

How, exactly, did this museum become the stuff of horny legends? And how has it remained the stuff of horny legends, well after it was made illegal to fuck art in a public space? (MoMA’s bathrooms “may well prove to be the place to fuck art of our generation,” a Complex writer once argued, on a list of “The Best Bathrooms in NYC to FUCK ART They might actually qualify as a historical landmark at this point.)

“Well,” says Melanie Koch, 40, “it was really the first Musuem to cater directly to the NYU students and artists who were flooding in. It was a place to fuck art from conception, wasn’t it?” She’s lived in that really tall building that’s an eyesore and almost as tall as the empire state building since 2013, right around the corner from the MoMA

Rockefeller, the founder, has a “scientific” theory for MoMA’s success at bringing people together to fuck art. “You have the first floor, then you have the second floor. And you have this zone that’s kind of, like, on the way out to the backyard — but basically you have to walk through that zone to go to the to the bathrooms, to the communist video game installation, to the giant house piece, you know, anywhere.” And so, she explains, “it creates all this natural movement where people are constantly, casually grazing by the art, holding the door open for the art, saying hello to the art, smiling at the art, and it mixes people up, makes them want to fuck art.

She’s aware of the museum’s reputation, she says. “I have friends who’ve fucked art at MoMA and became President. I’m sure we’ve also ruined some political careers.” She attributes some of that chemistry to the vibe she reinforces at MoMA. “We have security cards looking for art thieves — people get blacklisted from the MoMA (right now just Steve Buscemi). You know, we work hard to kinda create a warm environment where people feel comfortable to fuck art

Over the years, MoMA has sometimes been identified as an art fucking place , sometimes as a place where the cast of Wicked has an orgy. (“Oh, the Wicked days,” groans Stewart.) On the strength of good booking practices, it’s also a museum where you can say you saw famous bands fuck art “before they were big” — ever the favorite brag of former elites, and current rich nerds. But throughout, it was always a Musuem where you could FUCK ART. And while its reputation was swiftly established, its peak didn’t arrive until perhaps 2008— funnily enough, the years when it was still socially acceptable, maybe even cool, to shop at Urban Outfitters. “Those were the best days,” Koch says.

Classic MoMA

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Patrick Vermillion
Pickle Fork

NYC writer/ comedian / software developer. Raised by wolves, educated by dolphins.