Notes at the Whitney

26 Oct 2026 - Lily Elle Rood

I. Two women sitting on the shallow steps as I exit. One strokes the face of the other. I sit and as I do they kiss and do not stop. They stop only to laugh.

II. They put Rashid Johnson’s beauty inside and out of the fancy, I almost want to call it fake, café that they have at these kinds of places. “frenchette bakery.” The coffee is, like, $6. The drip coffee. I wonder if he chose this. Maybe – it makes a good commentary. His deeply poetic work, intellectual excellence, made accessory to rich people’s useless musings. I watch two old women touch the plants, more than even an adventurous spirit could find appropriate. They will go into the French(ette) bakery and pay $17 for bad bread. I am trying to touch the poems in my life, lightly and without excess.

IIa. (Re: I.) They get up and leave as I write. Holding hands, they swing their arms, going gallantly – to laugh.

III. They’ve made the museum free for young people. The museum still swarms with mostly rich people, but now also some young people.

IV. They’ve put a Kay WalkingStick piece in the exhibit called America [sic]. They call america racist and unjust, though also just and some other good words. I can’t tell if they mean it.

V. Alma Thomas paints Mars and it looks like america shattering.

VI. The Lichenstein mural, the only one that impresses me, turns out to be a recreation. The credits call it hand-painted to bring esteem but do not credit a person, only a firm.
Esteem for whom?

VII. Two men clad in false luxury arrive in a black SUV. Their driver, a gentleman in a brown suit, parks illegally at their direction. I look down at the rip in my dress.

VIII. Sung Tieu sounds the alarm all through the caverns and no one moves. I cannot tell why they are desensitized – do rich people not fear the apocalypse? I ridicule my question before I am finished writing it. But then again, why am I sensitized in the first place? My parents had the cold war drills, and I have friends from places where american men make war, but I, I who have never known the shattering my country forges? Did children before the internet know of other peoples’ alarm?

IX. I photograph myself in the reflection of autumn chilled glass and remember I too can be [an] art[ist].

X. Ella. Mid-20s, maybe late. Beautiful, kind. (Whenever I call someone beautiful, I repress the urge to backspace.) She/her pronoun buttons all the way down one side of her lanyard:

she/her she/her

she/her she/her

she/her she/her

Museums Run on Unions!

I wonder why she came to offer such emphasis, and by wonder I mean know. I ask Ella how she got her job and whether she likes it and whether she gets to see the art much. She does! They’re not hiring in my department, she tells me, otherwise I’d say you should apply. It’s alright – I have a feeling that somehow, someday, I’ll see her again nonetheless.