Guy: So I went to the dollar store, looking for some art for my apartment. You wouldn’t believe how bad some of it was.
–Suzie’s, Bleecker Street
Guy: So I went to the dollar store, looking for some art for my apartment. You wouldn’t believe how bad some of it was.
–Suzie’s, Bleecker Street
Guy #1: How was it?
Guy #2: It was cool. Paris was fun, except for a few days we spent at museums…We went one day to this place…The Love or something…I guess it was all right. There were definitely a lot of people there…Julie was freaking out about this one painting, though.
Guy #1: What painting?
Guy #2: The Mona Lisa.
Guy #1: …huh. Don’t think I know it…I’m not really an art person though.
Guy #2: Yeah, I didn’t know it either. It’s by Michelangelo I think. But I didn’t really get it…it’s really small.
–Union Square station
Overheard by: Stephanie Porto
Photographer lady: They didn’t de-jowl him, which surprised me.
–Once Upon a Tart, Sullivan Street
Overheard by: Sara T.
Two guys pass a poster for a Basquiat exhibit.
Guy #1: Is he dead?
Guy #2: Yes. He had AIDS.
Guy #1: How do they know what he looked like?
–Houston & Thompson
Tour guide: Now what does it look like to you? Does it look very European, very Greek?
Woman: It looks like a poo.
–Aztec exhibit, Guggenheim Museum
Tourist woman: I had no idea the Guggenheim Museum was so cheesy looking. What’s it made out of? Is that papier mache or something?
Tourist man: Well, I remember reading somewhere that Frank Lloyd Wright really was a nut.
–5th Ave. & 88th St.
Overheard by: Galen Chistopher
Cop: Photos, painting and other stuff in a museum I appreciate, but this is just bedsheets to me.
–The Gates, CPW
Overheard by: Chris Holm
Teen Girl 1: Omigod, she totally promised to stay after and help me take audition pictures, and she bailed on me.
Teen Girl 2: Yeah, she’s like the French: “Ve vill help you America! Zhust kidding…ve have to go drink coffee and eat croissants now!”
–Lincoln Center
Teen #1, staring at gun with comma for trigger: So, what do you think it means?
Teen #2: It means: “as soon as I finish this sentence, I'm gonna kill you.”
–Museum of Modern Art
Girl on cell: So I bought this air conditioner for my living room, and it's entirely too large for me to install by myself, because it weighs 78 lbs. No, seriously, I cannot even get it out of the box. I know–for the time being I'm just referring to it as a Duchamp "readymade." Ew! Don't you call me bohemian!
–19th & 6th
Art professor: You should look at Picasso and Matisse. These people will be more important to you than your family. Cousin Philly. I had a cousin Philly, and I loved him very much. But he's dead now.
–Pratt Institute
Overheard by: traPt
Lawyer to friend, about Vincent van Gogh: You know, I could have gotten him disability.
–Van Gogh Exhibit, MoMA
Woman, discussing gallery: It was all modern stuff–but not, like, the kind of modern art that children can do.
–20th & 5th
Tourist boy: You can see his penis! It's not art if you can see his penis!
–Petrie Court, Metropolitan Museum of Art
