Walking around Williamsburg this past weekend, I came across a 7SoulsDeep piece with a big red “X” over it. Adding insult to injury, someone had also scrawled “UR CORNY STOP” in green marker underneath. Ouch. Yet I welcomed this defacement. Not only did it zhuzh up the dry, floating text with some color and dynamism, but I also found the critique to be a thousand times more interesting than the street art itself—assertive and direct, with a clear point of view. And fucking funny.

I love a clear, rising moon. Not the bad kind, mind you. The Caspar kind. Not the friendly ghost (that’s reserved for Devon Sawa), but Caspar David Friedrich, the early 19th century German romantic landscape artist, whose first comprehensive exhibition in the US, Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature, opened earlier this month at the Met. Honestly, I cannot believe it’s taken this long for a holistic Friedrich exhibition to hit the US. His work is particularly singular and has always stood out. Friedrich didn't think like his contemporaries; what he painted—how he painted—he was ahead of his time.

Wandering the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few times every year is core to my being as a New Yorker. There’s much to see, so much appreciate, so much to be repatriated. The more traveling I do, the harder it is to bare the Met’s Oceanic Art, Ancient Near Eastern Art, Egyptian Art, and Islamic Art collections.