MoMA & El Museo del Barrio

I went to the Museum of Modern Art yesterday as only the large galleries are open on a Sunday. It seemed that everyone else had the same idea. It was packed. I walked part of the way and called into see the Felix Gonzalez-Torres show at El Museo del Barrio. The exhibition showed some early pieces and as I don't really know his work, even though he was an important artist, it was difficult to get any sense of the context. I think it relied on the fact that the viewer would be aquainted with his later more influential pieces and so I was left feeling as uninformed as when I went in,which is down to the curation and rather disappointing.
The show I went to see at MoMA was without boundary -17 ways of looking. I already knew many of the artists on show here but it was quite an interesting idea for a group show. The catalogue stated that the core group of artists "came from the Islamic world but live for the most part in Europe and the U.S." The show aimed to problematise the idea of a clear cut notion of "Islamic" in relation to artists and their work. There was an evident bias in the show to craft based issues, calligraphic and decorative works. I particularly liked the excessive, highly decorative painting of Shahzia Silkander and the beautifully crafted painting by Shirazeh Houshiary. The other artists in the exhibition included Mona Hatoum,Ghada Amer some small prayer mats by Shirana Shabhazi and a piece by Bill Viola.