from Nancy Grove

Just in case you hadn't seen or spoken to Marian for a while, this is what she did on September 7, the Sunday before she died.

She met me at Penn Station at noon, wearing her signature black and commenting, as always, on the amazing outfits people in the station were wearing. We took the train to Philadelphia - she was very excited about the trip because she had not been there for many years, and she talked about going to her uncle's house in Rittenhouse Square. It had a big window in the front and every evening at 5 pm her uncle would stand there and watch the pretty girls leave work...

We took a cab from the station to the Philadelphia Museum and had a lovely lunch in their cafeteria, then explored the American collection. She was thrilled to see the great Thomas Eakins Gross Clinic and the wonderful Copley portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Mifflin – all while she commented on the size, shape, color, and layout of each gallery and the placement of each object. That critical eagle eye never missed a thing!

We also went to the modern section, where she saw Duchamp's last work, the Etant Donnes, for the first time, enjoyed the spareness of the gallery with Duchamp's Large Glass, and thoroughly approved the Brancusi gallery (she disapproved of MOMA's Brancusi display...). We also attended a memorial for Anne d"Harnoncourt, the director of the museum, who, oddly enough, had unexpectedly died in her sleep, age 64,in June. Marian disliked the classical music that was played – she found it "turgid"- and could not hear the speeches, so when we were going back on the train I told her that one speaker had quoted Richard Serra's speech to the graduating class at Williams, about the importance of immediate perception, of keeping it real and staying in the moment. She loved that - she liked Serra's work and we had recently seen the documentary about him, which she loved, although she also understood why many people did not feel about his work as she did.

I also told her that another speaker had quoted Adam Gopnik's remark at Kirk Varnedoe's memorial, that the ancient Greeks did not believe that any life was too short or too long - that every life has a certain unique shape to it - and she loved that idea. We were all part of the shape of Marian's life, as she was an important part of the shape of all of ours. When we parted, she was full of plans to go back to Philadelphia - to the museum, to the Rodin Museum, to the Institute of Contemporary Art to see the R. Crumb show, which of course she knew about and I didn't...In short, she was her upbeat, indomitable, engaged and delightful self!