Went through the MoMA while waiting for our check in time at our hotel. I thoroughly enjoyed it all, and got to see classics like Van Gogh's Starry Night and Dali's The Persistence of Memory. My four favorite pieces in particular were less ubiquitous, if only slightly.
First was Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 1). His work in this period focused on what he referred to as "static representation of movement", and this was one of my favorite examples of that idea.
Then there's Mark Rothko's No.37/No. 19 (Slate Blue and Brown on Plum). No pictures do it justice, the lack of contrast between all of the deep, muted tones gives it an almost glowing effect when you see it out of the corner of your eye, and there's a depth to the painting with the way Rothko layered the paints and other materials together. It's also a big-ass painting, which in my opinion only adds to the intensity of how weird and hard to describe the experience of seeing this painting is.
Speaking of big-ass paintings, the one I was looking forward to: Claude Monet's Water Lilies. I adore all of these paintings, and I knew they'd be massive, but they are MASSIVE. The picture isn't of the installation I actually liked, because I couldn't easily fit that one in frame. 3 massive paintings, each of them over 6 feet tall and 13 feet long, arranged in a continuous depiction of the water lilies in Monet's signature impressionist style. The colors are absolutely gorgeous, and these still remain among my favorite paintings of all time.
Finally, the Sleeper hit - Sophie Calle's The Sleepers! I had no knowledge of the existence of this particular installation, but it was easily my favorite of the bunch. It's just a bunch of black and white photographs of people taking turns sleeping in a bed, interspersed with brief writers from Sophie about the people - who they were, how they answered her questions, how they slept in her bed, and even what breakfast they ate afterward. The writings are intimate, plain, funny, excruciatingly French, and honest - and they made this piece my favorite of the bunch.