I had a couple of hours to spare after my visit to 30 Rock yesterday afternoon, so I walked a few blocks north to the Museum of Modern Art. I hadn’t visited it since its renovation. (Come to think of it, the last time I had been inside might have been before my escape from New York in 1985.)

Call me a philistine, but most of what I saw for the first half an hour or so had me thinking that instead of being in an art museum, I was trapped in the You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me Museum. In one room, I saw a pinkish fluorescent light bulb mounted vertically in a corner. In another, I saw completely blank canvasses. These constructs, and others like them, had no emotional effect, other than causing me to think, “Oh, please!”

And then I walked down a hall, and there was Rousseau’s “The Dream.” The moment I saw it—POW! I started to tingle. The hair on my forearms literally stood up. And in the next gallery, in front of Rousseau’s “The Sleeping Gypsy,” I nearly wept. And then van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” … and Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” … and Picasso … and Chagall … and I thought …

How can the “artist” who thought to lean a fluorescent light bulb in the corner see those and not then curl up in shame? (I do like Jenny Holzer’s work, but I’ll leave the reasons why for some future entry.)

But I’m not just here today to rant. I’m also here to share a little known—well, little known to me, anyway—publishing fact.

I was impressed by one particular painting, and so moved forward to read the title and artist off the informational plaque. I discovered that the painting was titled “Street Light,” and that it had been painted by Giacomo Balla around 1910 or 1911, and that the painting was present thanks to something called the Hillman Periodicals Fund.

I knew that name, but never expected to encounter it at MoMA. Hillman Periodicals is a long-defunct comic-book company best remembered for its characters Airboy and the Heap. (The Heap was the inspiration for both Man-Thing and Swamp Thing, though the character had charms of its own.) But what could a dead comic-book company possibly have to do with the Museum of Modern Art?

A little online research reveals that publisher Alex L. Hillman, who also gave the world true confessions and crime magazines, as well as the general-interest magazine Pageant, was a noted art collector. He eventually created a foundation to oversee his collection, and some of that artwork ended up at MoMA.

So don’t think that the only comic-book connections you’ll find at MoMA are those annoying Roy Lichtenstein swipes!