Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work as well as his daily life on Coenties Slip.

This journal page covers December 21–22, 1959. In his entry for December 21 Indiana records a call from Agnes Martin, who asked him if he would give her a hand with her show announcements (for the exhibition Paintings: Agnes Martin, at Section Eleven, Betty Parsons Gallery). He notes that it had been months since he had heard from her, but that he put aside his resentments, "willing to give the old brotherhood another fling," and agreed to help. 

Indiana records that Martin and he went to see the Whitney Annual, missing out on most of one floor, but seeing Ellsworth Kelly's painting. They then went to see the Sixteen Americans show at the Museum of Modern Art. He writes "fortunately Agnes likes Stella too. Ellsworth still looks sharp; Jack [Youngerman] somewhat weaker. The sculptor in bronze intrigues Agnes the most, and she insists that I should transform the mural into a metal relief. Hammered copper, or bronze."

Sixteen Americans was the fifth in MoMA's Americans series, which introduced exceptional contemporary American artists. Indiana would be included in the series four years later, exhibiting nine works in Americans 1963.

Indiana then walked Agnes across Manhattan to the river, thus missing Robert Natkin's opening (at Poindexter Gallery), and he notes deciding to skip Robert Bücker’s at the Condon Riley Gallery, as he did not want "to face that crowd."

In his second entry on the page, for December 22, Indiana only records receiving a birthday gift from J. (his partner, fashion designer John Kloss), the books Divine Comedy, Brothers Karamazov, and Crime and Punishment.