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.

In his journal entry for January 7, 1962, Indiana writes that he took a taxi uptown with J. (his partner, fashion designer John Kloss), arriving too early at the Museum of Modern Art, where there was a line waiting for the doors to open. Because of this they walked a block away, checking out the new Hilton hotel and running into Stephen and Barbara Durkee, who had not yet see his painting The American Dream, I (on display in the exhibition Recent Acquisitions: Painting and Sculpture). He notes that the painting had been straightened, with the shadow even underneath and the typescript quotes next to it on the wall. He remarks that a mother described it to her child "as something [to] do with 'gambling.'"

Indiana then records going upstairs to see Rosenquist's Tube: "hung very nicely in all its rounds on [the] blue-tile wall. Upstairs also is an Agnes Martin, making [the] roster complete. Every painter painter on [the] Slip is now hanging at [the] Modern: Kelly, Youngerman, Martin, Rosenquist and Indiana!"

Indiana also writes that he took the train to Scarsdale, where Noel Frackman (a collector and journalist) was waiting at the station to meet him. He notes that her husband Dick was at home, and that the painting she had purchased from him, Beating Hearts (Papa), was on the wall in the study.