Photo: Jody Dole; Courtesy Star of Hope Foundation, Vinalhaven, Maine

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 November 3, 1962, Indiana records that it was the last day of his solo show at the Stable Gallery and that: "Rain and wind of real Novemberish unpleasantness marred [the] whole morning and reduced attendance, on ordinarily [the] busiest of all [the] week's days, to practically a full zero. No one was in [the] gallery when I finally did get there (2), and so it remained for some time."

He writes that his constructions "were hooded but still soaked in [the] rain, being sponges [to] their base," and that a piece of plastic had been blown off and landed high above the garden in an empty lot of rubble. 

Indiana records the visitors that day, starting with collector Myron Orlofsky, "all wreathed in smiles and enthusiasm," and who had just secured the use of an apartment in the Village, where The Rebecca, which he had purchased, would go. Lou Winter also stopped by, as well as "someone named Hobbs from the Pasadena Museum in California." Indiana notes that it is while he was talking to him that Alfred Barr and Dorothy Miller, of the Museum of Modern Art, "burst onto the scene accompanied by an entourage of people, including a Look photographer who kept posing them in front of my work. Pandemonium set in and [the] pace of [the] day was suddenly transformed into a full gallop. Fortunately I had taken [the] plastic off [the] constructions . . . Barr and Miller went down [to] [the] garden, being photographed in a light rain, which had set back in. Their reaction [to] [the] show seemed positive."

He records that Museum of Modern Art curator Campell Wylly came while they were there and "took his little painting," and that Robert Rauschenberg and Niki de Saint Phalle were the last visitors.