press event at MoMA

Press from around the world had more than enough space on the cavernous 6th and uppermost gallery floor, dedicated to temporary exhibitions, to watch Director Glenn Lowry present the unassuming star of the show, architect Yoshio Taniguchi. Correspondents and photographers, including an above average representation of Japanese (and Norwegian!) reporters, spent the next few hours roaming the new galleries, which increase the museum's exhibition space by almost 4,000 square meters. The highly advertised opening extravaganza for the public is tomorrow, Saturday, November 20th, when visitors will have free access from 10 to 10. After that it's an incredible twenty bucks to get in!

I spent most of my time in the painting and sculpture galleries on the 5th and 4th floors. These spaces bear little resemblance to the previous linear, structured arrangement of boring rooms that Caesar Pelli gave us in his renovation in the 80's, yet there is a similar sense of intimacy. The design and mounting of works on the 5th floor in particular is - I hate to gush - aesthetically impeccable. The architecture's generous and well-proportioned volumes allow just the right feel of space for viewing familiar works indelibly associated with the "best collection of modern art in the world" (I don't know how many times I heard that today). The movement through the galleries of early modern art on this floor is as clear as the canons of early modern art history that Curator John Elderfield unapologetically presents to the public: straightforward, comprehensible, opening onto other contained spaces to provide juxtapositions of related historical "-isms," and only occasionally penetrated by views onto the sculpture garden and cityscape of midtown Manhattan. It is hard to imagine the story of early modern art being told in a more seductively conclusive manner, with Picasso pretty much positioned as main character from beginning to end.

The painting and sculpture collection is presented chronologially on the 4th floor as well, but reads more as a "favorite hits" experience for MoMA enthusiasts, with "Oh good, I was hoping they'd still keep the Pollocks next to the Rothkos" - kind of comments heard. Standing near a large group of Japenese correspondents taking each others' pictures in front of Jasper Johns' flag and target paintings, I was taken with a small grouping of paintings in an early Legér style that included one by Le Corbusier. It reminded me of how MoMAs founder, Alfred H. Barr, Jr, championed the capital letters of International Style in the late 20s after his sojourns in Europe and Russia. I haven´t made it to the arcitecture department exhibition, that will have to wait 'til next time, as will my next blog over the weekend about the ground floor galleries for contemporary art, where new acquisitions are presented.