The Art’s the Star: The New Old MoMA in New York
For nine months, the MoMA made a guest appearance in Berlin’s New National
Gallery. Now, following two years of construction in Manhattan, New York’s
Museum of Modern Art has reopened. The newly erected structure, designed
by the architect Yoshio Taniguchi, subordinates itself to the outstanding
art collection, and for the first time there’s enough room to show a
greater number of large-scale works and conceptual art. But the Modernist
classics still preside above it all on the fifth floor –
Christian Schaernack took a look around the new MoMA for db-artmag.
The Museum of Modern Art,
designed
by Yoshio Taniguchi.
Entrance at
53rd Street
©2004 Timothy Hursley
The one-liner on the posters announcing the reopening of the
Museum of Modern Art is clear, yet subtle: "New York is Modern Again." A
claim to absoluteness lies concealed within this tactful understatement;
as a message, it reveals an agenda.
Without a doubt, the gigantic
construction site on 53rd Street created a vacuum at the center of New
York’s art cosmos. The wrecking balls first arrived in 1999; three years
later, at the beginning of the feverish construction phase, large portions
of the world-famous collection were stored in a temporary branch in the
neighboring borough of Queens. The city’s remaining art institutions
didn’t even come close to filling the gap – in the
Metropolitan Museum, the 20th century is represented only marginally,
while the Whitney’s program is
purely American.
Henri Matisse: Dance (1), 1909
©2004
Timothy Hursley
|
The MoMA is, quite simply, unique with its
Demoiselles d’Avignon,
Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie, the many
Pollocks, Roy
Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl,
Andy Warhol’s golden Marilyn
, and Pininfarina’s red-hot
Ferrari from the design section. Hardly ever before has the building of a
museum become the subject of such intense discussion ahead of time, and
the sense of expectation has never before been so keen. New Yorkers love
their MoMA, an institution whose 75-year success story is more or less
symbiotically interwoven with the city’s rise to a modern metropolis and
the self-proclaimed "Cultural Capital of the 20th Century."
The Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries,
with Ferrari by Pininfarina © 2004 Timothy Hursley
Was the wait worth it? What does a museum look like that swallows up over 850
million dollars, half of which went to building costs? And what does the
visitor get for his record-breaking entrance fee of 20 dollars? A museum
that has more than anything else remained true to itself. The MoMA has
long since become a "conservative" institution. And ever since
mid-November, whoever hasn’t noticed this can find proof of it on the six
stories and over 700,000 square feet of the new Museum of Modern Art,
designed by the Japanese architect
Yoshio Taniguchi.
Ellsworth Kelly:
Sculpture for a
Large Wall, 104 aluminium panels 1957
©2004 Ellsworth Kelly
New York obviously
balked at jumping on the latest express train by resisting "event
architecture" à la
Libeskind,
Gehry & Co. and even the plans of stars the likes of
Rem Koolhaas or the Swiss team of
Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron. In contrast, the 67 year-old
Taniguchi, who became known through his elegant museum buildings in Tokyo,
Kakegawa, and Kyoto, masterfully integrated his design into the
surrounding city context and subordinated it to the collection inside. The
contents alone are what count: this was the motto, which happily distanced
itself from the magical architectonic tricks of certain individuals. And
in any case: there’s far too much pride in the museum’s inimitable
collection to allow it to take second billing in the shadow of an
over-powerful architecture.
[1]
[2]
[3]
|
