The recently completed expansion of New York’s Museum of Modern Art was the fourth extension since the institution completed its pioneering Modernist structure by Edward Durell Stone and Philip Goodwin in 1939. Additions have been designed by such notables as Philip Johnson, Cesar Pelli, and Yoshio Taniguchi, none of them among those architects’ greatest works, except for the Johnson-designed sculpture garden, a major achievement for both the designer and the museum.
The latest growth spurt has inspired the expected torrent of press coverage, much of it questioning the outcome of this of this effort. Wasn’t the museum already too big? Were its expansion plans worth the demolition of the small-scaled but elegant Folk Art museum next door by architects Williams and Tsien, recent winners of the international Praemium Imperiale (officeinsight, Oct. 21, 2019)? Did the expansion have to be funded by erecting yet another 1,000-foot-plus condo tower above the museum’s added volume?
The design of the enlarged MoMA was entrusted to the firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, who have recently risen to stardom through bold design statements at the new Broad Museum in Los Angeles and at the Shed performing space at New York’s Hudson Yards, along with innovative outdoor interventions at New York’s High Line and Lincoln Center public spaces.
Here the work of DSR – backed up by the multiple skills of Gensler – is largely, and wisely, an exercise in restraint. Some 40,000 additional square feet of exhibition space has been added, but there is no architecturally iconic new space and hardly any deviation from the minimal detailing of individual galleries. There are just more galleries, accommodating a much larger proportion of the museum’s holdings, plus relatively few loan works and current-work installations. There is a seemingly more thoughtful spacing of works within galleries, so that clusters of viewers around known favorites don’t block nearby works. And a few new galleries are taller or depart from the museum’s all white standard – one with walls painted tomato red and another with deep purple.
The Principal Revision: Mixing the Arts
From its earliest years, the museum’s definition of “art” was broad – including not only paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture, but design and architecture as well – along with photography and film. Yet up to now, these various art forms were each assigned to designated spaces within the museum. Galleries for temporary exhibitions might be reassigned to one or another of these arts, but they were rarely mixed in the same gallery.
In the reopened museum, there are a few galleries primarily devoted to areas of design, but design doesn’t necessarily reign alone. In the “Take a Thread for a Walk” gallery focused mainly on textiles, there is a classic 1952 Bertoia armchair, in the fabric-covered version. There’s even an exquisite 1896 painting by Vuillard of a textile artist at work.
In a suite of galleries devoted to works of South American artists are the iconic 1938 sling chair by an Argentinian design team, widely distributed in the midcentury U.S. as a “Hardoy chair” (more often in simple fabric than in the leather version exhibited here) and the less widely known Bowl upholstered chair (1951) by the Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi (who is only now being recognized for her superb buildings, including the brilliantly innovative museum of modern art in Sao Paulo, 1957-68).
An impressive array of Modern furnishings is displayed in a “Design for Modern Life” space. Tubular steel is combined with canvas in Marcel Breuer’s iconic 1927-28 armchair, with cane in a Mies van der Rohe 1927 armchair, and with rich red leather in a circular revolving chair of 1928 by Charlotte Perriand. In the same exhibit space are a 1929 child’s chair in laminated birch and molded plywood by Alvar Aalto, an impressive steel-framed, glass-topped 1925 desk by Rene Herbst, and an entire full-size kitchen prototype by Margarete Shutte-Liholsky (1926-27), plus a variety of photos, posters, tabletop items, and hypothetical architectural drawings.
In the room labeled “Architecture for Modern Art” there is a group of much less familiar, highly unconventional chairs (1942) by architect Frederick Kiesler, made of oak and linoleum, along with a low Kiesler table and another little table support only by ropes from both ceiling and floor. In the gallery labeled “From Soup Cans to Flying Saucers” (for what most of us would call Pop Art) there is a simple print of a very conventional one-story midcentury house, attributed to artist James Rosenquist, displayed hanging face-down from the ceiling.
The gallery labeled “The Vertical City” includes – among examples of photographic and poster interpretations – many architectural drawings and large models of two Frank Lloyd Wright (unbuilt) projects: The San Francisco Call building of 1913 and the St. Mark’s Tower (1927-29), precedent for the Price Tower, completed 1956 in Bartlesville, OK.
The “Architectural Systems” gallery centers on a full-size portion of the original (1952) curtain wall of the United Nations Secretariat, displaying both its optimism and the technical shortcomings that made its replacement so necessary. Surrounding it are futuristic views of buildings and cities, along with the popular 1967 movie “Playtime,” starring Jacques Tati, which poked memorable fun at these system-based design concepts.
More Varied, More Changeable Displays
As has been widely noted, the percentage of work shown by women and by artists of various minority groups and nationalities has been admirably expanded. Another major change in installation policy involves rotating much of what’s on display every few months – regularly drawing on the 90% of the museum’s holdings that are typically stashed away in storage. That may bring to the galleries furniture of Alvar Aalto more impressive than the one child’s chair now shown. Perhaps we’ll also see some iconic furniture by Arne Jacobsen, Eero Saarinen, and Charles and Ray Eames. We may see as well some lighting fixtures by Louis Poulsen and others.
The integration of design and architecture into the main stream of MoMA’s extraordinary holdings deserves much praise. And some day the curators may reach out to other designed components of our environment. Their exhibitions may even incorporate, say, aesthetically advanced solar collectors, window blinds, and acoustic ceiling systems.