The Decorator Triumphant
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, should be given a tickertape parade down Fifth Avenue – and maybe run out of town on a rail.
MoMA’s new building, expanded and renovated by Yoshio Taniguchi, is a triumph of museum architecture. Its director and staff deserve credit for that accomplishment, and will get it after the museum, closed in Midtown since May 2002, reopens to the public on Saturday. What Mr. Lowry and Co. have done with that triumph in regards to MoMA’s permanent collection is at times sublime. At others it verges on betraying the very tenets and foundations of Modernism.
The Museum of Modern Art, which first opened its doors in November 1929 under the directorship of Alfred H. Barr Jr., boasts undisputedly the greatest collection of Modern art in the world. But MoMA is not merely a collection of artworks. The first museum of its kind, from day one it not only shaped the history of art in the Modern era but defined our very notions of what art is and could be – of what a museum is and should be.
Barr’s embrace of Modernism did not merely alter America. It altered the Western world. He expanded the realms of art and the museum to include departments of photography, film, and graphic, architectural, and industrial design. He was not the first to bring the Postimpressionists, Fauves, Cubists, Surrealists, Russian Constructivists, and de Stijl to New York’s attention, but he was the first to make them accessible – through museum publicity, community outreach, printed pamphlets and catalogs, docents, and lectures.
Barr’s choices shaped not just how we see Modern art but how we see and form ourselves in relationship to Europe and to popular culture. MoMA’s collection, temporary exhibitions, and publications have fed, rankled, and inspired American artists for 75 years. Without MoMA’s prominent showing of Surrealism and the School of Paris (which taught American artists how to paint – though they fought against that education) it is doubtful there would have been a New York School.
On the wall to the entrance of the permanent collection in the old MoMA was a quote from Barr that read: “The conscientious, continuous, resolute distinction of quality from mediocrity.” Barr’s mission statement for MoMA went on to declare that though “the composition of the collection will change; the principles on which it is built will remain permanent.” As far as I can tell, this important reminder is absent from any prominent place of display in the new MoMA.
Things have changed a lot since Barr’s tenure at MoMA (1929-67). Contemporary art is often canonized for its commentary upon and ridicule of Modernism and its beliefs, which have been denigrated and dismissed as elitist, if not dead, by Postmodernism. Most of the recent exhibitions and contemporary artists featured at MoMA reflect the position that Modernism – indeed, traditional art itself – must be attacked and dethroned.
This puts the museum of Modern art in a bit of a pickle. What should it do with its great collection of classic works by artists such as Picasso, Matisse, and Klee when the schools of Warhol and Duchamp are ascendant? In a Postmodern era, how does the Museum of Modern Art, which prides itself on embracing contemporary artists, reconcile two very different belief systems: Modernist and Postmodernist? The answer is that it doesn’t. The new MoMA treats the classics, which are relegated mostly to the fifth floor, as trophies, and their galleries as vitrines. The second floor, the first galleries of art a visitor encounters, is devoted to contemporary art, physically asserting MoMA’s change of commitment from the old to the new.
The postwar galleries are devoted to Abstract Expressionism, the New York School, Minimalism, Dada, Pop, and Conceptualism. The postwar School of Paris is practically nowhere to be seen. Warhol and Duchamp, shouts MoMA from its rooftop, have overthrown Matisse and Picasso. As you move through the floors devoted to contemporary art, and, time after time, encounter works with little or no aesthetic merit, you know MoMA is “up-to-date.” Although there are many great contemporary artists working today, artists who are continuing to reinvent and extend the traditions of painting and sculpture, I fear we may not see them well represented at MoMA. The museum’s leadership seems to take its cues from blue-chip tastemakers in galleries instead of leading the way.
The new building is literally full of surprises. On a single black, marble landing with a curving staircase is a spectacular group of works that left me breathless. It includes Leger’s “The Divers II” (1941-42), Mondrian’s “Trafalgar Square” (1939-43), and Calder’s hanging mobile “Lobster Trap and Fish Tail” (1939). Even the cafes and gift shops are tasteful; the escalators, positioned in the center of the museum, feel like classic forms in motion, and they energize the galleries.
The sky-lit sixth floor is a beautiful gymnasium of a gallery. Unfortunately it is so huge it swallows up the large-scale works on view. MoMA has created a behemoth of space. Currently, pride of place is wasted on James Rosenquist’s banal, 86-foot long “F-111” (1964-65). Across the gallery is Ellsworth Kelly’s 65-footlong, tessellating masterpiece of aluminum “Sculpture for a Large Wall” (1957). The sculpture, which originally hung in the entranceway of the Transportation Building in Philadelphia, deserves to be hung in the museum lobby near the artist’s “Spectrum IV” (1967).
The fifth and fourth floors, the Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Painting and Sculpture Galleries I (1880-1940) and II (1940-1970), respectively, are devoted to the permanent collection. This begins on the fifth floor with installations that are pure, Modern heaven. During the course of the next year, they will be augmented by three chronological, four-month-long shows of works on paper in the Paul J. Sachs Drawings Galleries on the third floor. The first, “Drawing From the Modern 1880-1945,” is spectacular and will be up through March. The show rounds out the third floor, where you’ll also find two amazingly wonderful, hodgepodge shows, one of photography, in the Edward Steichen Photography Galleries, and one of objects – including a racing car and a vitrine of things that “pour” – in the Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries.
Seeing the gallery walls graced with the names of these people, all of whom were instrumental in MoMA’s early years and development, should be heartening. Barr took Sachs’s legendary museum studies course at Harvard, and Sachs oversaw Barr’s curation of the first Modern art exhibit at the Fogg. (Sachs recommended Barr to Abby Aldrich Rockefeller for the directorship.) But I could not help but think that they, like the permanent collection, were not being honored; rather, they were being entombed, permanently retired.
The retirement of what really matters at MoMA is evident in the insistence of a nonchronological installment of the galleries, which encourages visitors to stumble around. It is also evident in the choice of artworks that grace the cover of each gallery’s pamphlet. Duchamp’s “Bicycle Wheel”(1913) is on the cover of the fifth-floor booklet; Robert Rauschenberg’s “Bed” (1955) is on that of the fourth floor. Barr never liked Pop art. The Rauschenberg is an outright slap in the face.
This does not mean that there are not great experiences available at the new MoMA. Coming off the elevators in the hallway on the fifth floor, you encounter three wax sculptures by Medaro Rosso, Rousseau’s “The Dream” (1910), and a bronze sculpture by Matisse. The first gallery is filled with Cezanne, van Gogh, early Braque, and Derain. To my right, in the Cubist gallery, I was startled for the first time in ages by Picasso’s 1907 masterpiece “Demoiselles d’Avignon,” which challenges the Postimpressionist gallery like a bull, ready to charge.
The Cubist gallery, filled with Rose Period and Cubist Picasso, Fauvist Matisse, and a couple of early Braques, is stunning. But it is here, realizing that Modernism was being truncated, quickened, funneled into the narrowest of acceptable perimeters, that I began to have misgivings. Where was more Cubist Braque, I wondered. In other galleries I would wonder where Dufy, Marquet, and Vuilliard were, or Matisse and Kandinsky after 1920; Balthus does not show up at MoMA at all. Then I understood why Rousseau was relegated to the hallway: Not because we are getting more; because we are getting less.
MoMA has nearly doubled in size, but from here on out it is the history of Modern art – smothered by the art of the last 60, specifically the last 30, years – presented in a nutshell. On view are a number of the classics – van Gogh’s “Starry Night” (1889), Matisse’s “The Red Studio” (1911), Chagall’s “I and the Village” (1911), Picasso’s “Three Musicians”(1921) and “Girl Before a Mirror” (1932), Leger’s “Three Women” (1921), “Mondrian’s “Broadway Boogie Woogie” (1940). Certainly visitors will feel as if they have encountered many of Modernism’s greatest hits.
Yet something is not quite right. Robert Delaunay’s “Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon” (1913) is shoved in a corner; the closely hung wall of Mondrians, which move from early to late, read like a flip-book; Matisse’s four bronze reliefs “Backs I,” “II,” “III,” and “IV” (1908-31) are separated at opposite ends of a gallery; and his iconic painting “The Dance (I)” (1909) has been relegated to a stairwell.
If you descend the stairs, you will discover that the curators are making a tasteful statement about “blue,” “pink,” and “green,” the predominant colors in “The Dance (I).” Positioned on the landing of the fourth floor are paintings by Richard Diebenkorn, Howard Hodgkin, and Milton Avery that all use variations on that same color range. And around the corner you will encounter Yves Klein’s “Blue Monochrome” (1961), a single blue rectangle that emphasizes the overall design scheme.
This “color theory” hanging is used throughout the galleries in the museum. A bit of orange is carried from one painting along a wall to another, where red is introduced and carried to the next. On the fourth floor, whose works are colored mostly with creams, browns, blacks, and whites, a whole wall is suddenly filled with brightly colored rectangles and organic shapes in works by Mr. Kelly, Matisse, and Hans Hofmann.
When MoMA’s curators force easy associations such as those of shape and color on the works, they weaken and reduce the art to mere decoration. At that point the architecture and the art lose their integrity, as they all blend together in a smooth, tastefully designed transition that flows from work to work, gallery to gallery, floor to floor. It is a safe way to decorate a museum. It moves visitors along, keeping them from lingering over differences and particularities. And it goes along with MoMA’s recent, unimaginative and safe, curatorial decisions, which have given us a museum too often not of quality and challenge but of the anti-art, Postmodern status quo.
MoMA, though drained of some of her color, is still alive and well. And she is stronger and smarter than her increasing mediocrity. I believe that, despite in-house ignorance and a cynical art world, she can still surprise, winning people over to the side of quality.
The New MoMA
The expansion of the Museum of Modern Art has increased the exhibition area by 40,000 square feet, to 125,000 square feet, including an expanded sculpture garden. The installation at the new MoMA building is in reverse chronological order, starting on the second floor with contemporary art and working backward to the Impressionists and their contemporaries. The bi-level sixth floor will be dedicated to temporary exhibitions.
1st Floor: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden
2nd Floor: Donald B. & Catherine C. Marron Atrium, Paul J. Sachs Prints & Illustrated Books Galleries, Yoshiko & Akio Morita Gallery for Media Art
3rd Floor: Edward Steichen Photography Galleries, Paul J. Sachs Drawings Galleries, Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries
4th Floor: Alfred H. Barr Jr., Painting and Sculpture Galleries II (1940-1970)
5th Floor: Alfred H. Barr Jr., Painting and Sculpture Galleries I (1880-1940)