Learning To Live With MoMA

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.

The New York Sun

The Museum of Modern Art has been reopened now for about a month, and most of the jury is in. There have been mixed reviews: Some people (I, for one) love the new building. Others hate it. Some think the permanent collection has never looked better. Others long for the days when William S. Rubin was at the helm. Others, still, for the days of Alfred H. Barr Jr.


I continue to have very mixed feelings. But like it or not in its current incarnation, MoMA – the good, the bad, and the ugly – is here to stay, at least for a while. And we have to make the best of it. On Monday, I did just that, braving the holiday-shopping crowds on 53rd Street, and it was worth the effort.


All those reviews of the new MoMA you read a few weeks ago were like the exit polls from the election. They were first impressions, and in most cases they were the impressions of critics who saw the museum when it was mostly quiet and empty or, at worst, through the quiet buzz of a press preview or party. How the museum looks – and works – for the actual public is an entirely different question.


On the day I dropped by, the museum was bustling with visitors who seemed to be at once equally quizzical, hesitant, and excited by what MoMA, the reigning voice of authority, was offering. Their heads in constant motion, patrons looked as much at the art as they did at the architecture (which itself says something positive about the latter, I think).


Visitors mostly hurried through the galleries, attempting, seemingly, to take it all in during a single viewing. Near closing, I overheard one woman (obviously referring to the cost of a membership vs. the cost of a single admission) say to her companion: “I told her, ‘I know it’s a better deal. But I don’t have $75. I barely have twenty.’ And we aren’t even going to make it to the sixth floor.”


For the most part, I didn’t linger as much as I like to. I felt carried along by the prevailing current, though I know the museum deserves and demands multiple visits. One of the few places I saw visitors lingering (besides the cafes) was in the atrium, on the long benches that face Monet’s “Water Lilies,” the museum’s oasis.


As I went back through MoMA’s galleries, I attempted to put my criticisms aside, so that I could enjoy the museum for what it is – one of the greatest collections of Modern art in the world. It was an enthralling and sobering experience.


I still have a lot of problems with the hanging, exclusions, or inclusions of some of the works. But some paintings and sculptures speak to each other in new ways, and the architecture sings.


There are moments at MoMA when artworks are smothered: The hanging of Braque’s “Studio V” (1949-50) – a miraculous array of grays and one of the greatest paintings in the collection – between two dead messes by Dubuffet turns the Braque into mud. And putting Andre Masson’s masterpiece “Meditation on an Oak Leaf” (1942) between inflected Surrealist banalities by Max Ernst and Norman Lewis very nearly reduces the Masson to a set of mannerisms.


But there are times when the works have never looked better, and the architecture offers insights to the art. I was very pleased to move between the various curves of van Gogh’s roiling sky in “The Starry Night” (1889) and Rousseau’s lion’s tail in “The Sleeping Gypsy” (1897); or back and forth between the various brushstrokes of van Gogh, Signac, Derain, Matisse, and Cezanne; or between the subtle color shifts of Picasso’s rose-period works and the close shifts of gray in the nearby works of the Cubists.


In the Surrealist gallery is a window that looks down on the atrium space, providing a bird’s-eye-view of Barnett Newman’s sculpture “Broken Obelisk” (1963-9). Next to the window’s floor-to-ceiling sheet of glass is Giacometti’s sculpture “Woman with Her Throat Cut” (1932), and the crisscrossing lines of Giacometti’s splayed torso speak to the stepped striations on the top of the Newman. These are further enhanced by the escalators and the walkways, which, seen across the space, cut through the architecture. The base of the “Broken Obelisk” feels framed by the window, and appears to anchor the glass to the gallery floor, helping to arrest a sense of vertigo.


Mondrian’s “Tableau I: Lozenge with Four Lines and Gray” (1926), a painting so strong that it seems to lift the gallery wall off the floor, is faced, as if by an audience, by a grouping of six Brancusi sculptures in an adjacent gallery. Going back and forth between, on the one hand, the economic geometry of Mondrian’s stark lines and soaring, frontal triangles and Brancusi’s softly curving volumes, on the other, was an experience I look forward to repeating.


I was also able this time to linger in the Sculpture Garden. The scale of the sculptures, a little bit larger than human in feel, provides an outdoor space that makes adults seem the size of children. The wonderful Calders “Whale II” (1964) and “Black Widow” (1959), Picasso’s “She Goat” (1950), and the jungle-gym feel of sculptures by Donald Judd, Tony Smith, David Smith, and Ellsworth Kelly create an atmosphere somewhere between playground, dreamscape, and barnyard.


But though I certainly had my moments of Modern bliss, being content was not an easy task. The new MoMA has made a firm commitment to contemporary art. But it is a sad story that we have seen before: Like a 40-year-old arriving late at a college party, MoMA, made-over in the latest, hip fashion, apparently wants to prove that it can still dance like the kids. But the display of paintings and sculptures by contemporary artists, with some exceptions – Rachel Whiteread, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Tuttle, Anne Truitt, Charles Le Dray – is unoriginal and uninspired. The second-floor installation, a drab who’s-who of art world celebrities represented by blue-chip galleries, feels inherited and off-the-shelf – absent of a point of view, other than that MoMA pockets run deep, allowing it to compete easily at auction.


The Museum of Modern Art was one of the main reasons I came to New York, back in 1985. I was so excited by the collection that I made myself wait a few days after I arrived before I went to see it. I had to gear up for what I knew would be an overwhelming experience. (If you have not yet made it to the new MoMA, maybe you are waiting for the same reasons.)


I must admit that, as I approached the museum’s entrance this last Monday, my pace quickened just as it did the first time I walked down 53rd Street. I experienced that old familiar MoMA thrill. It felt good to be back home.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use