MoMAgnifique In Manhattan

By Fabrice ROUSSELOT

Saturday November 20, 2004 (Release - 06:00)

New York of our correspondent

A small island planted in the beautiful medium of the island. A very whole oasis devoted to the modern art. "a city in the city" , known as still the Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi. For its 7ë anniversary, MoMA (museum of Modern art) of New York offered a beautiful gift. After two years and half of exile in the district of Queens, its return to Manhattan is masterly. More than one simple "restoration", it is a true rebirth which awaits the New-Yorkers and the visitors of the whole world for his reopening this Saturday. Old MoMA, one does not recognize almost anything. A formidable whole of glass, granite and metal rises in full Midtown. A transparent and aesthetic structure entirely organized around a garden of the sculptures reconsidered and increased. There, between the trees and the fountains, in company of the goat of Picasso or the woman to the opened out shapes of Gaston Lachaise, one is under the shock of the frontage out of grayed glass, with a museum which extends from now on from is in west and of the south in north, with two entries, on 5é and the 5ê street.

It is at summer 2002 that MoMA had been exiled towards Queens. But the debate on its expansion had earlier begun, after the arrival, in 1995, of its new director, Glenn Lowry. At the time, the board of directors of the museum estimated that MoMA, which is prided to be the first museum of modern art in the world, too was with the narrow one. Beyond the expansion considered, Lowry then proposes to reconsider all the museum.

A colossal project of 858 million dollars

The result is greeted since weeks by the American press. After having obtained the contract, with the general surprise in 1997 (to read page 6), the Taniguchi Japanese made a success of what the New York Times describes of a sentence: "a fusion of art and the urban one in a pure esthetics." Nearly three years of work, for a colossal project of 858 million dollars (425 million for only construction). Monumental, supposed project to symbolize the found dynamism of the New York post-11 September. With final, space for paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, photographs and projections almost doubled, passing to 12 000 square meters of exposure.

For Taniguchi, new MoMA is a microcosm of Manhattan, with a museum which is coiled around its garden like Manhattan around Central Park. To the interior, a vast central atrium returns the visitor on six stages (ground floor included/understood) of collections and exposures. In top of the first staircase, imposing it broken obelisk of Barnett Newman faces the Nymphea of Monet. Open the first gallery then. It is there that one takes the measurement of the work of Taniguchi. The galleries never seem to be closed, to unceasingly open the ones on the others, like letting art be propagated from one part to another. Space is immense and MoMA, for the first time, can show in its entirety a part like Bingo of Gordon Matta-Clark. A section of wall, reconstituted in 1974 starting from a frontage of a house of the Niagara Falls.

"MoMA is not in New York by chance"

For the first time also, MoMA could obtain a vast gallery media, where films and documentary divide seven video screens of all sizes. "We from now on will be able to try out and introduce many artists" , known as Barbara London, in load of the project. The genius of new MoMA is also in the light. Each space of exposure has of windows or picture windows, which allow a new glance on works while exploiting the relation between the city and its museum. "MoMA is not in New York by chance , explains Glenn Lowry. From its modernity, its innovation, the city belongs to our ADN And the public can feel this relation when it sees the frontage of a building right behind a sculpture or a painting."

For its great return, MoMA does not have escaped with a vast debate on its collections and its exposures, on balance between contemporary and modern . During its restoration, the museum acquired several thousands of new parts, the parts recognized like the Plunger To marble Johns or the sculpture of the pregnant Woman of Picasso, as well as more recent works like the photographs of the Canadian Jeff Wall or synthetic paintings of Josiah McElheny. But the choices for reopening caused movements. Criticisms were astonished by the "disappearance" of works of Julian Schnabel or owing to the fact that the work of the bad British servant boy Damien Hirst is relegated in a small space close to escalator. Others greeted the return of Jeff Koons, with its two vacuum cleaners under glass exposed on the 2nd floor. Or obvious will to propose the American Cindy Sherman, exposed photographer beside Marbling Johns and not in the gallery of photography.

"Politically correct, once again"

The sharpest discussion, which agitates MoMA since its creation in 1929, again turned around "modernity". Charlie Finch, critical of art, let know that MoMA "was satisfied once again to be politically correct" . Before adding that "the museum traditionally had ten to twenty years of delay on what is done in contemporary art" .

The conservatives rétorquent that they expose new talents, such Chris Ofili, which had made scandal in 1999 by showing its portrait of the Virgin covered with excrements. Or the British painter Peter Doig, whose work presented has less than two years. "To show the history and the past of the modern art through our collection, but also to seek new contemporary parts to add to our works , summarizes John Elderfield, conservative of paintings and sculptures in MoMA. It is a difficult work and which never stops."

On his side, the director Glenn Lowry "really does not think of the number of visitors", but "thanks in advance all those which will cross our doors and will make the experiment of new MoMA" . At the price, raised, of 20 dollars the entry (to read opposite), the museum must be with the height of its ambition of "world laboratory of the modern art" , like had proclaimed it as of the end of the Twenties one of its founders, the billionaire and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller.