The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is counting down to its reopening in midtown Manhattan. The expanded and reconceived Museum will provide a sublime venue for the world’s leading collection of modern and contemporary Art.
The Museum of Modern Art will reopen its midtown Manhattan building on Saturday, November 20, 2004, commemorating the Museum’s 75th anniversary and heralding the completion of the most extensive rebuilding and renovation project in MoMA’s history. The new Museum nearly doubles the capacity of the former building, encompassing approximately 630,000 square feet of new and renovated space on six floors and providing expanded facilities for special exhibitions, public programs, educational outreach, and scholarly research.
On opening day, admission to the Museum will be free of charge as a special gift to the public for its steadfast support. Free admission is made possible by the generous contribution of lead sponsor JPMorgan Chase, who also is supporting the reinstallation of the Museum’s collection and accompanying educational programs, as well as the Museum’s opening week festivities.
The renovated and expanded Museum was designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, who has created a uniquely elegant design to extend and enhance the presentation of the Museum’s dynamic and evolving collection of modern and contemporary art. Galleries are clustered around a soaring 110-foot-tall atrium that diffuses natural light throughout the building. For the first time, views of The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden and the city can be seen from many of the galleries in the Museum. The new building, constructed at a cost of $425 million, features a 12,400-square-foot lobby that connects West 53rd and 54th Streets, provides two major entrances to the Museum, and joins Philip Johnson’s 1964 addition and Cesar Pelli’s 1984 Museum Tower to link MoMA’s past with its future in a street-level panorama of architectural history.
On the second through sixth floors of the Museum, architecturally distinctive spaces have been specially designed to provide the ideal environment for the display of art, including works from the Museum’s collection, recent acquisitions on view for the first time, and temporary exhibitions. From the lobby, a staircase leads to the contemporary galleries on the second level. The block-wide column-free space, with nearly 22-foot-high ceilings, serves as MoMA’s first space dedicated to contemporary art and demonstrates the Museum’s commitment to the art of our time.
At the core of the Museum’s presentation of its collection are the painting and sculpture galleries on the fourth and fifth floors. Each of these galleries will be devoted to an individual subject – a period, movement, artist, or set of artists. Additionally, the Department of Architecture and Design will present an overview of its collections of design objects, architectural models, and graphic design from the mid-19th century until today, as well as an installation of architectural drawings by the most eminent architects of the 20th century. The Department of Drawings galleries will stage a three-part exhibition over the first year entitled Drawing from the Modern, which will reexamine drawing from 1880 to the present. The Department of Photography’s inaugural installation will present a survey of the period from the 1890s through the 1950s. The Department of Prints and Illustrated Books will show Artists & Prints, an exhibition of approximately 100 works dating from the 1880s to the present that will demonstrate how such figures as Louise Bourgeois, Jasper Johns, William Kentridge, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, and many others expanded their creativity through explorations of printmaking.
Nine Museums by Yoshio Taniguchi (November 20, 2004–January 31, 2005), the inaugural display in the temporary exhibition space on the third floor, will present the new Museum of Modern Art in the context of the other extraordinary art museums that Taniguchi has designed over the last 25 years and will address four integral themes in the architect’s work – materials, proportion, natural light, and movement. Projects 82: Mark Dion, Rescue Archeology – A Project for The Museum of Modern Art (November 20, 2004-March 14, 2005) will feature historical artifacts – including architectural cornices, moldings, shards of ceramic, wallpaper samples, and fireplace mantels – that the artist excavated from the foundations of Abby Aldrich and John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s, former townhouse, now the site of The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, as well as artifacts from demolished adjacent brownstone buildings and the Dorset Hotel. Michael Wesely: Open Shutter at The Museum of Modern Art (opening November 20, 2004) will present a unique photographic project inspired by the construction of the new Museum of Modern Art.
A full schedule of Film and Media programs also will resume in the reopened Museum, where screenings will be presented in the two refurbished Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters. The inaugural exhibition will be Premieres (November 20, 2004-January 2005), featuring new works by a wide range of artists, all of whom will be presenting New York, American, or world premieres.
The MoMA Design and Book Store will have entrances on 53rd Street and in the main lobby, and will feature books, art reproductions, and design objects. On the second floor, MoMA Books will offer a reader-friendly environment in an intimate setting for a wide range of art books and publications, and an exhibition shop on the sixth floor will focus on products related to temporary exhibitions.
All in all, this is truly an event not to be missed. For more information visit the museum’s website at www.moma.org.
