MoMA Museum in New York opens after a grand renovation: what has changed

October 21 one of the most demanded museums in the world - Museum of Modern Art in New York - opens after a grand renovation. This publication writes "Voice of America".

MoMA - one of the most sought after museum addresses in New York and the world, which is located in the heart of Manhattan, in some years gathered more than three million visitors a year.

“The project began several years ago, and the museum has been closed to visitors for the last four months. The approximate cost of the renovation has been announced - $ 450 million, ”the statement says.

What has changed after renovation

After the renovation, the museum has two main entrances from 53rd Street. “One of them leads directly to the new galleries, some of which are called David Geffen Wing,” the source explained.

It is noted that producer and philanthropist Geffen donated $ 100 million to the museum.

The scale of innovations is such that the administration of the museum set aside four full working days for the press preview, the source added.

It is worth recalling that this is not the first renovation in this museum. So, after moving to the current building on the 53-th street of Manhattan, the museum has undergone renovations several times and annexed new spaces.

However, the current renovation is incomparably more ambitious than all the previous ones, the publication emphasizes.

“14 thousand square meters have been added to the exposition area. meters. Thus, the museum, founded in 1929, now occupies about 52 thousand square meters. meters. The existing galleries have undergone a renovation that swallowed up the small Museum of American Folk Art adjacent to MoMA, ”the statement said.

Visitors now have access to both buildings - the new and the old, as well as the lower floors of the Nouvel residential tower with condo apartments included in the museum space. The luxury penthouse topping the tower is reportedly up for sale for $ 63,8 million.

Simplified Logistics

“For many years, picky experts have complained about the difficult logistics of getting around the museum. Escalators, which were narrow, slow and often overcrowded, were of particular concern. As for the elevators, as they say, they had to wait forever, ”the source notes.

As art critic Philip Kennicott of The Denver Post stated, “The intellectual energy of the galleries was strangely exhausted in this inappropriate vertical space resembling a shopping mall.”

Now an attractive alternative to moving between floors has appeared in the museum - a new wide steel staircase flooded with natural light. “That alone justifies renovation,” says Kennicott.

It is noted that the extension project was implemented by the New York design studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with the architectural firm Gensler from San Francisco.

Museum collection

The permanent museum collection is mainly exhibited, as before, in accordance with the chronology and stylistic community of paintings, graphics and sculptures, the source notes.

“Works of the late 19th century are on display on the fifth floor, works of the mid-20th century on the fourth, and new exhibits on the second,” the newspaper said.

As one of the museum curators Christophe Sherix said, now he and his colleagues have the opportunity to vary the different ways of presenting exhibits, placing works of a very different style, applied materials on video on the same wall or in neighboring rooms.

Also, for the first time, several galleries were added on the ground floor, entrance from the street there is free. “Which, apparently, should serve as some consolation for those for whom the regular entrance ticket to MoMA for $ 25 is expensive,” the source emphasizes.

And it reminds that the entrance to the popular “sculpture garden” has been free since 2013 of the year.

"Special exhibitions" and "eternal" masterpieces

It is noted that the planned rotation of exhibits should be considered the most important innovation. “Every six months, a third of the works in the galleries will be renewed, that is, every XNUMX months, almost all of the exhibited works will be replaced by others,” said Christoph Sherix.

This is easy to explain: in the "bins" of the museum are stored approximately 200 thousand pieces of art. Moreover, many of them have never been exhibited due to lack of space in galleries. “Behind each picture exhibited is an invisible line of dozens of similar works,” Sheriks noted.

The curator specified: an exception will be made for 15-20 masterpieces. For example, for such works as “Starry Night” by Van Gogh, “Constancy of Memory” by Dali and “Dance” by Matisse.

“They are supposed to be 'irreplaceable'. Millions of tourists come to New York (half of them for the first time) and come to the museum, dreaming of seeing exactly these canonical works, ”the source emphasizes.

Experts believe that the new spaces will enable the museum to exhibit much more work by African-American artists, as well as works of art in Africa, Asia, and South America.

In addition, the museum intends to combine the proclaimed multiculturalism (some critics call it “modernism plus”) with much greater attention to female artists.

In the series of new galleries, the huge metaphysical sound installation “Rainforest V” (“1 Variation”) created by David Tudor and the Composers Inside Electronics group stands out.

“Obviously, only the acquisition of a significant new space made it possible to fully implement this and other installations,” the message says.

On the sixth floor of the new part of the museum are located “special exhibitions”. Hillary Raeder, one of the curators of the new collective exhibition, “Surrounds: 11 installations,” said that the museum was only now able to introduce the general public to the original ideas of several talented artists of new generations.

“These artists are trying to answer the question: how to combine personal experience with comprehension of the outside world? Said Raeder. “They obviously have something to tell us, and everyone chooses their own unique optics.”

So, the Japanese architect Su Fujimoto created a whole park of elegant architectural mini-projects. Some of them are imbued with irony, such as the Pringles chip building project.