Enlarged and redesigned, MoMA in New York is about to reopen its doors

Since its installation in the heart of Manhattan in 1939, MoMA has repeatedly pushed back the walls to meet the growth of its collection and the increase in its attendance.

In 1950, 1962, 1980 and 2001, successive works completely remodeled this museum, which is one of the rare large institutions in the world to be totally enclosed in the urban mesh.

With solid financial health and able to benefit from a joint real estate project, MoMA has decided to expand again.

After a first push to the east, along the 53^e Rue, completed in 2017, it is to the west that what was once called “The Modern” has stretched.

MoMA sold the land next to its building to real estate developers, with the agreement providing that the museum would benefit from the first three floors of this gigantic new 320-meter-high tower designed by French architect Jean Nouvel.

The museum has gained almost 3600 m² additional exhibition space, approximately 30% more, for a total of 15,500 m² of galleries.

Even if these new premises are technically located in another building, the continuity between the spaces is total for the visitor.

The work also made it possible to invite more natural light inside, with bay windows and clearances. The whole project will have cost some 450 million US dollars.

Director Glenn Lowry told reporters that thanks to this new space, MoMA will be able to exhibit around 2,400 works to the public per year, compared to an average of 1,500 so far.

Interdisciplinary arrangements that change regularly

The main change, however, is not the building itself. For the first time, the works will no longer only be presented by period, but also by theme, with an explanatory panel at the entrance, deliberately written in an accessible language.

Galleries will also more often offer a mix of painting, sculpture, photography and video. To enter into a new dynamic, the museum has decided to change this layout approximately every six months.

The idea is to return to the original spirit, that of the first director, Alfred Barr, who had imagined the museum as a laboratory, says Glenn Lowry.

For Mr. Barr, nothing was permanent, he said, art in the way it was presented. He understood that the museum was going to be in perpetual mutation, changing and evolving in tune with modern and contemporary art.

This return to basics did not happen overnight. Since 2000, MoMA has sought to reconnect with the blending of the arts through a series of exhibitions, for the first time in decades.

To reach the great upheaval of this fall, it took a new generation of curators with new ideas, for whom interdisciplinarity was natural, explique Glenn Lowry.

The exercise aims to create the conditions for exchange and dialogue between the arts, under the intrigued eye of the visitor, to make the public understand that the questions are more interesting than the answers, said the director, his eyes sparkling.

This recurring reinvention will nevertheless have its limits, warned the one who has been at the head of the institution for nearly a quarter of a century, in part to reassure those who fear not to find, during their next visit, one of the works. major from MoMA.

These will be visible most of the time, assures Glenn Lowry, mentioning in particular The Ladies of Avignon by Picasso and the Nymphéas by Claude Monet: But the context in which these works will be seen will change every six months.

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