C96 Article

M oM A

MoMA, the momma of modern art museums: where is it headed? Fióna Kearney continues her series on modern art museums.

MoMA is the museum of modern art. When it was founded in 1929, it was the first art institution to devote itself entirely to the modern movement. Since then, numerous organisations around the world have followed MoMA's lead including of course the Irish Museum of Modern Art, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year and is thus a relative newcomer to the extensive map of modern-art establishments worldwide. MoMA has always recognised the expanding boundaries and influence of modernism and from the establishment of the world's first curatorial department in architecture and design in 1932 to the significant role afforded lens-based media in its collection, the museum has adopted an inclusive view of art in the twentieth century.

		Can this elder establishment continue though to claim cutting-edge status for the new millennium? 'Modern art' itself seems a historical designation and the context of early masterpieces from the collection, such as Van Gogh's Starry Night and Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon seem conceptually as well as chronologically removed from the curation of contemporary art. At the moment visitors to MoMA pass immediately from these collection highlights to the exhibition Workspheres. The works in the first display are stunning, some of the most exhilarating and influential artworks of the last hundred years. The Workspheres exhibition is a futuristic glance at the work environment. The move from a synopsis of the modern narrative to our designer destiny is abrupt and a similar disjunction happens upstairs with the quick transition from an impressive solo show by German photographer Andreas Gursky to the pedagogical display What is a Print? to an overview of the contemporary-art scene in Collaborations with Parkett:1984 to Now. It is as if each curatorial department has been designated a specific area with little thought given to the overall proposition being made to the museum visitor.
Andreas Gursky: May Day IV, 2000, chromogenic colour print, 50 x 200 cm; courtesy MoMA/Matthew Marks Gallery/Monika Sprüth Galerie
MoMA QNS: The Museum of Modern Art Long Island City Facility, Queens, 2000; © Cooper, Robertson & Partners
MoMA QNS: The Museum of Modern Art Long Island City Facility, Queens, 2000; © Cooper, Robertson & Partners

The issue of course is space and so, like other key players on the international scene, MoMA is embarking on a programme of cultural expansion that has seen the launch of a $650-million capital campaign of which $500 million has already been raised. The significance of MoMA's undertaking can only truly be evaluated once the building work is completed in 2005 but it is interesting to consider how the museum is approaching the interim period of development. Whereas the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris operated a near-shutdown during its refurbishment, MoMA has adopted a number of strategies to keep up a strong public profile. Perhaps the most progressive is the relocation to a temporary exhibition space in Long Island City, Queens. Moving out of midtown while the 53rd Street galleries undergo construction is an adventurous step for such an established organisation and something of a gamble given that New Yorkers are notoriously reluctant to leave the Manhattan grid. They will be tempted off the island, however, by a series of blockbuster exhibitions from 2002, such as Matisse/Picasso, that are sure to attract over local and international crowds.

Already affiliated with the PS1 facility in Queens, MoMA will retain its presence in Long Island City in 2005 with the temporary galleries conveniently metamorphosing into a permanent art store and study centre. The public is being kept up to date of these changes with an informative presentation about the project schedule in the museum and plenty of leaflets on hand to signal the move to Queens. The museum is also responding to the hiatus in gallery programming midtown with the initiation of a number of online projects. Embracing the current curatorial concentration on new media, MoMA has developed a series of works for digital denizens including TimeStream (www.moma.org/timestream), a website by Tony Oursler that tracks the evolution of the moving image throughout history.

In the virtual world MoMA carries the prestige of its concrete setting into as much space as it wants. Meanwhile on real art turf the museum continues to programme its comprehensive range of gallery talks, lunchtime lectures, family-oriented workshops and public symposia and if the exhibitions seem somewhat scatty at present, there is a strong sense of future scope. As MoMA creates more space for its modern inheritance and contemporary displays, hopefully a more integrated presentation of its past, present and future visions will emerge.

Fióna Kearney is Visual Arts Officer at University College, Cork.