museum of modern art

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City on 53rd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. It is one of the leading museums of modern art in the world. The Museum of Modern Art is complementary to and sometimes considered a sister museum to the nearby Metropolitan Museum of Art, although the latter is a general art museum, where modern art is only one area of specialism among many.

History

The idea for the Museum of Modern Art was developed in 1928 by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr.) and two friends, Lillie P. Bliss and Mrs Cornelius J. Sullivan. They rented space for the new museum and it opened to the public on November 1, 1929, ten days after the Wall Street Crash. At the time, no American museum was devoted exclusively to modern art. Under the guidance of its first director, Alfred H. Barr Jr., the museum's holdings quickly expanded from an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing. Its first successful loan exhibition was in November, 1929, displaying paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and Seurat.^[1]

First housed in six rooms of galleries and offices in Manhattan's Heckscher Building, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, the museum moved into three more temporary locations within the next ten years. During that time it initiated many more exhibitions of noted artists, such as the lone Van Gogh exhibition in 1935.

Rockefeller Junior provided the bulk of the finances behind its initial development and upkeep; his son Nelson, who became its flamboyant president, was the prime instigator of its publicity, acquisitions and expansion into new headquarters during the 1930s. The family has continued to maintain strong links to the museum, with a number of members as trustees, conspicuous among them David Rockefeller, the current chairman emeritus, and his son, David Rockefeller, Jr..

MoMA's permanent and current home, designed in the International Style by the modernist architects Philip S. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone, opened to the public on May 10, 1939.

Artworks

Considered by many to have the best collection of modern Western masterpieces in the world, MoMA's holdings include more than 150,000 individual pieces in addition to approximately 22,000 films and 4 million film stills. The collection houses such important and familiar works as the following:

• The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh,
• Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Pablo Picasso,
• The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí,
• Broadway Boogie Woogie by Piet Mondrian,
• Water Lilies triptych by Claude Monet,
• Dance by Henri Matisse,
• The Bather by Paul Cézanne,
• Self-Portrait With Cropped Hair by Frida Kahlo

It also holds works by leading American artists such as Jackson Pollock, Cindy Sherman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jasper Johns, Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, Georgia O'Keefe, and Ralph Bakshi. MoMA developed a world-renowned art photography collection, first under Edward Steichen and then John Szarkowski, as well as an important film collection under the Museum of Modern Art Department of Film and Video. MoMA also has an important design collection, which includes works from such legendary designers as Paul László, the Eameses, Isamu Noguchi, and George Nelson. The design collection also contains many industrial and manufactured pieces, ranging from a self-aligning ball bearing to an entire Bell 47D1 helicopter.

Renovation

MoMA's Midtown location underwent extensive renovations in the 2000s, closing on May 21, 2002 and reopening to the public in a building redesigned by the Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi on November 20, 2004. From June 29, 2002 until September 27, 2004, a portion of its collection was on display in what was dubbed MoMA QNS, a former Swingline staple factory in the Long Island City section of Queens. MoMA's reopening brought controversy as its admission cost increased from US$12 to US$20, making it one of the most expensive museums in the city; however it has free entry to all on Fridays after 4 p.m., thanks to sponsorship from Target Stores. The architecture of the renovation is controversial. At its opening, some critics thought that Taniguchi's design was a fine example of contemporary architecture, while many others were extremely displeased with certain aspects of the design, such as the flow of the space.

MoMA has seen its average number of visitors rise to 2.5 million from about 1.5 million a year before its new granite and glass renovation. The museum's director, Glenn Lowry, expects average visitor numbers eventually to settle in at around 2.1 million.^[2]

Gallery of some works on display