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Looking
down from the fifth story towards the lobby of MoMA with Barnett
Newman’s
25-foot steel Broken Obelisk in the foreground and Claude
Monet's Water Lilies in the background. 2:30 PM. Photo: JH.
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Yesterday
we went over to MoMA for a first time look at the new building
designed by Yoshio Taniguchi. I’d already heard
all kinds of wonderful things about the place, and of course
the occasional bits of not-so-wonderful criticism, but I hadn’t
read any of the reviews of it, and so had really no idea what
to expect.
As far as any criticism you might hear: forget it. It is sensational.
A wonder. A fabulous, thrilling museum of space and light and great
vistas of both the interior and the exterior, of the garden and
the surrounding buildings. Mr. Taniguchi has created a masterpiece
for us.
I tried to remember what the old MoMA was like in order to compare.
But there is no comparison. Now there seems to be so much more
to see and a much more wonderful environment in which to see it.
Rodin’s Balzac presides over the interior terrace garden
(named for Agnes Gund) with such command that it is the first time
I’ve ever really stopped to take it all in.
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Andy Warhol's Campbell's
Soup Cans, 1962
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JH
and I went over at 11:30 for a tour given by Matt Montgomery of
the museum staff. We’d planned to spend an hour (and
of course planned to return to really see it at a later date).
At 1:30 we went down to the restaurant on the ground floor
(there are three, including a café and a wine and
coffee bar) for an excellent lunch. We both had a soup – he,
mushroom; I, butternut squash – and wild salmon with
a horseradish glaze for the main course: $10 and $16 twice,
plus Fiji and tea. Sixty dollars plus tax and tip for two.
A real bargain for the quality, the quantity, the beautiful
environment and in midtown Manhattan!
After lunch we returned to our viewing and JH working with the Digital. It was
almost four o’clock when we left, and although we’d seen every room,
we’d seen very little because we moved so quickly through the various exhibits.
Yet all of it was pure pleasure. Even looking at the city outside from within
the museum is a thrill. It is as if Mr. Taniguchi found a way to turn the museum
inside out and outside in so that all of the art and artfulness of modern times
and modern (and old) New York are accessible to our eyes.
The museum has had a little more than 200,000 visitors in its first
three weeks of being opened to the public. MoMA in Queens had 400,000 visitors
in a year. There were lots of people visiting but the space has the most comforting
way of accommodating the crowds that it’s even a pleasure to see them,
along with the art. This is the greatest holiday gift, the greatest holiday show
for New York and all of its visitors. |
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James
Rosenquist's F-111, 1964-65
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1945
Bell 47 D1 Helicopter
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The
Sculpture Garden
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The
Modern restaurant
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A
Miro in the lobby
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Pablo
Picasso's Les
Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907
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Zooming
in from the sixth story
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Ellsworth
Kelly's Sculpture for a Large Wall, 1957
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Picasso's
Boy Leading a Horse, 1905-1906
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Rodin's
Balzac
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A
Calder mobile
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MoMA
Members check-in
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Barnett
Newman’s Broken Obelisk with Henri Matisse's "Dance
I" (1909) above
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A
section of the MoMA's biggest room with Ellsworth
Kelly's Sculpture for a Large Wall behind
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Pop
Art Gallery
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Walking
through the Modern Paintings and Sculpture Galleries;
A group of Brancusi sculptures.
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L.
to r.: Henri Matisse's Jeannette I, II, III,
IV, V; Sol LeWitt's Floor Structure, 1963.
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L.
to r.: John Chamberlain's Essex, 1960;
Looking out towards the Sculpture Garden.
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