Published by Unknown
on Thursday, November 02, 2006 at 11/02/2006 04:58:00 PM. 
As I stated earlier there's something to be said about Roberta Smith's article yesterday in the NYT entitled "Tate Modern's Rightness Versus MoMA's Wrongs." Now I'm not one to agree with Roberta ever since she wrote a terrible review of a project that I was working on that was more of a personal attack against the artist then a general commentary on the exhibit but, as a die hard New Yorker I do agree that the MoMA has many flaws.
Growing up in New York I have always had a MoMA membership. Some of my proudest moments as a child was having my card and being able to invite five friends to come with me for free. I always felt like I was the leader of the cultural expedition to the MoMA to see some of the great modern and contemporary artists of our time. (My favorite part was the design and architecture area where they displayed the first mac ever made.) Ever since the renovation though, I have a bone to pick with the Moma and its use of space. The building itself has some nice features; I like the exterior material used, especially the black glass which is quite nice, and it has a few little features such as nooks in the wall and details that I appreciate. As a whole though I just can't seem to reconcile spending almost a billion dollars for what has been reported as a building that only stores 10% of the collection. To me this is just unacceptable. My strongest belief is when designing a building, especially a museum it needs to be able to tell a story. For example, the recently completed Jean Nouvel building for the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris. What Jean Nouvel did for the collection is brilliant, not only creating a masterpiece from the outside but on the inside giving he curators and the works the freedom to tell their story without over shadowing them. For me a building needs to compliment its contents, not overshadow it. The work of Yoshio Taniguchi is good and he is a talented architect but unfortunately this one missed its mark as far as I'm concerned.
I also have a thing against making museums more like luxury shopping malls with escalators and cafes that cost an arm and a leg. I like eating a snack using design cutlery but I still miss the burger in the old cafeteria where you went with your plastic tray and got a pre-wrapped burger that still tasted terrific. I guess where I am going with this is a very simple question really: with a $20 entrance and pricey cafes has modern and contemporary art become solely for the elite? Only time will tell but those that I admire are the champions of free or public art such as Creative Time or the Public Art Fund. I believe that the arts should be for everyone not just those who can afford it and that the billion dollars could of served a different purpose such as some free days for kids who would never be able to see it otherwise.
