Not even a precious object

Here is my lasting first impression of the new MOMA:

(click to enlarge)

You are walking along the 54th Street facade. The wall separates the sidewalk from the "sculpture garden." After only a few minutes study (from inside the Museum) I could see obvious alternative designs which would have simultaneously
1. preserved the garden as a private space and
2. offered a bit more engaging street front.

But I guess this Museum, which prides itself on understanding that "architecture and design....are key elements of modern culture," could not even ask questions about how the building works with 54th Street. Oh well.

And the 53rd Street facade is not much better.

The whole museum is an oddly mundane place. (Oh of course I like the art but I wish they'd offer more seats so one could sit and enjoy the works in comfort -- oh yes there's my sensible-shoes bourgeois sensibility taking hold.) There is no street-presence to speak of. The interior is OK, if a bit difficult to image and navigate. The big white centerpiece atrium -- with Broken Obelisk at its center -- is indeed striking. But what interior space with a ceiling 65 feet (?) above is not striking? Even the most mundane elementary school gymnasium can be imposing; mere interior volume is imposing and architects have known that for millenia.

Is the building is a good one from the curator's perspective? I don't have the qualifications to suggest one way or another.  But after all, what is a museum really about except providing a place to
1. preserve wall-hung art from the ravages of climate
2. display that art to those who desire to look
and that basically means a series of indoor spaces. MOMA appeared to have an adequate -- though confusingly arranged as I noted -- series of climate-controlled white-walled rooms with sufficient ceiling height. What more can there be/should there be than a series of rooms to permit paintings (and yes "the painting" is the default medium) to be shown to their best advantage? So it looks OK but MOMA certainly was not an inspiring/exciting/engaging place...more like a department store with no clerks and very little actually for sale.

One interesting thing my companion noticed was that many of the rooms were signed as the "Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Very Rich Donor." Rather than taking, say, all the works of one painter and grouping them together, collections are kept together...as if the collector's perhaps happenstance purchases had some significance to the larger world of "arts buffs",,,or as if these collectors were going to be hit up for more money and keeping their name in the public eye was a way of softening them up.

One of these days I will go read through the criticism of MOMA as a museum -- that Riley v. Ouroussoff  teapot -- and see what they are talking about. But overall, I am glad we saw the new MOMA on our very brief trip to NYC. We had a very nice lunch in the cafeteria. Its seeing-ordering-delivering system was rather odd/awkward/unorthodox and I suspect they will modify it before long, the food was good. In particular the community tables should lead to some pleasant chance encounters as so many visitors are from out-of-town and therefore open to conversation.

But overall I can't figure where the Museum spent $450 million. Certainly not on urban design.

Update: A comments from Steve Hodges suggests that the blank wall on 54th is a deliberate snub.

My response: Do you really think it deliberate?
On the one hand, it doesn't take brilliance these days to be able to acknowldege the sidewalk as a design element in the politics, if nothing else, of a building's entitlements.
And on the other hand could the MOMA people truly be so coarse and ill-mannered as to voluntarily make a dead frontage?
Btw, do they have a building-by-building review in NYC? I would have concluded that there must an exemption from any review process for well-connected museums.

Another update: I comment on Tyler Green's comment.

Comments

[Will Cox]

Isn't it appropriate, though, that a Modern art museum doesn't know how to be urban?

[David Sucher]

Maybe it's not surprising. But appropriate? I am not sure. I still don't understand what there is about either Modernism or "traditionalism" as architectural styles which makes either one more or less inclined to be urban.

The traditional city is simply the pre-automobile city and it had never had the chance to screw things up. The Modern city didn't understand the implications of being auto-oriented until it was too late.

So what amazes me is why Modernist architects cannot grasp the Three Rules and adhere to them in their work which could be as "Modern" as they wanted and still address the street. The Three Rules are a-stylistic i.e. they have nothing to do with architectural style. The whole thing is puzzling, no matter how long I consider it.

[Steve Hodges]

This is no doubt deliberate, and a real snub to pedestrians. If I was a vandal, I'd be tagging that in a New York minute.

Boy, I'll bet Jim Kunstler would have some choice words about this street facade. How in the world did the NYC planning department let MOMA get away with this? I'm sure there's a real story there. Or does this point towards some elitist snubbing of what should have been an New Urbanist principle applied w/o controversy?

[Laurence Aurbach]

I had the same thought. Send that amusing, slightly tragic photo to Kunstler. Double or nothing he uses it as an "Eyesore of the Month."

[Will Cox]

One of the key aspects of Modernism, as I understand it anyway, is that it deliberately turns its back on the past. Feet are in the past.

It's an extreme case of Not-Invented-Here syndrome.

[Tim Hulsey]

What do you think of Cincinatti's Contemporary Arts Center, David? To me, it seems well-integrated into its downtown neighborhood -- but the neighborhood isn't that great to begin with.

Of course, once you get inside and past the enormous, echoing atrium, the actual galleries tend to feel a bit cramped and cockeyed -- even the ones with high ceilings. They're clearly designed for paintings, even though most of the art I saw there involved sculpture. (Oopsie.) The stairways are narrow and difficult to negotiate, in part because the actual steps are laid out at an oblique angle to the handrails. I could see little old ladies tumbling down flight after flight ...