Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Is MOMA just a boring museum now?

A recent article in New York mag, "MoMA in Middle Age - Critical opinion has jelled: The new Modern is too safe. Can it become more than just a museum again? Should it?", is labeling MOMA a corporate art collection museum that is becoming too static. They make mention of the unutilized garden space that only seems to host parties, the steep admission price set with the new building and questioned why Rauschenberg's exhibition went to the MET instead of MOMA?
Frankly I am glad some people are questioning the status of the museum - heaven forbid anyone question a museum's intent or direction???

"...When it was founded, MoMA considered holding on to works of art for only a few years and then passing them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In that way it hoped to remain forever fresh. Today, the weight of its collection is enormous. Perhaps it’s inevitable that MoMA will subside into being a museum. Perhaps that’s not even bad, but a useful signal that what we call the modern and postmodern periods are retiring into history. If the art world remains impatient with MoMA’s treatment of art, perhaps it should consider alternatives. There are people today as wealthy as the Rockefellers were when they helped start MoMA. There are curators as eager to develop the new as Alfred H. Barr Jr. was in the thirties. Is there the cultural will? Let someone bold found a new museum for the 21st century."

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