“Inspired by Alfred Barr’s original vision to be an experimental museum in New York, the real value of this expansion is not just more space, but space that allows us to rethink the experience of art in the Museum,” said Glenn D. Lowry, The David Rockefeller Director of The Museum of Modern Art. “We have an opportunity to re-energize and expand upon our founding mission—to welcome everyone to experience MoMA as a laboratory for the study and presentation of the art of our time, across all visual arts.”
Reinstallation of the Collection
In October 2019, MoMA will reveal a presentation that highlights the creative affinities and frictions produced by displaying painting, sculpture, architecture, design, photography, media, performance, film, and works on paper together. A new curatorial generation will continually renew the experience of the Museum through installations and exhibitions, artist commissions, and programs that encourage debate and discovery.
The fifth-, fourth-, and second-floor galleries, including the new David Geffen Wing with over 30,000 square feet of new gallery space, will offer a deeper experience of art through all mediums and by artists from more diverse geographies and backgrounds than ever before. A general chronological spine will unite the three floors and serve as a touchstone of continuity for visitors. Individual galleries, some of which will be medium-specific, will delve into presentations of art and ideas that only MoMA’s collection can offer. This curatorial vision foregrounds the complex relationships among works of art and leverages the new architecture to encourage a multitude of possible routes through the Museum.
Recognizing that there is no single or complete history of modern and contemporary art, the Museum will systematically rotate a selection of art in these collection galleries every six to nine months. By 2022, MoMA will have re-choreographed each of its galleries across the fifth, fourth, and second floors—and will constantly renew the presentation.
Inaugural Exhibitions
All of the opening exhibitions in October 2019 will be drawn from the Museum’s collection. MoMA announced four of those exhibitions today and will announce many more later this year.
Sur moderno: Journeys of Abstraction―The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift will provide a deeper look into the Museum’s holdings of modern Latin American art, primarily through paintings, sculptures, and works on paper donated by the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros between 1997 and 2016. On view through March 2020, the exhibition celebrates important abstract, concrete, and geometric art by artists from Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and Uruguay.