Sawse - Stir it Up!

The Museum of Modern Art is a world class museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York, USA. It has single-handedly spurred the development of modernist art and is widely considered be one of the most influential museums of modern art since its inception in 1929. MoMA was the first ever museum to admit photography, design, architecture and film to its collection. The Museum’s library archives over 300,000 books, periodicals and individual files of more than 75,000 artists.

The museum was developed by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller along with two of her friends. This interesting group was known by a variety of names “the Ladies”, “the adamantine ladies” and “the daring ladies”. They rented out a small living space, and opened the museum to the public precisely nine after the Wall Street Crash. Abby invited Conger Goodyear, the former president of the board of trustees of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, to be the president of the new museum. Rockefeller then became the treasurer. At the time it was America’s leading museum which was devoted exclusively to modern art.

The Museum was initially housed in a modest six room gallery in Manhattan’s Heckscher Building, on the corner of Fifth Avenue. Abby’s husband was inherently against both the museum and modern art; he refused to release funds for the venture. They had to scour for funds from other areas and this resulted in frequent location change. However, he was the one who eventually donated the property for the current site and also made numerous other contributions over time. Ultimately, he ended up becoming one of the greatest benefactors. During that time the museum initiated the exhibitions of many a noted artist. The most prominent artist to be displayed being Van Gogh on November 4,1935. The Van Gogh display contained an unparalleled sixty-six oil paintings and about fifty drawings as well as some excerpts from the artist’s personal letters. The exhibition was a massive success and served as a sort of a precursor to hold Van Gogh in the minds of contemporary imagination even to this day. The museum also gained prominence due to the hugely successful Picasso retrospective of 1939-40, held in alliance with the Art Institute of Chicago. It made a significant representation of Picasso, especially for future scholars. This was masterminded by a Picasso enthusiast by the name of Barr and the exhibition is widely credited in lionizing Picasso as the greatest artist that ever walked the Earth. MoMA’s midtown location was subject to extensive renovation and was closed on May 21, 2002; it was finally reopened to the public on November 20, 2004 amidst much fanfare.

The renovation nearly doubled the space for exhibitions and other programs and also featured 630,000 feet of redesigned space. The Peggy and David Rockefeller Building houses the main exhibition galleries and is located on the western portion of the site. The Lewis B Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building on the eastern portion now provides five times more space for classrooms, teacher training and a library. The two buildings frame the enlarged Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden done by Richard Serra. The new structure consists of the original architecture along with additions that have enhanced its collection overall. The renovation was done by the clinically modernist Japanese architect, Yoshio Taniguichi. He is responsible for the stunning Toyota Municipal Museum of Art in Toyota City, Japan. Tanguchi was able to maintain the architectural spirit of MoMA’s international style.

The Museum houses the world’s largest and most inclusive collection of modern sculptures and paintings comprising of some 3,600 works. It offers a definitive selection of renowned artists from 1890s to the present. In 1989, the museum acquired a stunning portrait done by Vincent Van Gogh of his friend, Joseph Roulin. The museum arranged a special exhibition titled Van Gogh’s Postman: The portraits of Joseph Roulin. The painting was shown along with two other paintings that Van Gogh did of this man who was so vital in his life. Joseph Roulin was a postal employee in Arles France and Gogh was fascinated by his peculiar physiognomy which to him seemed Socratic due to the shortened nose, which was flushed due to heavy drinking. Roulin was an ardent socialist, a man of intense passion for the left wing of French republican politics. He was also the devoted father of a large family which attracted the lonesome and isolated artist to him.

The photographic galleries in the museum will remain closed from April 15th to May 21st 2008, in preparation for the exhibition of Bernd and Hilla Echer: Landscape/Typology. Salvador Dali’a famed “The Persistence of Memory” is not currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art, it will be on view at Tate Moern, London, and from there it will travel to Los Angeles County Museum of Art and then to Salvador Dali Museum in St.Petersburg Florida. The painting will then return to the MoMA in June 2008 as part of the exhibition Dali and Film.

The highlights in the painting department are Paul Cezanne’s Still Life with Fruit Dish, L’Estaque and “The Bather”, George–Pierre Seurat’s “Evening, Honfleur” and “Port-en-Bessin, Entrance to the Harbor” and Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night”. Of these no other has captured the imagination of contemporary art fanatics like Gogh’s Starry Night. The portrait embodies and inner, skewed expression of Gogh’s response to nature. In the thick sweeping brushstrokes, a fiery cypress blends the churning sky and the hushed village below. Cypress is traditionally associated with death and mourning, but death was not always sadness for Gogh. He always felt that looking at the stars made him dream, he felt that shining dots in the sky be accessible as the black dots in the map of France. Just like we take a train from Tarascon to Rouen, we take death to reach a star. The village seems to be partly invented and the church spire is reminiscent of van Gogh’s native land, Netherlands.