New York’s Museum of Modern Art: a case study in how to ruin an institution

MoMA’s many expansions and redesigns have destroyed one of the most unique and precious public experiences of modern art. Who is Glenn D Lowry? A particular modern problem is that megalomania, especially when it involves real estate development, is the disturbance of many faceless men. And a faceless man is a difficult enemy.

MoMA Reveals Its Expansion Plans

The Museum of Modern Art is on the march again, advancing westward down 53rd Street, sweeping away the old American Folk Art Museum and planting its flag in the base of a future skyscraper. Only the American Folk Art Museum building, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s twelve-year-old gem, has to go, because, like a cobbler’s […]

Saltz: The Next MoMA Expansion Is As Big a Mess As the Last One

The word art barely came up. Maybe that’s why midway through this excruciatingly verbose three-hour closed-door briefing about MoMA’s second major rebuilding in less than ten years, I felt my eyes tear up and my stomach turn.

Philanthropist Michael Audain reveals design for his Whistler museum

Described by its architect as a “very quiet participant within the forest,” the Audain Art Museum planned for Whistler, B.C., has grown to double the size originally announced. On Tuesday, philanthropist Michael Audain revealed the design for a 55,000-square-foot museum – up from the 27,000 square feet first proposed last fall, and the 39,000-square-foot facility […]

Jerry Saltz on MoMA’s Plan to Raze the Folk Art Museum: Good!

How sad. Just twelve years after it was built on W. 53rd Street next to MoMA, the former American Folk Art Museum is going to be torn down by its new owner: MoMA. What’s sad is not that the building is going; it’s that, despite near-universal rave reviews for its architecture, it was doomed to […]