December 31, 2004
MOMA Revamped
Yoshio Taniguchi has revamped MOMA.Yoshio Taniguchi has designed a new building of classic white boxes, around the old facade which doubles the size of MoMA's galleries. It is a self-effacing building that rejects the status of icon.
Computer image courtesy MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art,New York.
The result is a grand and elegant creation that incorporates the old façades on 53rd Street but completely transforms the interiors and the garden façades on 54th Street. It still is a building of straight lines and galleries as classic white boxes.
MoMA is famous for its modernist narrative created under Alfred Barr One entered Modernism through Post-Impressionism. All roads led through Cubism, and all began with Paul Cezanne. Art encompassed life, including the art of design, and it culminated in postwar America.
MoMA had two related purposes: to represent the history of modern art and to stay in touch with the most recent contemporary work.