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Architecture Review: A New Way to See Art: The Modern, Completed
NY Times ^ | November 29, 2006 | NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

Posted on 11/29/2006 4:24:31 AM PST by Pharmboy


Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Museum of Modern Art The new Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman education building, completing the
museum’s expansion, opened Tuesday. Shown is the staircase at the end of the lobby.


Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
The Museum of Modern Art’s garden, with the
new building on the left and the reclad
1964 building by Philip Johnson on the right.


Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
A new meeting room overlooks St. Thomas Episcopal Church.

The new Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman education building at the Museum of Modern Art is unlikely to appease those who feel the museum has become a soulless corporate machine. But at least it underscores what is most alluring about the museum’s recent expansion.

A taut composition of floating planes and elegant lines, the education wing has a cool, self-confident air like that of the museum’s 2004 gallery building, which was also designed by Yoshio Taniguchi. Finally, we can experience the museum as a complete urban composition. And while its sleek packaging may alienate those who consider it evidence of the institution’s aloofness, it reaffirms that Mr. Taniguchi is adept at designing complex spaces, often with real seductive power.

The eight-story building, which opened yesterday, anchors the eastern end of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. Its main facade there, a towering glass wall capped by a soaring steel canopy, mirrors the facade of the David and Peggy Rockefeller Building across the garden to the west, creating a monumental frame for the activity below, like the prosceniums of twin stages. But it is the audience that is on display. Seen from the street or the garden, the museum presents a continuous pattern of activity, reaffirming its public mission.

This is what we expect from Mr. Taniguchi:

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Arts/Photography
KEYWORDS: architecture; modernart; moma; nyc
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To: leilani

Vittoria Colonna


21 posted on 11/30/2006 3:50:48 PM PST by mthom
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To: Pharmboy
Me too.

Yet it projects sterility and coldness, not a place to find spirituality.

22 posted on 11/30/2006 4:17:03 PM PST by Jane Austen
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To: Jane Austen
Exactly. Why do some modern museums go for that antiseptic look? Do they think "...if the background is blank, the better the art will show?"

The Whitney is "modern," yet it isn't cold. Less large, open spaces.

23 posted on 11/30/2006 4:40:11 PM PST by Pharmboy ([She turned me into a] Newt! in '08)
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