
April 29, 2013
An image from the #FolkMoMA protest Tumblr. (And no, this is not what I’m endorsing! But it’s amusing.)
Some, it is clear, are appalled by the Museum of Modern Art’s stated intent to demolish an adjacent building it now owns, in order to expand in a more aesthetically consistent, and I gather structurally practical, manner. This criticism is no surprise: A major cultural institution obliterating a perfectly fine, and perhaps even interesting, extant piece of architecture, is (as they kids say) a bad look.
What I will try to add to the discussion, if I can, is not criticism, but a suggestion. I have a rationale for MoMA to reverse course, without resorting to face-losing capitulation to noisy naysayers. That is, I don’t want to argue whether, but rather how, MoMA should change its mind.
First, let’s quickly review the reported details. (You can skip this paragraph if you’ve followed the story.) The building in question, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, is the former home of the American Folk Museum, which opened in that new space in 2001. Herbert Muschamp called it “a bighearted building. And its heart is in the right time as well as the right place.” According to the Times story about the demolition decision: “MoMA officials said the building’s design did not fit their plans because the opaque facade is not in keeping with the glass aesthetic of the rest of the museum.” Also, the floors don’t line up with those in the adjacent MoMA structure.
Okay. So let’s step back a bit. What do we mean by modern? One could argue that obliteration is in fact component of the modern: To be modern is to cast aside the old, to reject it decisively. In aesthetic terms, that might mean sweeping away the curlicues and bric-a-brac of earlier times, and replacing it all with a sleek and efficient, rationality. (Or a rational and efficient sleekness, if you like.) Pick and choose whatever artists, designers, and architects come to mind as espousing this point of view. The fact that the structure at issue just so happens to have been devoted to folk arts actually ices the cake of this argument: The folks is just one more imperfect idiom that the modern strives to transcend — at all costs.
Obviously I’m getting carried away. And in any case we’re not talking about the Museum of Modernism, so let’s get back to what “modern” could mean. It’s actually one of those murky ideas that can be defined many ways. So you could easily dream up a set of counter-example artists, designers, and architects whose creations were intricately tied up on the notion of working with existing materials, extracting fresh pleasures and insights from what had gone before — surely including much that could be classified as folk — by way of influence and outright appropriation. Some might be labeled post-modern, but that’s an even more up-for-grabs word, and more to the point many have been justly celebrated by MoMA over the course of its existence, suggesting that the museum’s idea of “modern” has added up to more than aesthetic conformity.
What I suggest, then, is focusing on this latter line of thought in addressing what it means to be modern at the particular moment in time (I mean: now) that this decision is being made. MoMA should appropriate the building. Its difference is not a problem to be erased, but an opportunity for compelling juxtaposition. The non-aligning floors might be a challenge — but that challenge, too, surely can be reconsidered as opportunity. Take what exists and make it new. What could be more modern?
Observed
View all
Observed
By Rob Walker