History of creation

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is a must see place. And this, perhaps, is the only museum of modern art in the world where you will definitely understand something and at least something, but will be imbued. Why do we love MoMA so much and why not go there at least once in our lives is just a crime?

In 1929, art critic Alfred Barr bought 9 prints by contemporary artists - he simply could not afford more. Yes, and there was nowhere to dispose of them. For a long time, Barr offered rich people to buy paintings and sculptures by contemporaries, but it all turned out to be problems: someone just did not understand the value of the work and spoiled it with inappropriate content, someone just bought up complete nonsense.

Then the art critic decided to offer a deal to the Rockefeller family: with them money and premises, with Barra - a unique collection of contemporary art. Six months later, 6 office rooms in the Heckscher Building were allocated for the future museum, and the first hundred works were listed in the collection.

As soon as public interest began to grow, the new Museum of Modern Art moved to its own building is a mansion on 53rd Street. Then no one could have thought that it would become only a small part of the whole museum complex.

Current state

Today, the MoMA collection has more than 150 thousand units: paintings, sculptures, installations, scripts and other objects of art. The museum’s library contains about 300 thousand books. Plus other materials: some films owned by the museum as much as 200 thousand. And of course, huge volumes are required for such storage and demonstration volumes.

The modern main building of the Museum of Modern Art was built in 1939. In the 50s, the architect Philip Johnson took up its reconstruction and turned the building into a modern "international" object. But this was not enough. Until 1980, the area of the museum expanded almost 10 times.

Exposure Basis

The Museum of Modern Art is known for its reverent attitude not only to contemporary art, but also to non-standard masters of the past. Today, the permanent exhibition presents works that are considered classics, but which were a breakthrough of their time.

For example, the painting "Avignon Maidens" by Picasso, which is considered the first in the genre of cubism. Or the beloved Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh. Monet's Water Lilies, Matisse's Dance, and Dali's Persistence of Memory are also presented there. All of the above works are perfectly adjacent to the primitivism of Rousseau, an abstraction from Malevich and Mondrian, pop art from Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol.

We can say that the basis of the museum are works that turn the world around. And it does not matter what period to take for “modernity” - the main thing is that the idea of the work has an impact on the minds, here and now. And in this regard, MoMA is perhaps one of the most powerful collections in the world.

The museum also hosts a lot of temporary exhibitions, performances, film screenings and performances. He, as a living organism, reacts to all the trends of the time and collects the best examples of creativity.

Conflict with the Metropolitan

In 1947, the leadership of MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum signed an agreement on the transfer of "expired" works. That is, the first undertook to transfer works to the second as they were transformed from modern to classical. It was understood that this would help both sides — MoMA had an acute question of the lack of space for placing art objects, and the Metropolitan was always happy to get hold of new copies.

After 6 years of such cooperation, the Museum of Modern Art abruptly broke the agreement. The reason was the outflow of visitors and negative reviews — people loved MOMA for their unique face, for the combination of already recommended and new masters. As soon as the works already recognized as masterpieces then began to disappear, the museum was accused of short-sightedness and narrow views.

The metro naturally did not like this decision. For a long time due to this incident, the employees of the two museums were strictly forbidden to communicate with each other.

The Museum of Modern Art of New York annually visits about 3 million people. Such a crowd cannot lie — it really is worth it.