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After multiple visits to the reopened museum, they shared and compared their observations.
Justin Davidson:Lets start with the architecture.
Jerry, youve made yourdistastefor Diller Scofidio + Renfro and yourskepticismabout their MoMA design plain.
Did they live up to or down to your expectations?
Jerry Saltz:Both.
Art dodged a bullet after DS+R announced its original MoMA plans in 2014.
You, I, and a few others had hissy fits about what the starchitects were proposing.
:I didobject to the demolition of the Folk Art Museum, but … hissy fit?
I recall thinking,Oh, my God, more of that old 1980s painting-is-dead nonsense.
:Architects talking about architecture can get pretty scary, its true.
What about what they actuallydid, though?
But it still amazes me that the suits who make the museums real-estate deals sold MoMA short again.
They shouldve gotten, like, four more complete floors.
If the developers said no, Id tell them to take a walk.
I wouldnt have settled without more space for the museum.
No matter: Im thrilled to say that the Museum of Modern Art is nowalmostbig enough.
Thats why the Folk Art Museum had to go, because it interfered with the pathways.
How does that square for you with the experience of actually looking at art?
:I love that for the first time ever, you’re free to get lost at MoMA.
Things proceed pretty well after that, till you get to about 1962.
Then things turn boring, rote, and focus dissipates.
They dont do much to me these days, honestly.
But students, curators, and collectors revere this and postmodernism, so I guess they should be ecstatic.
:Well, what you call bullying, I call teaching.
Its one thing to get lost at the Metropolitan Museum, which covers many millennia and the entire globe.
Its also overlaid with generations of connoisseurship and culling.
But MoMA has a narrower purview, and now it seems less confident about how to navigate it.
:How does the building strike you from the outside?
And from the inside other than there being more space?
I mean, is it a good building?
Is it a building, even?
:The outside is hardly noticeable, which is kind of amazing for something so big.
:Well, for sure, the building is hardly noticeable, and to me, hardly notable.
But I care only about whether museums have enough good, usable space for art.
:Its much more interesting inside.
The changing curatorial mission, if in fact itischanging, put the architects in an odd position.
Im sure it can do that.
This building works just as well for a Museum of Whats Modern Art?
as for a Museum of This Is Modern Art!
But that creates a tension between a high-precision design aesthetic and a museum thats deliberately blurring its own brand.
:Youre way right about the if in fact itischanging part.
In a way its meet the new modernism, same as the old modernism but with other names.
Art thatwasnew and modern butnotmodernist!
Its like MoMA is saying, Wherever theres a grid, well be there.
:So you want MoMA to stake out the anti-MoMA position, too?
J.S.:Yes!
But it doesnt fit MoMAs hard-core formalist program, so youll never see it here.
That rigidity is only habit and an illusion.
Modern art contained multitudes in that period.
Or just the nerve to buck the old dogma.
I dont blame the architects.
But this hull is already under pressure.
:The crowding is extreme but predictable.
MoMA seems to think the crowds will abate once the opening buzz wears off, but I wonder.
Im starting to suspect the same principle applies to museums.
:What do you make of it spatially and aesthetically now that its full of people?
The first issue is hunger.
I gave up five different tries of waiting in the long second-floor coffee-and-croissant line.
J.D.:Right?!
:I gave up on the sixth floor cafe too.
But Im never at MoMA to eat or for coffee anyway, so I guess these arent my battles.
More benches and spaces for the disabled, c’mon!
:The second problem is sound.
I believe excessive exposure to that kind of acoustic confusion eventually leads to psychosis.
DS+R arethe firmfor just this kind of razzle-dazzle.
:I disagree with you there: Theyre on the more austere end of the razzle-dazzle spectrum.
But back to my experiential list: Third, tremors.
It turned out to be one skinny dude in sneakers.
I found that virtually impossible.
:Well, now that everyone is thinking, Whats with these two geezers raining on our parade?
Im going to rate one gallery.
Finally, after decades and shaming, MoMA has seen fit to make a place for so-called outsider artists.
For this I am deeply grateful.
It kills me, however, that theyre sequestered in a ghetto.
Sometimes in the same countries!Bill Traylorwould blow a hole through the walls of the 1940s1950s galleries.
The greatNative American ledger drawingswere made in American concentration camps up to the 1920s.
For whatever reason, MoMA cant think this way.
