On May 20, 2014 (published online May 19, 2014), the New York Times (
visit link) ran the following story:
"Met Plans a Gut Renovation of Its Modern Wing
By ROBIN POGREBIN
MAY 19, 2014
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is planning to rebuild its wing for Modern and contemporary art — possibly from scratch — to create new, showcase galleries for its expanded collection from those periods, Met officials have confirmed.
Part of the first comprehensive re-examination of the museum’s layout in 40 years, the planned new wing sends a powerful signal that the Met is acknowledging its shortcomings in Modern and contemporary art and stepping up its commitment to that area in order to become truly encyclopedic.
“It seemed a logical moment to really step back and think about the needs of the museum in the next 30 years,” said Thomas P. Campbell, the director of the Met. “It’s the Modern wing’s turn to get it right.”
This comes at a time when the museum world has become more competitive and others are upping their game, namely the Museum of Modern Art, which recently announced a major renovation, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, which will soon move to a hip new home downtown.
Still, the move has its risks, given that Modern and contemporary art has never been the Met’s main skill set and some will argue that the museum should play to its strengths. But the museum has a tailwind with the gift it received last year of 79 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures from the philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon Leonard A. Lauder. And the Met seems determined to compete in a field whose stature and popularity has been boosted by soaring auction prices.
Though the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, completed in 1987 in the southwest corner of the institution, is one of the largest recent additions, curators and visitors have long viewed its layout as problematic, partly because it does not allow for a chronological presentation.
“You leave the 19th-century galleries, which finish with early Picasso and Matisse, then cross the hall and are abruptly confronted with contemporary art made 100 years later,” said Gary Tinterow, former chairman of the Met’s department of 19th-century, Modern and contemporary art, and who now directs the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Mr. Campbell said that he has in the back of his mind a completion goal of 2020, when the Met will turn 150, and that he will aim to have the redesign include an expansion of the roof garden and, possibly, even a new entrance to the museum from Central Park. The current building “in a sense turns the museum’s back on the park,” he said.
No budget figures have been released for the undertaking, but projects of this scale, particularly if it is a total demolition, typically cost hundreds of millions of dollars, a significant sum, though in keeping with what the powerful Met board has raised for prior additions.
One spur for the decision is the Met’s eight-year agreement to lease the Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue from the Whitney, giving the Met space for its contemporary collection during construction. The Whitney is moving next spring.
Another factor is the Met’s interest in creating an appropriately important home for the Lauder gift, valued at more than $1 billion.
“Leonard’s collection is such a huge missing link between our very strong collections of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism and our moderately strong holdings of early-20th-century,” Mr. Campbell said, “that if we reconfigure the galleries, we have the potential to tell the chronological story.”
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Still, as evident in the case of the New York Public Library’s scuttled renovation for its flagship Fifth Avenue branch, enthusiastic planning is not enough to underwrite a major structural change on this scale. Any redesign will require considerable fund-raising and the approval of city agencies like the Landmarks Preservation Commission and the parks department.
The Met’s most recent master plan, drafted in 1970, added a million square feet to the museum on Fifth Avenue — like the American Wing and Sackler Wing (which houses the Temple of Dendur) — over a 30-year period.
Those changes include the recent renovations of the Islamic galleries and the Costume Institute, which just reopened. An overhaul of the Fifth Avenue plaza is also underway.
Two years ago, the Met quietly commissioned a sweeping feasibility study of its physical plant, which was completed last fall by Beyer Blinder Belle. A committee of trustees and staff is plotting next steps.
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The Wallace Wing was built at a cost of $26 million, including $11 million from Lila Acheson Wallace, a Reader’s Digest founder and major patron of the museum who died in 1984.
When the Wallace Wing was built at a cost of $26 million, it provided the Met with 40,000 square feet of galleries — more than the Whitney’s 25,400 square feet of exhibition space at the time, and the Guggenheim’s 38,500. Lila Acheson Wallace, a Reader’s Digest founder and major patron of the museum who died in 1984, donated $11 million to the project.
But the ample space could not compensate for the collection’s shortcomings, and the Met has felt compelled to address them.
“Its Modern holdings rank far behind those of the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim,” Holland Cotter wrote of the Met in The New York Times in 2011. “The collection, with its erratic logic, has been something of an institutional embarrassment.”
The Wallace Wing’s original architect, Kevin Roche of Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates — who has designed the Met’s additions since 1967 — said the wing was always a problem. “It really never got built properly,” said Mr. Roche, 92, in an interview. “I was never very happy with what happened.”
“There wasn’t a clear program,” he added, “and it kind of just got put together in pieces.”
Philippe de Montebello, the Met’s former director, said he was not privy to the museum’s internal discussions but believed the Met had to start over, given Mr. Lauder’s gift “and the need to rationalize the collections of late 19th into 20th and 21st centuries.”
“That wing has to be completely redesigned,” he said. “I can’t imagine this would be merely a fix-it solution. I suspect that it would need to be torn down and rebuilt.”
The reconstruction of the Wallace Wing will offer the Met naming opportunities for a new donor. “That is something we’d have to think about,” Mr. Campbell said. “We might honor the Wallace legacy by naming another part of the museum.”
The Met officials said they also hoped an improved space would lure more donated works of art. “We’ve got areas of strength and we’ve got big areas of weakness, and, of course, we can’t afford to buy at current prices,” Mr. Campbell said. “One of my goals is to make attractive galleries where collectors and donors feel they are giving to spaces where their art will be meaningful.”
As part of its initial research, the Met recently brought in art and architecture professionals to share their expertise, including Adam D. Weinberg, the director of the Whitney, and Hal Foster, a professor of art and archaeology at Princeton. “They have this important collection that is largely lost now,” Mr. Foster said. “The wing’s tucked away in the back of the museum, and its spaces disorient the visitor.”
“They need to do two opposite things at once — connect it to the rest of the museum more and make it more autonomous,” he said. “Right now, it feels like an add-on to the 19th-century galleries or an exit from the tribal art collection.”"