curator overseeing these projects (along with her colleague
Tara Keny). Raymond leads us to the education building,
where Andy Warhol’s famous pink-and-yellow cow
wallpaper is being peeled off to make way for a piece by
another artist of Slavic origin, Goshka Macuga. Macuga
uses photography-based tapestry to present layered
investigations into political movements and their influence
on art history. Here, she reimagines a famous photograph
from 1954 that depicts the French writer and culture
minister André Malraux in his home, with layouts from his
canonical art book, Museum Without Walls.
“It’s an iconic image of a male curator of the 20th century,”
Macuga says. “A white bourgeois man smoking a cigarette
in his house leaning against a piano.” In Macuga’s version of
the photograph, she takes up position in a similar room, with
her own selection of images arranged on the floor. It’s one that
unearths many more women—from artists Meret Oppenheim
and Vija Celmins to donors such as Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson
Cobb, who helped sustain the museum for decades. At 50 by
36 feet, it is Macuga’s most ambitious project yet. “It’s a big
gesture for MoMA to invite living artists to make commissions
that will remain for up to 10 years,” she says. “I wanted it to
be like an exhibition within an exhibition.”
Another excavation is taking place in the sixth-floor
restaurant, where my crew leads me into an immersive
installation by the German-born artist Kerstin Brätsch. Here,
slablike abstractions made from pressed stucco in vivid neon
colors line the walls, and faux-marble wallpaper at foot level is
inset with dinosaurs and grooves of colored gel. Brätsch, who
collaborates with glassblowers and other artisans to explode
the conventions of painting, is influenced by everything from
Old Masters to Japanese animation. She was unfazed by the
prospect of exhibiting her work in a utilitarian environment
“where art and daily life intertwine,” as she puts it. “I hope
the experience is playful, mysterious, a little magical, intimate,
and not corporate.”
We pass MoMA’s existing cafeteria,
which is also getting a revamp, this one at
the hands of a three-person Dutch graphic
design group, Experimental Jetset. The trio
researched historic artist-led restaurants,
such as Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Jean Arp, and
Theo van Doesburg’s 1920s Café L’Aubette
in Strasbourg, whose original paint colors they sourced to
create panels based on the shape of Philip Johnson’s windows
for MoMA’s façade. As we reach the grand gesture that is
the museum’s new-minted ground floor, the sculpture garden
is having its weighty contents reconfigured—I spot an Isa
Genzken rose waiting to be planted. A new acquisition, Haim
Steinbach’s large-scale text piece Hello. Again., from 2013,
has been mounted on a wall.
“My criticism as a visitor to MoMA,” says Diller, “was
that it felt like I walked a quarter mile into
the museum before I saw art.” No longer.
Now the lobby is less of a tunnel connecting
53rd and 54th Streets and more of an open,
airy space hosting installations of its own.
The French artist Philippe Parreno gets star
billing here with an environment that
includes two marquees, some 120 moving
lamps, a screen, and interactive sound.
Like the other commissions, Parreno’s
takes a non-prescriptive approach to the
way viewers look at art, acknowledging that
this can be anything from focused and
in-depth to spacey and oblivious. A final
commission on the third floor hosts
an open invitation to dream, courtesy
of national treasure Yoko Ono. Here,
beanbags are scattered and sky-blue panels
bear a poem opposite a long window
engraved with a Babel-like incantation,
showing the words peace is power
in 24 languages. Turns out, it can be
surprisingly hard to translate. @
POINT OF VIEW
ART BY KERSTIN
BRÄTSCH
(ABOVE) AND
PHOTOGRAPHY
BY GOSHKA
MACUGA ARE ON
DISPLAY.
VLIFE
60 NOVEMBER 2019 VOGUE.COM
TOP: KERSTIN BRÄTSCH.
FOSSIL PSYCHIC FOR CHRISTA (STUCCO MARMO),
2019
. PLASTER, PIGMENTS, GLUE, WAX AND OIL ON HONEYCOMB, FELT, 43,3 X 51,6 IN. BOTTOM: GOSHKA
MACUGA,
EXHIBITION M
, 2019. JACQUARD TAPESTRY, COTTON, ACRYLLIC, WOOL MIX, 36 X 52.5 FT APPROX. THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART COMMISSION 2019. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
