The Met Breuer ( BROY-?r) is a museum of modern and contemporary art at 945 Madison Avenue and East 75th Street in the Upper East Side of New York City; it is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met). The Met Breuer opened in March 2016 in the building formerly occupied by the Whitney Museum of American Art, designed by Marcel Breuer and completed in 1966. Its works come from the Met's collection and are both monographic and thematic exhibitions.
Video Met Breuer
History
In 2008, the idea behind the Met Breuer project was initiated by philanthropist Leonard Lauder. An agreement between the Met and the Whitney was signed, after three years of negotiation, in 2011.
The location opened in March 2016 following a year and a half of preparations as part of a $600 million Metropolitan Museum of Art renovation plan. Architects Beyer Blinder Belle updated the Met Breuer building, which had been designed by Marcel Breuer. The Met will allocate an annual operating budget of $17 million to run the museum as part of an integrated expansion of the main museum's outreach, with a focus on modern art. The Met has an eight-year lease on the building from the Whitney Museum, with the option to renew another five and a half years, until approximately 2029.
The Met Breuer will be overseen by Sheena Wagstaff, previously at the Tate Modern, who has been the head of the Modern and Contemporary Art Department of the Met since 2012. Director and CEO of the Met, Thomas P. Campbell, has spearheaded the effort with a stated focus on the digital (moving from analog to digital) and focusing on accessibility and outreach. He considers the Met to be the largest encyclopedic museum in the world, with the Met Breuer an important part of that, especially as it works towards meaningfully engaging with a global audience, as well as the visitors who come to the museum in person. Both Campbell and Wagstaff see the Met Breuer as a sculptural creation and artwork in its own right.
The opening featured a survey of Nasreen Mohamedi and "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible", an exhibit of incomplete works that ranged over 500 years, from Italian Renaissance to contemporary paintings. The exhibit notably featured Pablo Picasso's never-before-exhibited 1931 painting Woman in a Red Armchair as well as work by Kerry James Marshall, who will have an upcoming exhibition at the Met Breuer.
Maps Met Breuer
Reception
In advance of the Met Breuer's opening, art critic at The New York Times Roberta Smith wrote that the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other major art institutions feared to miss out as the rest of the art world displayed more contemporary art exhibitions. Smith said that the Met excelled at "bringing older art to life" and that the Met Breuer's cautious opening exhibit showed unclear goals for the new building. Wallpaper cited the renovations involved in the opening as being more representative of Breuer's design for the building, with a lower level sunken garden and a more welcoming emphasis on the sculptural design. The Architect's Newspaper sees the Met's approach as one that treats the building itself as an artwork versus a building, with a focus on the patina of the materials as part of a holistic entity.
Critics of the new endeavor challenge its mission to be less safe and salubratory, with a focus on engagement and innovation. The Met Breuer will address the lack of collection activity of modern and contemporary art in the early to mid-1900s.
Exhibitions
- 2016: Nasreen Mohamedi
- 2016: "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible"
- 2016: "Humor and Fantasy--The Berggruen Paul Klee Collection"
Gallery
References
Further reading
- "Lost and Found". Wallpaper. Spring 2016. pp. 74-77.
External links
- Official website
- Met Breuer building at Marcel Breuer Digital Archive at Syracuse University Libraries
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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