Word: moma
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...cartwheeling Lee Friedlander retrospective that settles into the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City this week arrives just days after the very popular Diane Arbus retrospective completed its New York run at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Friedlander comes, Arbus goes. You imagine them saluting each other with whistle blasts like ships passing at sea. That's in part because their shows are the latest development in a process that began in 1967, when they were both introduced to a wider public in a pivotal MOMA exhibition that was entirely devoted to them and a third relative...
...years that followed, Arbus, with her I-dare-you-to-look pictures and her untimely death by suicide, would become a legend. Winogrand, who died in 1984, and Friedlander, now 70, settled for becoming enormously influential photographers. But it's only now, with this MOMA show of 500-plus images, that we understand how fiercely delightful and original Friedlander is. If a sophisticated notion of what a picture can look like, the continuous construction of new avenues of feeling, and sheer, sustained inventiveness are the measures we go by, then Friedlander is one of the most important American artists...
...Fuses at the Museum of Modern Art, where I worked for a couple of years in the late 60s, before becoming editor of Film Comment magazine, and where I met the foxy lady who would become my wife. MoMA was a jazzy place when the Vietnam War was wearing everyone down, and the new sensuality was perking most of us up. Members watched avant-porn in the private screening room; some had sex on the carpeted floor. (I should say had love, since three Film Department liaisons, Mary's and mine included, ended in late-60s marriages...
...retained and expanded the much-beloved sculpture garden, but encased it in glass, he says, "like one would a precious object." It still serves as the museum's beating heart and the centerpiece of the entire block?Taniguchi compares the museum to New York itself, calling the sculpture garden MOMA's own Central Park. Thereafter, he says, the interplay of spaces involved attempting to "connect the two cores"?the sculpture garden and the atrium?via a series of bridges, balconies, stairs and passageways, which link the various galleries in a splendidly (and newly) nonlinear and open floor plan...
...much as possible," he says. "I can only do a few buildings at a time." For now, his main focus is back in Japan where he's designing a new home for the Tokyo Club and creating a new gallery at the Kyoto National Museum. "After I won the [MOMA] competition, I got lots of offers," he says with a smile, "but I had to say I am sorry." And with that, the modest master goes back to work...