The Museum of Modern Art

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel cleared a hurdle today in his effort to build a skyscraper taller than the Chrysler Building next to the Museum of Modern Art, as the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission today voted 7-0 to allow the tower to go forward, according to agency spokeswoman Lisi De Bourbon. Neighboring residents have strongly resisted the idea of a giant new hotel and residential tower going up mid-block on 53rd Street.  read more »

Poor lil' stem cells. They just couldn't hold up to all the pressure of being on display at MoMA's Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition. Victimless Leather, a small jacket made up of embryonic stem cells taken from mice, has hit the bucket. The artists, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, told the Art Newspaper that the work which was fed nutrients by tube, expanded too quickly and clogged its own incubation system just five weeks after the show opened. Mr.  read more »

A judge ruled that the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Foundation can continue to fight for ownership of two Picasso paintings. Julius Schoeps, a University of Potsdam professor, has claimed that his family should own the paintings since "Boy Leading a Horse" and "Le Moulin de la Galette" were sold during the Nazi reign in Germany by his relative, a German Jewish banker.  read more »

Like an unknown bar band playing on a weeknight, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel seemed to leave little impression on much of his audience yesterday, speaking at a public hearing to win an approval for his planned 75-story tower by the Museum of Modern Art.

The room at the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission was packed with residents from around the planned mid-block tower on West 53rd Street who, by and large, were vehemently opposed to the scale of it. And while it is the commissioners who ultimately vote on the approval, the community concerns could count heavily some months down the road when another approval comes before the City Council.

“I wish to enrich this neighborhood, to open the sky to the street and also to create a kind of a signal,” Mr. Nouvel said. “You can look at the skyline of the city, and you can say, ‘The MoMA is here.’”  read more »

Jean Nouvel, the newly minted winner of architecture’s Pritzker Prize, will likely face some criticism of his planned 75-story apartment tower (rendering right) next to the Museum of Modern Art tomorrow afternoon, as the development proposal goes before the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission for a hearing.

Surrounding residents have criticized the tower for its out-of-scale height, and the local community board recommended against the development last month. Though in a twist uncommon to not-in-my-backyard battles, architectural enthusiasts, troubled by the community board vote, have tried to rally support for the tower, at least in cyberspace (we’ll see if they show up to the hearing tomorrow).

The Times did a profile of Mr. Nouvel yesterday and quoted his business partner as saying the French architect was focusing his energy on the MoMA tower.  read more »

Some West Side Manhattanites might not be too thrilled to hear that French architect Jean Nouvel has won the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honor. The award is to be announced today, according to The New York Times.

Mr. Nouvel, 62, has two buildings in New York City: 40 Mercer, a luxury condo building completed last year in Soho; and a proposed 75-story condo and hotel tower slated for 53 West 53rd Street, next-door to the Museum of Modern Art. On March 13, Community Board 5 voted 21-1 to deny the transfer of air rights from two landmarked buildings to the site for the tower.  read more »

There’s been a bit of movement on the MoMA tower front since I wrote about it in this week’s paper.

Last night, Manhattan’s full Community Board 5 voted overwhelmingly (21-1, according to the board’s office) to deny the transfer of air rights from two landmarked buildings to the site for Jean Nouvel’s planned 75-story midtown hotel/residential/Museum of Modern Art skyscraper (the community board’s vote is only advisory).  read more »

Do not attempt to see Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit on a Friday night. It may be your custom to take advantage of MoMA’s pay-what-you-can policy (thrifty!), or to celebrate the week’s end with a dose of high culture (classy!). But don’t do it. You’ll spend a slow, sweaty hour bumping up against every yokel with two nickels who has spent the last thirty minutes proclaiming the exhaustion of her feet. Pony up the money during the week. It's worth it to let your inner scientist take all the space-time she needs.<  read more »

Have you ever seen those house houses sitting atop a flatbed truck on the highway, looking all shiny and new (but also weirdly sad because they're not a "home" yet and there is a "wide load" sign attached to their back sides)?  read more »

Curators at the Museum of Modern Art had spent years searching for a set of vitrines by influential postwar German artist Joseph Beuys, and now they finally have them. The Museum of Modern Art’s committee on painting and sculpture approved a seminal set of vitrines by Beuys and two works by the 30-year-old Scottish painter Lucy McKenzie.  read more »

Restitution strikes again! The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation are currently in court battling a German scholar who claims their Picasso paintings were rightfully owned by his Jewish great uncle, who was persecuted in Nazi Germany.

The Associated Press reports:  read more »

Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the highest paid director of a nonprofit in the country, according to a survey of nonprofit executives conducted by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.  read more »

The titan behind Tilted Arc ascends the throne at MoMA.  read more »

Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s glittery Factory epic shows up at MoMA for week-long party.  read more »

MoMA explains the font we take for granted.  read more »

“Who is Brice Marden painting for?” That’s what one veteran painter asked after visiting the B  read more »

Community Board 2 tentatively approved a plan for the development of 363-371 Layfayette Street last night, with several stipulations that the board hopes will preserve light and space for the adjoining building at 20 Bond Street, where legendary artist Chuck Close has a studio.

Tenants at 20 Bond Street and the developer 363-371 Layfayette Street, Olmstead Propeties, have been in negotiations for months concerning the new development. Aided by big guns from the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art who wrote letters supporting Mr. Close and 20 Bond Street's other tenants, the tenants and the developer are negotiating a mutually beneficial plan that will allow the building to be developed while preserving light for the next-door property.

An attorney for the tenants addressed the board last night and said the negotiations are nearly finished, yet declined to state what any sticking points might remain. Apparently satisfied, the board approved the variance request, with a few modifications.
The developers asked for variances to change the ground floor to retail and the upper floors to residential, which is not allowed in the M1-5B (manufacturing) district, and an increase of floor-area ratio to 5.5, up from 5.0.
In its resolution, the board recommended to permit the retail use of the ground floor, but not to change the upper floors to residential use--instead, it urged the developers to use the upper floors as "joint living-work quarters," with each unit required to be 1,200 square feet, eliminating the balconies from the design (to preserve light and privacy in 20 Bond Street), and that negotiations continue with 20 Bond Street, resulting in a binding agreement.
The community board's decision is, of course, strictly advisory. The Board of Standards and Appeals must sign off on the plans before work starts.  read more »

For further info, check out The Villager's extensive coverage here and here.

-Matthew Grace

MADELEINE: I went to MOMA yesterday to take my mind off all the wedding craziness. I wandered into the Edvard Munch exhibit and came across his most famous work, The Scream. I stared at it for a long time, finally recognizing it resembled me and Mitch. Hands on face, mouth wide open and a silent but visible scream bellowing out.

It's 25 days until our wedding, and I think we're both starting to freak out. Wedding dead time is long over and we're officially into wedding crunch time. I am five meetings, two fittings, one hair trial, a bachelor and bachelorette party, and a rehearsal dinner away from getting married. I prefer to look at the tasks ahead instead of thinking too much about the wedding day itself. The light at the end of the tunnel is finally visible!  read more »

Here’s an ironclad guarantee: Visitors to Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul, an overvi  read more »

Here’s an ironclad guarantee: Visitors to Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul, an overview o  read more »

Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon, an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, is devoted t  read more »

For devotees of the shaped-canvas aesthetic, the exhibition of paintings by Elizabeth Murray at the  read more »

For devotees of the shaped-canvas aesthetic, the exhibition of paintings by Elizabeth Murray at the  read more »

To fully understand the exhibition called Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro 1865-188  read more »

To fully understand the exhibition called Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro 18  read more »

Five hundred works of art: Just thinking about taking in so many during the course of one exhibition  read more »

Five hundred works of art: Just thinking about taking in so many  read more »

You won't believe what I saw upon entering the 57th Street branch of PaceWildenstein Gallery: A coll  read more »

Of the many criticisms one can make of the new, grossly expanded and grossly expensive Museum of Mod  read more »

There was a time, in the early decades of the last century, when the newly created museums devoted t  read more »

Another week in New York, another art museum opens.  read more »

Blessed are the artists who, owing to family history, innate talent and an indomitable will, are bor  read more »

With the Giorgio Armani fashion show now occupying the lion's share of exhibition space at the Solom  read more »

Time has not been kind to the reputation of the American photographer Edward Steichen (1879-1973), w  read more »

Museumgoers, fasten your seat belts!  read more »

There is a passage in William Rubin's text for the catalogue of the Cézanne Watercolors exhibition,  read more »

Of the many things to be said about the exhibition called Fame After Photography , which Marvin Heif  read more »

A third of a century has passed since the Museum of Modern Art mounted an exhibition called Turner:  read more »

I found myself thinking about Troilus and Cressida on my way up to the Mark Kostabi seminar, the "sp  read more »

In the mythology of Greek antiquity, the Muses were thought to be the patron goddesses of the arts a  read more »