NEW YORK NEW MOMA WINTER 2020 WINTER / OPENED OCTOBER 21 news ART At the new MoMA, Faith Ringgold’s 1967 painting American People Series No. 20: Die (below) is paired with Picasso’s famed 1907 canvas Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Misfred Canon A feminist curator fnds the rehang seriously lacking. BY MAURA REILLY URING THE 1990S, WHILE and, ultimately, Jackson Pollock. According by my boss from cheekily offering a tour of pursuing my graduate art history to Barr, “modern art” was a synchronic, “women artists in the collection” at a time degree at New York University, I linear flow of “isms” in which one (hetero- when there were only eight on view. worked in the Education Depart- sexual, white) male “genius” from Europe or By the turn of the 21st century, the rele- Dment of the Museum of Modern Art, where the U.S. influenced another who inevitably vance of mainstream modernism was being I led gallery tours of the museum’s perma- trumped or subverted his previous master, challenged, and anti-chronology became nent collection for the general public and thereby producing an avant-garde progres- all the rage. The Brooklyn Museum, the VIPs. At that time, the permanent exhibition sion. Barr’s story was so ingrained in the High Museum of Art, and the Denver Art galleries, representing art produced from institution that it was never questioned as Museum all rehung their collections accord- 1880 to the mid-1960s, were arranged to problematic. The fact that very few women, ing to subject instead of chronology, and a tell the “story” of modern art as conceived artists of color, and those not from Europe much-anticipated inaugural exhibition at by founding director Alfred H. Barr Jr., be- or North America—in other words, all Tate Modern presented the story of mod- ginning with Monet and Cézanne, and then “Other” artists—were not on display was not ern art through a thematic, genre-based : The Museum of Modern Art, York New above 110 leading to Picasso, Futurism, Surrealism, up for discussion. Indeed, I was dissuaded presentation organized into categories (still W20_BOB_Reviews_MoMA_Reilly_f.indd 110 11/18/19 8:40 PM INSIGHTS INSIGHTS life, landscape, nude, and history painting). shrine to Pablo Picasso, with 13 early paint- publicly that he was not interested in the Their display was nonhierarchical, non-cen- ings and sculptures by the modern “master,” tribal works in themselves, but only in the tralizing, and inclusive, allowing for jarring MoMA’s curators have placed a monumental way they acted as inspiration for the West- juxtapositions like Henri Matisse hanging work by African-American artist Faith Ring- ern avant-garde. The exhibition met with an / M beside Marlene Dumas. gold. The painting from 1967, titled American outcry of criticism spearheaded by Thomas o For its part, MoMA organized three People Series No. 20: Die, depicts a race riot McEvilley, who argued that the museum MA exhibitions in 2000 with the goal of in progress, with bloodied and contorted was really co-opting non-Western cultures reinventing itself for a newly expanded interracial bodies strewn across the canvas. and using them to consolidate Western no- building, positioning its collection as a sort I am thrilled that Ringgold is being given tions of quality and feelings of superiority. of laboratory. Sound familiar? The three long-overdue prominence in MoMA’s per- Regardless of whether you think Picasso “MoMA2000” exhibitions were thematic, manent collection galleries. She certainly stole from African art, with the Ringgold nonchronological, pluralistic, open-ended, deserves it. However, I am disappointed intervention MoMA appears oblivious to con- and, at times, playful. As John Elderfield, in her placement. Why is she integrated tinued controversies that such appropriation then chief curator at large, put it: “We’re into a room dedicated to a white male stokes. If Ringgold based her composition on not replacing one orthodoxy with another. master? MoMA justifies the placement Picasso’s, who had based his own on African We want to show that what was happening like so: “Ringgold based her composition art, is MoMA now attempting to make rep- until now was an orthodoxy.” on Picasso’s Guernica (1937)—the artist’s arations for him? Does Ringgold need to be But these postmodern modernist response to the atrocities of the Spanish linked with Picasso to validate her genius? endeavors proved to be failed experiments Civil War—which she regularly visited when Given that Ringgold’s work of the ’60s when the rehangs at Tate and MoMA the monumental canvas was on display at was not influenced by Picasso alone—she were almost universally criticized for their the Museum of Modern Art.” was also fueled by her admiration for the anti-chronological approach, which art Positioned as she is, Ringgold is present- writings of James Baldwin, the paintings of critic Hal Foster referred to as “a post-his- ed as a derivative of Picasso, or as a sup- Jacob Lawrence, and the decorative work torical hodgepodge of disparate works porting character. The irony is that Picasso of the Kuba peoples from the Democratic placed together in lookalike groupings.” In himself, in his desire to reinvent painting, Republic of the Congo, to name just a few— response, Tate reinstalled its collection in borrowed motifs from the tribal art he saw it might have been more interesting to a series of “hubs” and centralized works in 1907 at the Musée d’Ethnographie du Tro- include her work in relation to Lawrence’s around four art-historical moments. MoMA cadéro in Paris. His Cubism was derived from Migrant Series, also on view in the museum. also reverted to the mainstream modern- African art. Is the placement of the single Or, more radically, why didn’t MoMA pres- ART ist paradigm: Another expansion in 2004 Ringgold in this room, then, MoMA’s attempt ent an entire room dedicated to Ringgold, debuted with a return to strict art histor- to acknowledge Picasso’s African influences with multiple paintings and sculptures, news ical “isms,” with the collection galleries by way of an African-American artist? juxtaposed with a single Picasso? / installed almost exactly as they had been The fact that MoMA chose to present What Holland Cotter in the New York 2020 WINTER before “MoMA2000.” Only four percent of such an intervention in light of the nev- Times called “a stroke of curatorial genius,” the works on display were by women, and er-ending criticism of its own much-ma- I call tokenism. This was also the case with even fewer were by non-white artists. ligned 1984 exhibition “ ‘Primitivism’ in the placement of a single Alma Thomas Fast-forward to 2019. MoMA has re- 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and painting in an all-Matisse room. Is MoMA opened with great fanfare after yet another the Modern” is all the more interesting. trying to make amends for past wrongs, major building expansion and has yet again That show exhibited tribal objects from Af- which have celebrated an almost exclusive declared intentions to tell a different, more rica, Oceania, and North America without parade of white male superstars—and espe- inclusive, and less definitive story. While labels or explanatory wall text alongside cially Matisse and Picasso—by showing an it purports to be nonchronological, the works by Gauguin, Picasso, and Constantin African-American woman holding her own traditional narrative of modernism is left Brancusi, in order to show their influence as an abstract painter? As ARTnews exec- intact (unlike in 2000), and the ghost of the on modernism as a movement. The exhi- utive editor Andrew Russeth asked on this mainstream modernist timeline remains, bition’s curator, William Rubin, expressed magazine’s website, “Why just one? It reads tracing art history from the 1880s to the present. The museum has done away with “isms” in favor of quirky, oftentimes non- sensical, themes and dumbed-down gallery headings, such as “Stamp, Scavenge, Crush” and “Inner and Outer Space.” While it might appear that history is repeating itself, the most exciting aspect of the new MoMA is the rise in the number of women, non-white, and non-Western artists on view. But while the collection reflects greater diversity, it still needs much improvement. Of the more than 1,400 works on display, fewer than 350 are by women artists—making for around 25 percent, according to my calculations. (This does not include the Amy Sillman “Artist’s Choice” installation, for reasons outlined below.) While some critics have found the new in- stallation worthy of praise and full of exciting juxtapositions, I tend to disagree, especially Installation view of John Wronn/©2019 The Museum of Modern Art John Wronn/©2019 : a room dedicated to 111 as pertains to the various interventions. For “Florine Stettheimer right instance, in a room functioning as a virtual and Company.” W20_BOB_Reviews_MoMA_Reilly_f.indd 111 11/18/19 8:40 PM as tentative. Why not go half-Thomas and Gaston Lachaise, William Zorach, Edward Léger’s Purist painting The Mirror from 1925 MA o half-Matisse, and see what kind of fireworks Steichen, and Kenyon Cox, among others. on one side, and with a small 1962 painting M / these two great colorists shoot off?” Why not a room showing works by these by Zimbabwean artist Thomas Mukarobgwa Perhaps the best example of problematic artists to contextualize Stettheimer’s on the other. In another dialogue, a small curating is the room dedicated to “Florine genius as a major avant-garde figure of the painting by Ulrike Müller from 2017 and a Stettheimer and Company.” In this small early 20th century? tiny Duchamp sculpture are juxtaposed with INSIGHTS INSIGHTS space—let’s call it “The Ladies Room”—one a mammoth, cavernous Lee Bontecou from finds 21 works, with 18 by women artists and IF THERE IS ONE REASON TO 1959.