What Should MoMA Do With the American Folk Art Museum?

There is a growing uproar over the news, first reported in the New York Times yesterday, that the venerable Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will be demolishing the 12-year-old former American Folk Art Museum designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien to integrate the site into its masterplan.

Robin Pogrebin explained:

MoMA officials said the building’s design did not fit their plans because the opaque facade is not in keeping with the glass aesthetic of the rest of the museum. The former folk museum is also set back farther than MoMA’s other properties, and the floors would not line up.

“It’s not a comment on the quality of the building or Tod and Billie’s architecture,” Glenn D. Lowry, MoMA’s director said.

Mr. Lowry personally went to the architects’ offices to inform them of the museum’s decision, a gesture that Ms. Tsien said she appreciated.

When the American Folk Art Museum first opened in the wake of 9/11 people praised the structure and New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp wrote a gushing review, ascribing almost magical qualities to the building:

Folk art denotes point of view: this is the design’s understated message. History, aesthetics, anthropology, religion, psychology, politics, authorial intention: the works on view will try on as many interpretive frames as we care to toss around them. Not all will fit. But the building enshrines the desire to comprehend as an American freedom.

Since that time, the building has entered the contemporary architectural canon and it has been taught in schools and added to textbooks. Williams and Tsien’s transformation of such a small lot was successful, many said, in that it was able to make the small museum stand out and feel independent of the behemoth next door, MoMA.

Understandably, the angry response in the architectural community is pointed. In Architect, Ned Cramer wrote that:

The decision to tear down the folk art museum exposes MoMA to far less flattering characterizations than conservatism [on the part of the institution]. It’s as though the board voted to incinerate a Gerhard Richter painting because it didn’t match the floor tile or fit through the doorway. MoMA must find a way to incorporate the American Folk Art Museum building into its expansion plans. What’s at risk is not only a magnificent work by important contemporary architects, but MoMA’s credibility as a champion of architecture.

A group of architects on Twitter (lead by Ana Maria Leon and Quilian Riano) began floating the idea of a hashtag (#FolkMoMA) that would serve as a hub for commentary on MoMA’s decision. Archinect took up the cause and encouraged people submit their ideas on how the Modern could integrate the smaller building into their aesthetic and design. Though others have suggested (tongue-in-cheek) that a more appropriate hashtag may be #MoMAfolko:

Why not make the Folk Museum a Tilda installation, The Probably? She could usually sleep there until destruction. #momafolko

— Brent Burket (@HeartAsArena) April 11, 2013

Already, some submissions have been popping up on social media, and the most attractive (so far) is from art director Matthew Lucero, whose rendering finds a way to integrate the two aesthetics:

The bigger question here is whether the building should be saved. Many people, including myself, are torn since the facade may be attractive, but the galleries have always felt awkward and not ideal for a museum. The stern almost medieval looking facade didn’t do the American Folk Art Museum any favors and one has to wonder if it contributed to the lackluster attendance numbers for the institution, which was 160,000 in 2011 (and this includes a second building on the Upper West Side). The low attendance was obviously not due to location or foot traffic considering MoMA’s 2,814,746 attendance in the same year.

In May 2011, New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz, no fan of the building, wrote:

The building was called astonishing, a shrine, a temple, a Zen masterpiece. In reality, every one of their decisions reflected a total lack of feeling for, even a disdain for, art. Before he died, the Times architectural critic Herbert Muschamp, who’d said nice things about the building when it opened, confided to me that my loathing was “probably right.”

Do we save the American Folk Art Museum? As an architecturally significant monument, I believe MoMA should rethink its decision to raze the structure completely. If museums aren’t interested in saving the aesthetic heritage of our city, then we should be concerned about their role in our culture. Surely there’s another way.

And then there’s this:

https://twitter.com/bruteforceblog/status/322481201065644034