关于纽约现代艺术博物馆的英文概况

关于纽约现代艺术博物馆的英文概况....不要中文介绍
The Museum Of Modern Art - MOMA

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is a preeminent art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, USA, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been singularly important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world.[1] The museum's collection offers an unparalleled overview of modern and contemporary art, [2] including works of architecture and design, drawings, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, illustrated books, film, and electronic media.

MoMA's library and archives hold over 300,000 books, artist books, and periodicals, as well as individual files on more than 70,000 artists. The archives contain primary source material related to the history of modern and contemporary art.

MoMA is complementary to and sometimes considered a sister museum to the nearby Metropolitan Museum of Art[attribution needed], although the latter is a general art museum, where modern art is only one area of specialization.

The idea for the Museum of Modern Art was developed in 1928 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller[citation needed] (wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr.) and two of her friends, Lillie P. Bliss and Mrs Cornelius J. Sullivan. They became known variously as "the Ladies", "the daring ladies" and "the adamantine ladies". They rented modest quarters for the new museum and it opened to the public on November 7, 1929, nine days after the Wall Street Crash. Abby had invited A. Conger Goodyear, the former president of the board of trustees of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, to become president of the new museum. Abby became treasurer. At the time, it was America's premier American museum devoted exclusively to modern art, and the first of its kind in Manhattan to exhibit European modernism.[3]

Goodyear enlisted Paul J. Sachs and Frank Crowninshield to join him as founding trustees. Sachs, the associate director and curator of prints and drawings at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, was referred to in those days as a collector of curators. Goodyear asked him to recommend a director and Sachs suggested Alfred H. Barr Jr., a promising young protege. Under Barr's guidance, the museum's holdings quickly expanded from an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing. Its first successful loan exhibition was in November 1929, displaying paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, and Seurat.[4]

First housed in six rooms of galleries and offices on the twelfth floor of Manhattan's Heckscher Building, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, the museum moved into three more temporary locations within the next ten years. Abby's husband was adamantly opposed to the museum (as well as to modern art itself) and refused to release funds for the venture, which had to be obtained from other sources and resulted in the frequent shifts of location. Nevertheless, he eventually donated the land for the current site of the Museum, plus other gifts over time, and thus became in effect one of its greatest benefactors.[5]

During that time it initiated many more exhibitions of noted artists, such as the lone Vincent van Gogh exhibition on November 4, 1935. Containing an unprecedented sixty-six oils and fifty drawings from the Netherlands, and poignant excerpts from the artist's letters, it was a major public success and became "a precursor to the hold van Gogh has to this day on the contemporary imagination".[6]

The museum also gained international prominence with the hugely successful and now famous Picasso retrospective of 1939-40, held in conjunction with the Art Institute of Chicago. In its range of presented works, it represented a significant reinterpretation of Picasso for future art scholars and historians. This was wholly masterminded by Barr, a Picasso enthusiast, and lionized the greatest artist of the time, setting the model for all the museum's retrospectives that were to follow.[7]

When Abby Rockefeller's son Nelson was selected by the board of trustees to become its flamboyant president in 1939, at the age of thirty, he became the prime instigator and funder of its publicity, acquisitions and subsequent expansion into new headquarters on 53rd Street. His brother, David Rockefeller, also joined the Museum's board of trustees, in 1948, and took over the presidency when Nelson took up position as Governor of New York in 1958.

David subsequently employed the noted architect Philip Johnson to redesign the Museum garden and name it in honor of his mother, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. He and the Rockefeller family in general have retained a close association with the Museum throughout its history, with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund funding the institution since 1947. Both David Rockefeller, Jr. and Sharon Percy Rockefeller (wife of Senator Jay Rockefeller) currently sit on the board of trustees.

In 1937, MoMA had shifted to offices and basement galleries in the Time & Life Building in Rockefeller Center. Its permanent and current home, now renovated, designed in the International Style by the modernist architects Philip C. Johnson and Edward Durell Stone, opened to the public on May 10, 1939, attended by an illustrious company of 6,000 people, and with an opening address via radio from the White House by President Franklin Roosevelt.[8]

纽约现代艺术博物馆，充满了向旧艺术建筑的挑战艺术作品，是一个让艺术家充分发挥创意和展示激情的场所。但是，另一些评论家却认为新的博物馆失去了他的设计重点。尽管褒贬不一，博物馆仍然秉承一个最纯粹的目标，让更多的人接触到艺术，把艺术带入每个人的生活中。 这个由现在日本前卫建筑设计师妹岛和世和西泽立卫设计的新大厦，在竣工伊始得到了许多肯定评价的同时，也收到了一些负面的批评。 博物馆总监phillips评价说：“这个新的博物馆是一个向旧艺术建筑的挑战，但同时这也是一个给艺术家向大众展示他们不同想法和创意的机会。”但是，另一些评论家却认为，新的博物馆失去了设计重点，包括那些在博物馆开张主题会“21世纪的建筑”上出席的主流画廊艺术家john bock、urs fischer和rebecca warren等。无神论者则认为博物馆的建造过多的被理事会所影响和控制，理事会成员包括上文提到的两个设计师，其余都是收藏家。而相邻的一些画廊指责新博物馆没有像当初承诺的一样，向周围的画廊提供包括信息交流和合作支持的帮助。 当然，在一些大型机构如音乐厅、足球场、图书馆等等，在试图彻底全新地改头换面的时候，它们总会受到一些来自各方面的反对意见。但值得称道的是，博物馆仍然秉承一个最纯粹的目标：让更多的人接触到艺术，把艺术带入每个人的生活中。在开放前期，为了纪念创馆30周年，博物馆方面决定向广大观众免费开放连续30个小时。博物馆的第五层专用于一个与其他艺术机构合作的项目“博物馆网络中心”，总监解释说，“这是与其他艺术机构合作的一个国际项目，目的是为了研究当代艺术在社会中所扮演的角色和我们怎样从艺术的角度来影响和改变受众。”此项目开始与2006年，合作的机构包括韩国首尔的insa艺术空间，墨西哥的museo tamayo arte contemporaneo美术馆，开罗的townhouse gallery of contemporary art当代美术馆等。他们认为生活中不能缺少艺术，所有的合作艺术机构都将一直遵循他们的艺术“宗教”。 最后，phillips总监承诺它们绝对不会改变博物馆30年来不变的宗旨，“从我们1977年成立至今，我们总是不遗余力的努力推广新生艺术家的作品，包括那些不为人知的艺术家，年轻的实践者，在美国之外极有影响力的艺术家和还没有被广大观众接受的先锋派艺术家。我们一致会努力帮助他们。”