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The Met Breuer: New York's Newest Art Museum

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the most prolific art museums in the world, with over two million works of art in its collection. Now, this thorough collection has more space to be displayed than ever before, thanks to the opening of The Met Breuer. Located in the former home of the Whitney Museum of American Art at 75th Street and Madison Avenue, The Met Breuer is the Met’s new home for 20th and 21st century art. The museum, which opens officially on March 18, 2016 is, if not a thoroughly successful standalone destination, a worthwhile addition to this iconic institution.

met breuer lobby

“The reopening of Marcel Breuer’s iconic building on Madison Avenue represents an important chapter in the cultural life of New York City,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Met. “Whether frequent or first-time visitors to our Fifth Avenue building or The Met Cloisters, we look forward to welcoming everyone to The Met Breuer, which provides an unparalleled opportunity to experience modern and contemporary art through the lens of the global breadth and historical reach of The Met’s collection.”

Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer designed The Met Breuer’s new home in the 1960s, and in transitioning the space from the Whitney, The Met has been careful to honor, not overhaul, Breuer’s original vision. In a statement, Beyer Blinder Belle, the architectural firm behind the restoration, explained that the goal was “to approach the restoration as Breuer himself would have, carefully preserving the authentic patina of aging materials and allowing visitors to understand and appreciate the building’s evolution over time.”

The distinctly Brutalist nature of Breuer’s architecture, with its geometric concrete ceilings and “no-frills” design, brings some modernist variety to The Met’s otherwise classically grand buildings. (The Met Breuer’s austere interiors and limited spaces are a far cry from the Fifth Avenue building’s grandeur or The Cloisters’ sprawling medieval charm.)

unfinished installation met breuer

With no permanent collections currently housed at The Met Breuer, the emphasis is on its rotating exhibitions. The Breuer’s centerpiece opening exhibition is Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, an exploration of art left “unfinished” (whether intentionally or not) that runs through September 4, 2016. With artwork that ranges from the Renaissance to the present, including such masters as da Vinci, Rembrandt, Picasso, Van Gogh, and Pollock, this wide-ranging exhibition is something only The Met could pull off. The exhibition explores its singular topic in the most stunningly thorough way possible, using The Met’s vast resources in both the works on display and the scholarship that accompanies each piece to explain its unfinished nature. This thoroughness is in some ways its weakness as well—the exhibition stretches the definition of “Unfinished” to its limits (describing Pollock’s work as unfinished because of how it extends off the edges of the canvas, for instance), and perhaps would have benefitted by being slightly more focused. But it’s an incredibly impressive exhibition nonetheless—though the works may be “unfinished,” the artistic and aesthetic quality on display can certainly rival the most polished of collections.

The Met Breuer’s other opening exhibitions set a much more narrow gaze on contemporary artists. The second floor is home to a retrospective of 20thcentury Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi, who made fundamental contributions to the development of international abstraction and modernism. The exhibition, which runs through June 5, gives significant attention to Mohamedi’s abstract work, which ranges from earlier watercolor works to later hyper-precise black-and-white drawings that employ just razor-thin lines, basic shapes, and negative space.

The museum’s first Artist-in-Residence, musician Vijay Iger, showcases his work in the Tony and Amie James Gallery off the museum’s main lobby. Through March 31, Iger will perform throughout museum hours, both solo and in collaboration with other musicians, dancers, and poets, as well as curating performances by fellow performers and musicians. On March 30 at 7pm, Iger will accompany the current Nazreen Mohamedi exhibition with the debut of a new composition that honors Mohamedi and her work.

These individually directed exhibitions, along with the vastness of the main exhibition, show the strengths The Met Breuer will offer as an institution. By creating this new space, The Met Breuer can use The Met’s wide-ranging resources to explore topics more thoroughly than the limited space the Fifth Avenue building can provide. At the same time, the Breuer also gives The Met the opportunity to use the institution’s clout and expanded exhibition space to champion lesser-known contemporary artists.

With its limited space dedicated to just a few exhibitions, though, The Met Breuer doesn’t offer quite as rich an experience as the city’s larger contemporary art museums like MoMA or the new Whitney Museum. Instead, it’s best to see The Met Breuer as an extension of The Met’s main building on Fifth Avenue. Visitors will be easily able to visit both museums in the same day, as tickets—which, thanks to a recent legal settlement, will remain at a “suggested price” of $25—include same-day admission to The Met Breuer, Met Fifth Avenue, and Met Cloisters. (Though it should be noted that the Breuer, unlike Met Fifth Avenue, will be closed on Mondays.)

Accordingly, The Met has curated visitors’ travel between The Met Breuer and Met Fifth Avenue with the audio work Soundwalk 9:09. The work, which was composed by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams, consists of two pieces timed to be the exact length of the walk between The Met Breuer and Met Fifth Avenue (one piece is “Uptown” and the other “Downtown,” to fit either direction of travel). The piece uses ambient sounds recorded on the streets between the two museums, so that instead of using Adams’ work to tune out the day-to-day noises of New York City, the sounds  blend together. Thanks to this concept, although the work can be downloaded to your device and listened to at any time, it’s only when heard on the bustling city streets that it becomes complete.

unfinished paintings the met breuer

The Met Breuer is located at 945 Madison Ave. on the Upper East Side. It opens to the public officially on March 18. For more information on visiting the museum, see metmuseum.org.

About the Author

Alison Durkee is a New York-based arts journalist and critic with a background in theatre and dance. She currently serves as the Features Editor of London theatre website Everything Theatre and also covers news and politics for Mic.com.

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