long as artists are at liberty to feel with high personal intensity, as long as our
artists are free to create with sincerity and conviction, there will be a healthy
controversy and progress in art. Only thus can there be an opportunity for a
genius to conceive and to produce a masterpiece for all mankind.
But, my friends, how different it is in tyranny. When artists are made the
slaves and tools of the state; when artists become chief propagandists of a
cause, progress is arrested and creation and genius are destroyed.
(MoMA 1954: 3)
Eisenhower’s words, an example of cold war propaganda, were grounded in a fun-
damental aversion to central authority and the belief that state intervention should
be limited. As the country where capitalism is most ideologically secure, the model
of a free enterprise exchange economy extends to the arts; and MoMA recipro-
cated with the 1955 exhibition, ‘The Family of Man’, a statement of the universal-
ity of the American-style family (Staniszewski 1998). Indeed, Pop artists like
Andy Warhol, representing post-Pollock artistic production, were able to elaborate
a faith in the openness of the American life in terms supplied by consumer culture.
Of course, it is ironic that the American distrust of a closer relationship between
the arts and politics has not excluded a direct and active part of the role of govern-
ment in promoting American art abroad; indeed throughout the cold war, the arts
were considered a valuable tool in foreign policy.
In response to a changed (political) environment, including the cultural fran-
chising strategy of the Guggenheim, a competitor institution, MoMA has embarked
on two complementary initiatives. MoMA has established a ‘programmatic alliance’
with P.S.1, New York’s largest alternative space. The exhibition ‘Greater New
York’ (2000) was the first collaboration between the two institutions: thirty cura-
tors attempted a detailed map of New York art life, with painting, video, photog-
raphy, and new media side-by-side; moreover, invited artists were drawn from those
who have gained prominence since 1995 and those who have yet to gain public
recognition. The P.S.1–MoMA partnership invites two commercial analogies: it
represents a form of backward integration by MoMA to gain greater control of the
overall production process; it is not unlike a venture capitalist taking an equity stake
in an innovative start-up. It signals MoMA’s desire to show a commitment to
contemporary art; moreover, it allows a multidisciplinary approach to be included in
order to counter the increasingly problematic linear story of modernism, as told by
MoMA. For its part, P.S.1 gets MoMA’s fund-raising acumen. According to
MoMA’s director, the partnership with P.S.1 makes MoMA more competitive:
The atmosphere for museums has become extremely competitive and there is
enormous pressure to find the resources to differentiate oneself. … I believe in
competition. It forces you to do your best. It’s good for the public. It offers the
maximum number of choices. But this is a unique moment. Logic says things
have to shift. And any institution focusing on money rather than on a quality
collection and programming won’t survive.
(Glenn Lowry in
Art in America
, June 1999)
Artistic leadership
65
The current expansion project, to be completed in 2005, includes creating 50 per
cent more gallery space. ‘MoMA Builds’ is about enhancing the institution’s iden-
tity
and reputation, according to the director:
Throughout its history, [MoMA] has used architecture as a vehicle for self-
renewal and regeneration. With this building project, the Museum undertakes
the most extensive redefinition of itself since its founding over seventy years
ago. The timing could not be more appropriate, for MoMA’s mission demands
that we traverse the twenty-first century with the same confidence and bold-
ness that we did the twentieth.
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