Met Breuer

The Met Breuer (/ˈbrɔɪ.ər/ BROY-ər)[1] was a museum of modern and contemporary art at 945 Madison Avenue and East 75th Street in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It served as a branch museum of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (known as the Met).

Met Breuer
MET Breuer Building (2019)
EstablishedMarch 18, 2016 (2016-03-18)
DissolvedMarch 13, 2020 (temporary closure), June 23, 2020 (permanent closure)
Location945 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10021
TypeArt museum
Public transit access Subway: ​ at 77th Street
Bus: M1, M2, M3, M4, M79 SBS
Websitemetmuseum.org/visit/met-breuer

The Met Breuer opened in March 2016 in the building formerly occupied by the Whitney Museum of American Art, designed by Marcel Breuer and completed in 1966.[2] Its works come from the Met's collection and are both monographic and thematic exhibitions.[3]

In June 2020, it was announced that the museum would close permanently, never reopening after its closure in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[4][5] Control of the building was transferred to the Frick Collection for its use during renovations to the Frick's main building, an arrangement which predated the COVID outbreak.[6][7]

History
Renovated lobby

In 2008, the idea behind the Met Breuer project was initiated by philanthropist Leonard Lauder. An agreement between the Met and the Whitney was signed, after three years of negotiation, in 2011.[8]

The location opened in March 2016 following a year and a half of preparations as part of a $600 million Metropolitan Museum of Art renovation plan. Architects Beyer Blinder Belle updated the Met Breuer building,[9] which had been designed by Marcel Breuer.[10] The Met will allocate an annual operating budget of $17 million to run the museum as part of an integrated expansion of the main museum's outreach, with a focus on modern art.[11] The Met has an eight-year lease on the building from the Whitney Museum, with the option to renew another five and a half years, until approximately 2029.[12][13]

The Met Breuer was overseen by Sheena Wagstaff, previously at the Tate Modern, who has been the head of the Modern and Contemporary Art Department of the Met since 2012.[14][15] Director and CEO of the Met, Thomas P. Campbell, spearheaded the effort with a stated focus on the digital (moving from analog to digital)[16] and focusing on accessibility and outreach. He considered the Met to be the largest encyclopedic museum in the world, with the Met Breuer an important part of that, especially as it works towards meaningfully engaging with a global audience, as well as the visitors who come to the museum in person.[3] Both Campbell and Wagstaff saw the Met Breuer as a sculptural creation and artwork in its own right.[17]

The opening featured a survey of Nasreen Mohamedi and "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible",[18] an exhibit of incomplete works that ranged over 500 years, from Italian Renaissance to contemporary paintings.[19][20] The exhibit notably featured Pablo Picasso's never-before-exhibited 1931 painting Woman in a Red Armchair as well as work by Kerry James Marshall, whose retrospective exhibition “Mastry” appeared at the Met Breuer in the autumn and winter of 2016–7.[21][22]

In September 2018, it was announced that the Met intended to vacate the Met Breuer three years early, in 2020, with the Frick Collection temporarily occupying the space while its main building underwent renovations.[7][23][24] Originally, the intention was that the Met would vacate the Met Breuer building in July following an exhibition of the works of Gerhard Richter.[25] However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced the museum to close on March 13, just eight days after the Richter exhibit opened.[26] In June 2020, it was announced that the Met Breuer would close permanently, with the Frick Collection occupying the building, as planned.[6]

Reception
But the Met is huge and old, with a history of treating contemporary art as an afterthought. Getting it to change is like turning around an ocean liner; captain and crew are perhaps understandably proceeding cautiously.

New York Times art critic Roberta Smith on the Met Breuer's opening, March 2016[19]

In advance of the Met Breuer's opening, The New York Times art critic Roberta Smith wrote that the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other major art institutions feared to miss out as the rest of the art world displayed more contemporary art exhibitions. Smith said that the Met excelled at "bringing older art to life" and that the Met Breuer's cautious opening exhibit showed unclear goals for the new building.[19] Wallpaper cited the renovations involved in the opening as being more representative of Breuer's design for the building, with a lower level sunken garden and a more welcoming emphasis on the sculptural design.[27] The Architect's Newspaper sees the Met's approach as one that treats the building itself as an artwork versus a building, with a focus on the patina of the materials as part of a holistic entity.[28]

Critics of the new endeavor challenge its mission to be less safe and salubratory, with a focus on engagement and innovation.[29] The Met Breuer will address the lack of collection activity of modern and contemporary art in the early to mid-1900s.[8][30]

Exhibitions

References
  1. Nicholson, Louise (March 17, 2016). "The Met Breuer's biggest strength is its ability to make you think". Apollo. Retrieved April 24, 2016. its pronunciation, which should be 'broyer', as in a broiler chicken
  2. "About Marcel Breuer & The Breuer Building". www.metmuseum.org. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved May 30, 2017.
  3. Rose, Charlie (April 8, 2016). "Thomas Campbell (includes interactive transcript)". The Charlie Rose Show. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  4. "The Met Breuer is closing its doors for good". Time Out New York. Retrieved June 25, 2020.
  5. Miller, Hannah (March 12, 2020). "Metropolitan Museum of Art to close due to coronavirus". CNBC. Retrieved June 25, 2020.
  6. "The Met Breuer Will Not Reopen After the Lockdown Lifts, Officially Shifting Control of Its Historic Brutalist Building to the Frick". artnet News. June 22, 2020. Retrieved June 25, 2020.
  7. Pogrebin, Robin (September 21, 2018). "The Frick Likely to Take Over the Met Breuer". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  8. Tomkins, Calvin (January 25, 2016). "The Met and the Now". The New Yorker. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  9. Goldberger, Paul (March 4, 2016). "The Met Breuer Restores a Postwar Gem to Greatness". Vanity Fair. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  10. Kennedy, Randy (March 1, 2016). "A Look at the Met Breuer Before the Doors Open". The New York Times. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  11. Pogrebin, Robin (March 4, 2016). "Breuer Building Expands the Imagination, and the Budget, of the Met". The New York Times. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  12. Hawthorne, Christopher (April 13, 2016). "The restored Met Breuer (formerly the Whitney) has a new energy as well as a lived-in look". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  13. Golden, Thelma; Campbell, Tom; Weinberg, Adam; Brown, Alice Pratt (April 14, 2016). "Directors in Dialogue" (Video). Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  14. "Sheena Wagstaff to Head Metropolitan Museum's New Modern and Contemporary Art Department". Metropolitan Museum of Art. January 10, 2012. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  15. Solomon, Deborah (November 25, 2015). "Becoming Modern: The Met's Mission at the Breuer Building". The New York Times.
  16. Rosenberg, Karen (March 1, 2016). "The Take: The Museum "Non-Finito": How the New Met Breuer Reflects the Digital Disruption of Art History". Artspace. Retrieved April 24, 2016.
  17. Lange, Alexandra (March 3, 2016). "Met Breuer: Better or worse than the former Whitney Museum?". Curbed NY. Retrieved April 24, 2016.
  18. Davis, Ben (March 2, 2016). "The Met Breuer Botches Its 'Unfinished' Show". artnet News. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  19. Smith, Roberta (March 2, 2016). "At the Met Breuer, Thinking Inside the Box". The New York Times. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  20. Swanson, Carl (March 2, 2016). "Inside the New Met Breuer's Housewarming Show". Vulture. Retrieved April 24, 2016.
  21. Cotter, Holland (March 2, 2016). "A Question Still Hanging at the Met Breuer: Why?". The New York Times.
  22. "Kerry James Marshall: Mastry | The Metropolitan Museum of Art". www.metmuseum.org. Retrieved December 7, 2020.
  23. "The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Frick Collection Planning Collaboration to Enable Frick to Use Whitney Museum Of American Art's Breuer Building During Frick's Upgrade and Renovation" (PDF) (Press release). New York: The Frick Collection. September 21, 2018. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  24. "The Met Is Looking to Leave the Breuer Building After Just Two Years". Architectural Digest. Retrieved January 1, 2019.
  25. Farago, Jason (March 5, 2020). "The Sublime Farewell of Gerhard Richter, Master of Doubt". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 22, 2020. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which rented Breuer’s granite fortress from the relocated Whitney Museum of American Art in 2015, will be vacating the building in July, three years ahead of schedule. . . . The museum could not have offered a more apt final show — more rigorous, more resigned — than “Gerhard Richter: Painting After All.”
  26. Chung, Jen (July 20, 2020). "Frick Collection Will Move To Old Met Breuer Building During Renovation In 2021". Gothamist. Archived from the original on July 22, 2020.
  27. Murg, Stephanie (January 14, 2016). "Architecture. Design Awards 2016: Best Reboot – The Met Breuer". Wallpaper. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  28. Shaw, Matt (March 18, 2016). "Why the Met Breuer Matters". The Architect's Newspaper. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  29. Farago, Jason (March 2, 2016). "The Met Breuer review – museum's new outpost has an uncertain start". The Guardian. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  30. Lipsky-Karasz, Elisa (February 1, 2016). "The Met Goes Modern: The Met Breuer Opens With 'Unfinished' Artworks". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  31. "Nasreen Mohamedi: April 2016 to June 2016". Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2016. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  32. "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible: April 2016 to September 2016". Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2016. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
  33. "Humor and Fantasy—The Berggruen Paul Klee Collection". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  34. "Diane Arbus: In the Beginning". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Archived from the original on August 19, 2013. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  35. "Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  36. "Marsden Hartley's Maine". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  37. "Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  38. "The Body Politic: Video from The Met Collection". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  39. "Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  40. "Modernism on the Ganges: Raghubir Singh Photographs". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  41. "Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, 1950–1980". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  42. "Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  43. "Provocations: Anselm Kiefer at The Met Breuer". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  44. "Leon Golub: Raw Nerve". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  45. "Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300–Now)". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  46. "Obsession: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele, and Picasso from the Scofield Thayer Collection". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  47. "Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963–2017". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  48. "Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  49. "Lucio Fontana: On the Threshold". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  50. "Siah Armajani: Follow This Line". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  51. "Home Is a Foreign Place: Recent Acquisitions in Context". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  52. "Oliver Beer: Vessel Orchestra". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  53. "Phenomenal Nature: Mrinalini Mukherjee". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  54. "Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  55. "Gerhard Richter: Painting After All". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved July 9, 2020.

Further reading

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