The 20th and 21st-centuries have flipped the definition of art over, and over, and over again. With changing subjects, purposes, materials, and sizes, contemporary art has pushed to the limits the conditions needed to house and display it. So for architects, creating the right spaces to exhibit art can be challenging.
Over the past 100 years, something else has changed, too. As art transforms, so do neighborhoods, and one-by-one a similar pattern in NYC communities has presented itself. We’ll talk more about that in a little bit.
In their quest to find meaningful places to present their creations to the public, instead of looking to the future, avant-garde artists have relied on the past. This was the mantra of the alternative spaces movement. Alanna Heiss, a major proponent of this movement, founded the Institute for Art and Urban Resources Inc. in the 1970s. The aim of this organization was to “[organize] exhibitions in underutilized and abandoned spaces across New York City.” Abandoned warehouses and factories were two of the most beneficial building types for the display of new art, with their wide and tall open spaces suitable for all kinds of provocative and site-specific installations.
An abandoned public school building turned out to be the final jump for Heiss and the artists she advocated for. In 1976, the Institute rebranded as the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, named in honor of the First Ward School that the building was originally made for. The organization merged with MoMA in 1999 to become MoMA PS1.
MoMA PS1 is interesting architecturally in a variety of ways. First and foremost, of course, is the building itself. The building is part of the Romanesque Revival lineage that was popularized in the mid-19th century, especially by Henry Hobson Richardson. Romanesque buildings were characterized by their use of heavy materials and strictly semi-circular arches (a continuation of the form used by the Romans). The school has a handsome and massive stone base, and expresses its horizontality, rather than its verticality, through the use of successive, low-arched windows. The terra cotta colored brick and the restrained (this isn’t a Gothic Revival building) yet rich ornamental detailing (in terra cotta) is inviting. What better place to display underground, stick-it-to-the-establishment art than a building staunch in its forgotten and, nowadays, often frowned upon design elements?
The museum’s new entrance building, completed in 2011 by Andrew Berman Architect, is a brutalist success story. The cast concrete wall creates a strong presence on Jackson Avenue but is also a beautiful juxtaposition to the gaudy, green-glass Citi Tower that its vantage point leads you towards. The entrance atrium is reminiscent of Tadao Ando with its interplay of light through holes in the concrete construction, and then leads to what one might call a grand approach to the museum through its entrance courtyard.
The inside is beneficial for display, too. Classrooms have tall, open ceilings and can either be used individually for an artist or linked together to create larger exhibition spaces. Beyond that, the building has a feel unlike any other museum I’ve been to. When I’m climbing the cramped, low ceiling staircases with their red hand-rails, when I look through windowed doors lining long hallways, and when I hear the creaking of old, wooden floorboard, I’m brought back to my days as an elementary school student (shoutout to PS64). At MoMA PS1, there’s a sense of provocative art, youthful nostalgia, and proud NYC building history all mixed together, and it makes viewing the art all the more exciting.
The museum includes other architectural delights like traces of a building perpetually unfinished (holes in the wall that show utilities operations, bare brick ceilings, and plans drawn on walls), a walkthrough of the old basement and its outdated machinery, and art and building as one in pieces such as the Pipilotti Rist video installation (a hole in the floor), the in-motion Bruce Nauman installation which scratches on the floor, graphic arts in all the staircases, and more. MoMA PS1 also co-runs the Young Architects Program, which transforms the main courtyard each year into a sort-of architectural dreamworld. The 2018 winner Dream the Combine presented Hide & Seek, which featured huge, movable mirrors.
For all of its success as a contemporary art center, MoMA PS1 also hints at a darker lesson to be learned. If you’re wondering who would have thought that a school, in Long Island City, could ever be a museum, people paying attention in the ’70s could tell you that it wasn’t that big of a surprise, if you were paying attention. With the downfall of manufacturing in NYC, foresighted developers could tell which neighborhoods were next in line to be “revitalized.” LIC was the poster child for development in the 1970s. A mix of abandoned industrial buildings and low-income residents, buying property from locals was cheap, and the neighborhood’s close proximity to Manhattan meant that it would become desirable with a facelift. To get that process started, you let the artists take their place. When the avant-garde becomes more popular, more attention and money is attracted to the epicenter, and the neighborhood begins to change. During that change, in the words of one developer, “…in any development there are certain innocent people who get hurt.”
I don’t claim to be an expert in the development of LIC, nor do I think that MoMA PS1 has been a negative thing for the neighborhood or NYC, but there are questions to be thought about here. A lot of LIC natives were likely displaced in the transformation of the community from an industrial center to an artistic once, a similar development that SoHo underwent earlier and that many other neighborhoods are undergoing now. How do we ‘improve’ a neighborhood without pushing out low-income residents? What type of effects does real-estate development have on the urban and social fabric of city neighborhoods? MoMA PS1 fit nicely into the aesthetic of LIC, but what kinds of obligations, if any, does the museum have to long-term LIC residents 30-years after its inception?
Sources:
- Roberta Smith’s Art Review of the museum after its renovation in the 1990s: “More Spacious and Gracious, Yet Still Funky at Heart.”
- For more about the Romanesque Revival style, see this field guide.
- A short synopsis of the building’s history and style can be found here.
- For more about Alanna Heiss and the history of the organization, see MoMA PS1’s website.
- For a look at the entrance building, see the architect’s website.
- For an insightful and thought provoking reading about the future of Long Island City as “The Next Hot Neighborhood” near the end of the century and PS1’s role in this process, see pages 20-25 of New York Magazine’s August 11th, 1980 issue.
New York at its Best 