Contemporary at MoMA: Time’s Up

Now that I’ve returned, disgruntled, from the press preview for the Museum of Modern Art’s latest reinstallation of its sprawling second-floor contemporary-art space (tellingly entitled, “Out of Time”), it’s high time to add an 11th item to my “Top 10 List” of things I dislike about the new MoMA (posted here and here):
The concept behind MoMA’s contemporary galleries urgently needs to be rethought.
The less said about this particular contemporary installation, the better. Although nominally about “some of the tensions embedded in recent experiences of time,” “Out of Time” is actually a Seinfeldian show-about-nothing. “Time” is interpreted in so many different ways as to become a meaningless governing concept for disparate works that huddle together in various small groups that have little to say to one another—“Passing Time,” “Time’s Impact on the Creative Process,” “Irrational Models of Time,” “Time as a Repository of History and Memory” (this, the strongest section, for its political punch).
For the life of me, I could not fathom what Sarah Morris‘ and Frank Stella‘s hard-edged geometric paintings had to do with time, other than showing that the same concerns have occupied different artists working at different times. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (as Seinfeld might say). MoMA did a better job on the subject of time not that long ago—its 2002 “Tempo” show, organized by then adjunct curator Paulo Herkenhoff, at MoMA QNS.
But there’s a bigger problem, which is alluded to at the end of the new installation’s introductory wall text:
The history of contemporary art is in the process of being written, updated, and revised, and for this reason the presentation in the Contemporary Galleries changes at least once a year.
Because MoMA refuses to go out on a limb and say that certain works in its contemporary collection are so important that they deserve to be on (more or less) permanent view, we are at the mercy of the whims of different curators possessed of varying degrees of expertise and insight about contemporary art. This contemporary cop-out seems to say that the art of of the last few decades is more transient and less for-the-ages than the masterpieces upstairs. Judgments of quality, however controversial, can be revised but need to be made.
That’s not to say that there should not also be changing displays; there’s enough room on the second floor for both. Nor must the “permanent” contemporary works always remain on view; there may be times when the entire space is needed for an important temporary contemporary show.
But what we must NOT have is the situation we had this summer: No contemporary art was on display in those galleries for a period of seven weeks, while the previous installation was dismantled and the current one installed. Think of all those tourists who come to MoMA for a definitive account of contemporary art, get almost nothing, and can’t come back.
Meanwhile, we’re stuck with the current lackluster show for seven months—enough time to come up with a better plan. Actually, this is the second-floor show we can look forward to next summer. And, I must say, it’s about time!