Tuesday, January 31, 2012

WHAT: The Museum of Modern Art, West 53 Street



“Although today’s taste has returned to more texture and contrast, in a pioneering sense the museum building is still effective architecture.  It is best understood if we realize that the architecture of that date was undergoing a necessary cleansing process to rid it of the superfluous elements of traditional design that had ceased to have meaning in terms of modern machine production.  If the insistence on this bare simplicity was overstrict, it succeeded in its purpose of re-establishing sensitivity to the important basic elements of architecture – the wall, the frame, the nature of materials, and the proper relationship of the essential parts to the whole.”
- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Modern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.
Image via nyny100.com.

No comments:

Post a Comment