The Met Breuer ( ) was a museum of

modern Modern may refer to: History *Modern history ** Early Modern period ** Late Modern period *** 18th century *** 19th century *** 20th century ** Contemporary history * Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century Philosophy ...

and

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic ...

at Madison Avenue and East 75th Street in the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. It served as a branch museum of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

(known as the Met) from 2016 to 2020. The Met Breuer opened in March 2016 in the Breuer Building formerly occupied by the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

, designed by

Marcel Breuer Marcel Lajos Breuer ( ; 21 May 1902 – 1 July 1981), was a Hungarian-born modernist architect and furniture designer. At the Bauhaus he designed the Wassily Chair and the Cesca Chair, which ''The New York Times'' have called some of the most i ...

and completed in 1966. Its works came from the Met's collection, and it housed both monographic and thematic exhibitions. 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 The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. 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.

History

In 2008, the idea behind the Met Breuer project was initiated by philanthropist

Leonard Lauder Leonard Alan Lauder (born March 19, 1933) is an American billionaire, philanthropist, art collector. He and his brother, Ronald Lauder, are the sole heirs to the Estée Lauder Companies cosmetics fortune, founded by their parents, Estée Lauder ...

. An agreement between the Met and the Whitney was signed, after three years of negotiation, in 2011. The location opened in March 2016 following a year and a half of preparations as part of a $600 million

renovation plan. Architects

Beyer Blinder Belle Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners LLP (BBB) is an international architecture firm. It is based in New York City and has an additional office in Washington, DC. The firm's name is derived from the three founding partners: John H. Beyer, Ri ...

updated the Met Breuer building, which had been designed by

. The Met allocated 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. The Met has an eight-year lease on the building from the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

, with the option to renew another five and a half years, until approximately 2029. The Met Breuer was overseen by Sheena Wagstaff, previously at the

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...

, who has been the head of the Modern and Contemporary Art Department of the Met since 2012. Director and CEO of the Met, Thomas P. Campbell, spearheaded the effort with a stated focus on the digital (moving from analog to digital) 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. Both Campbell and Wagstaff saw the Met Breuer as a sculptural creation and artwork in its own right. The opening featured a survey of Nasreen Mohamedi and "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible", an exhibit of incomplete works that ranged over 500 years, from

Italian Renaissance The Italian Renaissance ( it, Rinascimento ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the trans ...

to contemporary paintings. The exhibit notably featured

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

's never-before-exhibited 1931 painting ''Woman in a Red Armchair'' as well as work by

Kerry James Marshall Kerry James Marshall (born October 17, 1955) is an American artist and professor, known for his paintings of Black figures. He previously taught painting at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2017, Marshall ...

, whose retrospective exhibition “Mastry” appeared at the Met Breuer in the autumn and winter of 2016–7. 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. Originally, the intention was that the Met would vacate the Met Breuer building in July following an exhibition of the works of

Gerhard Richter Gerhard Richter (; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary Germa ...

. However, the onset of the

forced the museum to close on March 13, just eight days after the Richter exhibit opened. In June 2020, it was announced that the Met Breuer would close permanently, with the Frick Collection occupying the building, as planned. The building subsequently reopened as the Frick Madison on March 18, 2021

Reception

In advance of the Met Breuer's opening, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' art critic

Roberta Smith Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position. Early life Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. Smith studied a ...

wrote that the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other major art institutions feared to miss out as the rest of the

art world The art world comprises everyone involved in producing, commissioning, presenting, preserving, promoting, chronicling, criticizing, buying and selling fine art. It is recognized that there are many art worlds, defined either by location or alte ...

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. ''

Wallpaper Wallpaper is a material used in interior decoration to decorate the interior walls of domestic and public buildings. It is usually sold in rolls and is applied onto a wall using wallpaper paste. Wallpapers can come plain as "lining paper" (so ...

'' 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. ''

The Architect's Newspaper ''The Architect's Newspaper'' is an architectural publication that covers the United States in monthly printed issues and online. The paper was founded in 2003 by William Menking, editor-in-chief, and Diana Darling, publisher, to bring architects ...

'' 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. Critics of the new endeavor challenged its mission to be less safe and salubratory, with a focus on engagement and innovation. The Met Breuer was to address the lack of collection activity of modern and contemporary art in the early to mid-1900s.

Exhibitions

* 2016: Nasreen Mohamedi * 2016: "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible" *2016: "Humor and Fantasy—The Berggruen

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented ...

Collection" *2016: "

diane arbus Diane Arbus (; née Nemerov; March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971
" The New York ...

: in the beginning" *2016: "

: Mastry" *2017: " Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space" *2017: " Marsden Hartley's Maine" *2017: " Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms" *2017: "The Body Politic: Video from The Met Collection" *2017: "

Ettore Sottsass Ettore Sottsass (Innsbruck, Austria 14 September 1917 – Milan, Italy 31 December 2007) was a 20th century Italian architect, noted for also designing furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting, home and office wares, as well as numerous buildings an ...

: Design Radical" *2017: "Modernism on the Ganges: Raghubir Singh Photographs" *2017: "Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, 1950–1980" *2017: " Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed" *2017: "Provocations: Anselm Kiefer at The Met Breuer" *2018: " Leon Golub: Raw Nerve" *2018: "Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300–Now)" *2018: "Obsession: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele, and Picasso from the

Scofield Thayer Scofield Thayer (12 December 1889 in Worcester, Massachusetts – 9 July 1982 in Edgartown) was a wealthy American poet and publisher, best known for his art collection, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and as a publisher and editor of the l ...

Collection" *2018: "Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963–2017" *2018: "Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy" *2019: " Lucio Fontana: On the Threshold" *2019: " Siah Armajani: Follow This Line" *2019: "Home Is a Foreign Place: Recent Acquisitions in Context" *2019: " Oliver Beer: Vessel Orchestra" *2019: "Phenomenal Nature: Mrinalini Mukherjee" *2019: "

Vija Celmins Vija Celmins (pronounced VEE-ya SELL-muns;Hilarie M. Sheets and Randy Kennedy (September 24, 2015)''New York Times''. lv, Vija Celmiņa, pronounced TSEL-meen-ya) is a Latvian American visual artist best known for photo-realistic paintings and dr ...

: To Fix the Image in Memory" *2020: "

: Painting After All"

Gallery

BaptismOfChrist-MetBreuer.png,

Jacopo Bassano Jacopo Bassano (c. 1510 – 14 February 1592), known also as Jacopo dal Ponte, was an Italian painter who was born and died in Bassano del Grappa near Venice, and took the village as his surname. Trained in the workshop of his father, Francesco t ...

''The Baptism of Christ''
c. 1590 Madame Cézanne (Hortense Fiquet, 1850–1922) in the Conservatory MET DP317780.jpg,

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically d ...

'' Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory''
1891 Salvator Mundi MET DP164819.jpg, Albrecht Dürer
'' Salvator Mundi''
c. 1505 The Vision of Saint John MET DT1052.jpg, El Greco
'' The Vision of Saint John''
c. 1609–14 Two Girls with Parasols MET DP161222.jpg, John Singer Sargent
''Two Girls with Parasols''
1889

References

External links