The Met Breuer ( ) was a museum of modern and

contemporary art Contemporary art is a term used to describe the art of today, generally referring to art produced from the 1970s onwards. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a ...

in the Breuer Building at

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and East 75th Street on the Upper East Side of

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

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. It served as a branch museum of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

(known as the Met) from 2016 to 2020. The Met Breuer opened in March 2016 in the Whitney Museum of American Art's Breuer Building, designed by Marcel Breuer and completed in 1966. Its works came from the Met's collection, and it housed both

monograph A monograph is generally a long-form work on one (usually scholarly) subject, or one aspect of a subject, typically created by a single author or artist (or, sometimes, by two or more authors). Traditionally it is in written form and published a ...

ic and thematic exhibitions. In March 2020, the museum announced it would temporarily close due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. Three months later, in June, the Met announced that the museum would close permanently. Control of the building was transferred to the

Frick Collection The Frick Collection (colloquially known as the Frick) is an art museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was established in 1935 to preserve the collection of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. The collection (museum) ...

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. 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 updated the Met Breuer building at 945 Madison Avenue, which had been designed by Marcel Breuer. 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, 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 in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...

, 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 ( ) was a period in History of Italy, Italian history between the 14th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Western Europe and marked t ...

to contemporary paintings. The exhibit notably featured

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

'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. In September 2018, it was announced that the Met intended to vacate the Met Breuer three years early, in 2020, with the

temporarily occupying the space while its main building underwent renovations. The closure was a priority of incoming Met director Max Hollein, as it had an expensive lease, low attendance, and mixed reviews. 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 art, abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, photographs and Glass art, glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important con ...

. 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'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' 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. '' 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. '' 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. 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

There were thirty-one exhibitions at the Met Breuer: * March 18–June 5, 2016: " Nasreen Mohamedi" * March 18–September 4, 2016: "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible" * April 19–September 25, 2016: " Tatsuo Miyajima: Arrow of Time (Unfinished Life)" *July 12–November 27, 2016: " diane arbus: in the beginning" *September 1, 2016–January 2, 2017: "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 wi ...

Collection" *October 25, 2016–January 29, 2017: " Kerry James Marshall: Mastry" *October 25, 2016–January 29, 2017: "Kerry James Marshall Selects" *January 24–May 7, 2017: " Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space" *February 1–May 21, 2017: "Breuer Revisited: New Photographs by Luisa Lambri and " *March 15–June 18, 2017: " Marsden Hartley's Maine" *March 21–July 23, 2017: " Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms" *June 20–September 3, 2017: "The Body Politic: Video from The Met Collection" *July 21–October 8, 2017: " Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical" *September 13, 2017–January 14, 2018: "Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason 1950–1980" *October 11, 2017–January 2, 2018: "Modernism on the Ganges: Raghubir Singh Photographs" *November 15, 2017–February 4, 2018: " Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed" *December 13, 2017–April 8, 2018: "Provocations: Anselm Kiefer at The Met Breuer" *February 6–May 27, 2018: " Leon Golub: Raw Nerve" *March 21–July 22, 2018: "Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300–Now)" *July 3–October 7, 2018: "Obsession: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele, and Picasso from the Scofield Thayer Collection" *September 6–December 2, 2018: "Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963–2017" *September 18, 2018–January 6, 2019: "Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy" * December 4, 2018–February 24, 2019: " Julio Le Parc 1959" *January 23–April 14, 2019: "

Lucio Fontana Lucio Fontana (; 19 February 1899 – 7 September 1968) was an Italian Argentines, Argentine-Italian painter, sculptor, and theorist. He is known as the founder of Spatialism and exponent of Abstract art, abstract painting as the f ...

: On the Threshold" *February 20–June 2, 2019: " Siah Armajani: Follow This Line" *April 9, 2019–March 12, 2020: "Home Is a Foreign Place: Recent Acquisitions in Context" *June 4–September 29, 2019: "Phenomenal Nature: Mrinalini Mukherjee" *July 2–August 11, 2019: " Oliver Beer: Vessel Orchestra" *September 24, 2019–January 12, 2020: " Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory" *January 29–March 12, 2020: "From Géricault to Rockburne: Selections from the Michael and Juliet Rubenstein Gift" *March 4–March 12, 2020: "

: Painting After All"

Gallery

BaptismOfChrist-MetBreuer.png, Jacopo Bassano
''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 Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work introduced new modes of representation, influenced avant-garde artistic movements of the early 20th century a ...

'' Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory''
1891 Salvator Mundi MET DP164819.jpg,

Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer ( , ;; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, Old master prin ...

'' 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