MoMA Tries To Master Life Outside Of Manhattan

Vincent Van Gogh taught at least one Museum of Modern Art official how much MoMAs move to Long Island City this spring will mean to Queens.
"I was giving a group of local community leaders a tour of MoMA QNS," said Katy McDonald, MoMAs director of Government and Community Relations, "when a woman looked up at me, shook her head and with disbelief in her voice said, I cant believe that The Starry Night is really coming to Queens," referring to the classic 1889 oil painting by the Dutch master.
The borough is atwitter at the impending opening of MoMA QNS on June 29, in a huge restored factory on 33 St. and Queens Blvd. For the already burgeoning arts community in Long Island City, the museum will be a singular resource and creative partner. So, too, for local schools, libraries and senior centers. For the areas merchants and for those dreaming of a refurbished Queens Plaza nearby, MoMA QNS, with more than 400 employees and hopefully, thousands of visitors, should be an economic boon.
MoMA officials say they are just as happy about the move.
"The museum is thrilled to be joining all the other well established cultural institutions in Queens," said McDonald. "We are hoping that people all across the City will realize what a great destination Long Island City is and will be just as excited as people in Queens are."
Museum officials spent months searching Manhattan to find a suitable space to display, while MoMAs W. 53 St. site is undergoing a three-year renovation.
Like the little old lady looking everywhere for her spectacles, the answer was found right under MoMAs nose, in the gritty LIC warehouse they had purchased in 1999, primarily as a storage facility.
"When we first got here, there were still remnants of staples all over the floor," said McDonald of the warehouse that was once the home to the Swingline stapler company.
Who could have imagined that the tiny metal prongs would one day be symbolic connecting the museums time-honored history in Manhattan to its new and limitless outer borough incarnation?
In the hands of designers Michael Maltzan Architecture and Cooper, Robertson & Partners, the cavernous facility became transformed into an idyllic artistic show space, with galleries that museum officials admit may surpass those in MoMA Manhattan.
"Its an architecture that I think is dynamic in its forms because it is meant to be understood through movement," said Maltzan. "You have to move in and around the space to understand it."
Thats exactly what a reporter and photographer from The Queens Courier did last week on a private preview of MoMA QNS, as museum workers put the finishing touches on the buildings interior and curators chomped at the bit at the prospect of hanging old masterpieces on freshly painted walls.
With 25,000 square feet of exhibition space and a library of more than 200,000 illustrated books, prints, and drawings, MoMA QNS is clearly a serious museum and research facility. And while paintings, sculptures, and photography are rightfully the focal point of the new MoMA QNS, so too is the art of museum going.
Past the museums welcoming foyer and alongside an ascending ramp that leads to the galleries, there is a caf-bookstore and a coat check, information stands and a large ticket booth, all framed by huge white walls on which the museum plans to show films from its huge 14,000-piece collection.
Though moving out of its longtime Manhattan space is undoubtedly a huge adjustment for the museums staff, they are not missing an artistic beat. MoMA QNS will open its doors on June 29 with five exhibits, including "Tempo," in which artists from around the world will explore the subject of time. Works by Alighiero e Boetti, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Matthew McCaslin will examine the value of clocks and watches, while the works of other artists will conjure history as a tool for understanding present times.
Time, as well as transportation, will be the themes of another exhibit called "Autobodies: Speed, Sport, Transport," as MoMA unveils a first ever presentation of its entire automobile collection, including the debut of three new acquisitions and the first American auto design.
Longtime Astoria residents, and anyone interested in one of the boroughs most culturally rich communities, shouldnt miss the exhibition of photographs from the early 1940s by Rudy Burckhardt. On June 29, the day the museum opens, MoMA QNS will feature "Projects 76: Francis Alys," in which the artist is staging a ceremonial procession where replicas of the museums great works will be paraded from its former and future home in Manhattan, across the Queensboro Bridge to its temporary home in LIC. The procession, reminiscent of the saints day processions, will also kick off "To Be Looked At: Selections from the Painting and Sculpture Collection," which will include not only The Starry Night, but also Picassos Les Demoiselles dAvignon, and Andy Warhols Gold Marilyn Monroe among countless other pieces.
During the rest of its stay in the borough MoMA QNS will also present "Matisse-Picasso," highlighting the friendship and rivalry of the great painters; "The Changing of the Avant-Garde," an exhibit of architectural drawings; "Ansel Adams at 100"; a retrospective on European artist Dieter Roth, and an exhibition on contemporary landscape design, among many other shows and film and multi-media projects.
The arrival of MoMA QNS brings almost endless artistic possibilities to a part of the City that is already undergoing a creative renaissance. The only questions still to be answered are how well will New Yorkers from Queens and the other boroughs support a major museum situated outside of Manhattan? And will the museum keep a significant presence in Queens once its fancy west side digs are restored in 2005?
A museum official is hopeful but noncommittal.
"We want to be in Queens for the long haul," said McDonald. "But economic realities necessitate that people from Queens and everywhere else visit and support the museum in the next three years."