In March 2020, the museum announced it would temporarily close due to theCOVID-19 pandemic. Three months later, in June, the Met announced that the museum would close permanently.[4][5] Control of the building was transferred to theFrick Collection for its use during renovations to the Frick'smain building, an arrangement which predated the COVID outbreak.[6][7]
In 2008, the idea behind the Met Breuer project was initiated by philanthropistLeonard Lauder. An agreement between the Met and the Whitney was signed, after three years of negotiation, in 2011.[8]
The location opened in March 2016 following a year and a half of preparations as part of a $600 millionMetropolitan Museum of Art renovation plan. ArchitectsBeyer Blinder Belle updated the Met Breuer building,[9] which had been designed byMarcel Breuer.[10] 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.[11] The Met has an eight-year lease on the building from theWhitney Museum, with the option to renew another five and a half years, until approximately 2029.[12][13]
The Met Breuer was overseen bySheena Wagstaff, previously at theTate Modern, who has been the head of the Modern and Contemporary Art Department of the Met since 2012.[14][15] Director and CEO of the Met,Thomas P. Campbell, spearheaded the effort with a stated focus on the digital (moving from analog to digital)[16] 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.[3] Both Campbell and Wagstaff saw the Met Breuer as a sculptural creation and artwork in its own right.[17]
The opening featured a survey ofNasreen Mohamedi and "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible",[18] an exhibit of incomplete works that ranged over 500 years, fromItalian Renaissance to contemporary paintings.[19][20] The exhibit notably featuredPablo Picasso's never-before-exhibited 1931 paintingWoman in a Red Armchair as well as work byKerry James Marshall, whose retrospective exhibition “Mastry” appeared at the Met Breuer in the autumn and winter of 2016–7.[21][22]
In September 2018, it was announced that the Met intended to vacate the Met Breuer three years early, in 2020, with theFrick Collection temporarily occupying the space while itsmain building underwent renovations.[7][23][24] The closure was a priority of incoming Met directorMax Hollein, as it had an expensive lease, low attendance, and mixed reviews.[6] Originally, the intention was that the Met would vacate the Met Breuer building in July following an exhibition of the works ofGerhard Richter.[25] However, the onset of theCOVID-19 pandemic forced the museum to close on March 13, just eight days after the Richter exhibit opened.[26] In June 2020, it was announced that the Met Breuer would close permanently, with the Frick Collection occupying the building, as planned.[6] The building subsequently reopened as the Frick Madison on March 18, 2021[27]
But the Met is huge and old, with a history of treating contemporary art as an afterthought. Getting it to change is like turning around an ocean liner; captain and crew are perhaps understandably proceeding cautiously.
New York Times art critic Roberta Smith on the Met Breuer's opening, March 2016[19]
In advance of the Met Breuer's opening,The New York Times art criticRoberta Smith wrote that the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other major art institutionsfeared to miss out as the rest of theart 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.[19]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.[28]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.[29]
Critics of the new endeavor challenged its mission to be less safe and salubratory, with a focus on engagement and innovation.[30] The Met Breuer was to address the lack of collection activity of modern and contemporary art in the early to mid-1900s.[8][31]
^Golden, Thelma; Campbell, Tom; Weinberg, Adam; Brown, Alice Pratt (April 14, 2016)."Directors in Dialogue"(Video).Metropolitan Museum of Art. RetrievedApril 23, 2016.
^Farago, Jason (March 5, 2020)."The Sublime Farewell of Gerhard Richter, Master of Doubt".The New York Times. RetrievedJuly 22, 2020.The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which rented Breuer's granite fortress from the relocated Whitney Museum of American Art in 2015, will be vacating the building in July, three years ahead of schedule. . . . The museum could not have offered a more apt final show — more rigorous, more resigned — than "Gerhard Richter: Painting After All."
^Pineda, Mercedes; Rodríguez, Mafalda, eds. (2015).Nasreen Mohamedi: Waiting Is a Part of Intense Living. [Madrid]: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.ISBN978-84-8026-521-8.
^Baum, Kelly; Bayer, Andrea; Wagstaff, Sheena, eds. (2016).Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.ISBN978-1-58839-586-3.
^Cassidy, Donna M.; Finch, Elizabeth; Griffey, Randall R., eds. (2017).Marsden Hartley's Maine. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.ISBN978-1-58839-613-6.
^Candela, Iria; Ferreira, Glória; Martins, Sérgio B.; Rajchman, John, eds. (2017).Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.ISBN978-1-58839-616-7.
^Garrels, Gary; Steihaug, Jon-Ove; Wagstaff, Sheena, eds. (2017).Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.ISBN978-1-58839-623-5.
^Syson, Luke; Wagstaff, Sheena; Bowyer, Emerson; Kumar, Brinda, eds. (2018).Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body. New York, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.ISBN978-1-58839-644-0.
^Rewald, Sabine; Dempsey, James, eds. (2018).Obsession: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele, and Picasso from the Scofield Thayer Collection. New York, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.ISBN978-1-58839-652-5.
^Eklund, Douglas; Alteveer, Ian, eds. (2018).Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.ISBN978-1-58839-659-4.
^Garrels, Gary, ed. (2018).Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory. San Francisco, California: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.ISBN978-0-300-23421-3.
^Wagstaff, Sheena; Buchloh, Benjamin H.D., eds. (2020).Gerhard Richter: Painting After All. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.ISBN978-1-58839-685-3.
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