![]() ![]() In announcing the acquisition in a January 1939 press release, Barr wrote, "Picassos Demoiselles d'Avignon is one of the very few paintings in the history of modern art which can justly be called epoch-making. In 1937, MoMA acquired Picasso's little-known painting Demoiselles d'Avignon and first exhibited it in 1939 with the opening of its new building. While the permanent collection did not really ever resemble a revolving door, Barr was dedicated to using the museum as a laboratory to educate and engage the viewers, bringing modern art to a wider audience. In that sense, "a museum for modern art" seemed to be an oxymoron. ![]() Barr wanted to create a permanent home for the world's greatest modern artists, a controversial idea in the early-20 th century when modern art was characterized by its constantly changing nature.Influenced by the Bauhaus and Constructivist workshops in Russia, Barr understood modern art to encompass not just painting and sculpture but also applied art, design, architecture, film, photography, and theater. While Barr's formalism seems restricting and even traditional, he had a capacious view of what constituted modern art.He relied on leading questions, juxtapositions, and even humor to engage the audience. Thinking of the museum as a laboratory, Barr used innovative pedagogical techniques to formulate wall labels and installations. Always a teacher, Barr strove to make modern art accessible and relevant to a diverse audience who was unaccustomed to such radical art that veered away from traditional naturalism. Barr's approach to exhibition design was quite revolutionary.Expressionism, Cubism, etc, His schematic of modern art's progress from "-ism" to "-ism" is still prevalent today. He tended to group eras and movements of art history into schools of thought and technique, or what are commonly called -isms, i.e. ![]() He wanted the Museum of Modern Art, one of the first-ever modern art museums, to be a place of scholarship, whose chief goal was not necessarily to discover the new but to classify the old. While Barr was interested in some of the most advanced art of the early-20 th century, his more traditional art historical training led him to systematize the new art, just as art historians had always done. ![]() It has only been in recent years that the Museum of Modern Art has come to revisit Barr's schematic, diversifying and complicating Barr's original vision. His formalism would be consequential for subsequent critics, most famously Clement Greenberg, but also drew criticisms from more socially-minded critics. In his attempt to educate the public about modern art, his formalist approach was an effort to help the viewer see and understand the new art that tended to deviate from traditional naturalism. Appointed the first director of The Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1929, the young Barr promoted the art of modernists like van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Matisse and Cézanne, creating a canon of modern art still largely adhered to today, and his retrospectives of van Gogh and Picasso helped to perpetuate the legendary artistic myths that remain in the public imagination to this day. Captivated by cutting edge modern art and grounded in classical connoisseurship, art historian Alfred Barr shaped the way that generations of artists and art historians studied modern European and American art. ![]()
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