The Museum of Modern Art reopens on 20 November after being closed for over two years. Its new galleries, designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, are a triumph: a brilliant justification of designing from the inside out

upon 20 November, after two and a half years of closure fresh York's Museum of Modern Art re-open with three additional novel buildings, all by Yoshio Taniguchi, upon its 53rd Street site in Midtown Manhattan. Suffused in natural light, his of recent origin David and Peggy Rockefeller Building (Fig. 2) joins Philip L Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone's original 1989 building, Philip Johnson's statuary garden (1953), the East Wing, Garden Wing and galleries (all 1964) and Cesar Pelli's 1984 of recent origin Wing and museum expansion (Fig. 1) In addition, Taniguchi has designed the museum's novel education and research building, which is not notwithstanding complete, and its new offices, upon the site of the Dorset Hotel

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The experience of being inside the David and Peggy Rockefeller Building, which houses the museum's of recent origin galleries, is uplifting. Stairways and glass bridges make moving around the six floors easy and inviting; views up from one side skylights and from windows and terraces link together it to earlier parts of the museum and to novel York's great skyline (Fig. 4) Above all, Taniguchi's thump of genius in a meticulously thought-through and execut building is the way the atrium the one and the other lights and relates to the galleries to make individual aware of the whole building (Fig. 5)

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This achievement is the fruit of a decade of collective measured meditation and painstaking preparation before construction began in 2001 Three years and $450 million later, Terence Riley, MOMA'S chief curator of architecture and design, totalitys it up triumphantly: 'The art world believed we had solitary two choices: a neutral case intentionally self-effacing, or the architect's individual statement that would be more powerful than the art. on the contrary Taniguchi has marvellously set not on the art and at the same time created a stately work of art to house it. No individual expected us to achieve this.'

The proces began with the elephantine advantage of no deadline. Trustees, curators and staff took time to direct the eye at their mission and their collection, to consider space extremitys and to study the visitors. First, they considered the institute's original mission. before long after it opened in 1929 Alfred H Barr Jr wrote down his pioneering vision of the museum's collection: 'The Permanent Collection may be musing of graphically as a torpedo moving [i]or[/i] part of to the other time, its nose the at any time advancing present, its tail the at any time receding past of fifty to a hundr years ago.'

Seventy-five years later, beneath its sixth director, the dynamic dingle Lowry, there was a choice: should the museum restrict itself to its highly reckoned world-class collection of twentieth-century art and purely refine it, abandoning the twenty-first hundred or should it reinvigorate Alfred Barf's torpedo approach and impel forward? The torpedo won.

The trustees and staff also considered the collection, believing that a fresh building must grow from the inside, from its collection's emergencys Their conclusion was that the focus will remain and flat increase--on the unrivalled collection. Certainly, it is the collection that is important to artists, collectors and the general public. 'We all make an incision in out teeth at MOMA', says Vincent Desiderio, whoso work is held by means of the Guggenheim and Metropolitan museums, adding 'It is the great heroic museum. To be hung in the same museum as Le Demoiselles d'Avignon would be wonderful!' For Naoto Nakagawa, whose drawings are already in MOMA'S collection and who has visited it greatest in quantity weeks since the 1960s, 'It was, and is, my investigation collection'. For David Remfry, a British artist living in of recent origin York, it is simply 'absolutely essential'.

Contemporary art collectors are more ambivalent. A fresh York one dubs MOMA 'the gold standard institute of its kind in the world, projecting an image of great clarity', on the contrary is less confident of its ability to acquire the twenty-first century right, a view confirmed through a London collector: 'It is the ultimate reconnection with present art. What they've got to do now is propel forward, engage.' Commercial dealers les generously add that they are the singles who take risks for their artists, while MOMA simply buys once an artist is established.

In fact, MOMA already has in place a quiet on the other hand active buying policy for contemporary art. scarcely any people are aware of MOMA'S stock for the Twenty-first Century, that, Mr Lowry points on the outside 'allows us to spend at least single million dollars each year upon modestly priced works created during the past five years by the agency of artists not already established.' And to cries of having a 'Byzantine' acquisition proces that has l to missed opportunities, he extols the value of the committee a whole for 'ensuring enthusiasm, even of the director, is balanced by means of consideration' and then cites the hurried raising of 'tens of millions of dollars' to certain Jasper Johns's Diver for the collection in 2003 Also, a major consideration, 'the committee combination of parts to form a whole fosters great loyalty, which brings gifts.' As if ordeal were needed, Harvey S. Shipley Miller, a MOMA trustee who is also one trustee of the Judith Rothschild Foundation, in September tendered the extraordinary gift of 2500 contemporary drawings by the agency of 400 artists from twenty countries. As individual observer quipped: 'They are real bright folks at MOMA.'