Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (New York City, New York)

 museum, movie / film / TV location, art museum / art gallery

7-story International-style museum building originally completed in 1939, with later additions. Designed by Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone (and later, Philip Johnson and Yoshio Taniguchi), the building houses the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world. The museum's collection offers an unparalleled overview of modern and contemporary art, including works of architecture and design, drawings, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, illustrated books and artist's books, film, and electronic media.

MoMA's library and archives hold over 300,000 books, artist books, and periodicals, as well as individual files on more than 70,000 artists. The archives contain primary source material related to the history of modern and contemporary art. It also houses a restaurant, The Modern, run by Alsace-born chef Gabriel Kreuther.

The museum first opened in 1929 on the 12th floor of the Heckscher Building. In 1937, MoMA had shifted to offices and basement galleries in the Time-Life Building in Rockefeller Center. Its current home opened to the public on May 10, 1939. In 1983 the Museum more than doubled its gallery and added an auditorium, two restaurants and a bookstore in conjunction with the construction of the 52-story Museum Tower adjoining the museum. In 1997, the Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi beat out ten other international architects to win the competition to execute the redesign of the museum. MoMA's midtown location underwent extensive renovations in the early 2000s, closing on May 21, 2002, and reopening to the public in a building redesigned by Taniguchi along with Kohn Pedersen Fox, on November 20, 2004. The Peggy and David Rockefeller Building on the western portion of the site houses the main exhibition galleries, and The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building, after Lewis B. Cullman and Dorothy Cullman, on the eastern portion provides over five times more space for classrooms, auditoriums, teacher training workshops, and the museum's expanded Library and Archives. These two buildings frame the enlarged Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden.

The south facade of the complex, along 53rd Street consists of a 6-story section at the west end; the west half of which is clad in black glass above a ground floor of clear glass and metal that houses the design and book store; the east half is clad in grey granite panels above a recessed lower portion of opaque grey glass, where the main entrance on 53rd is located. There is a setback above the 6th floor, and a rooftop garden topping the 9th floor galleries, designed by landscape architect Ken Smith. Set back above this section at the middle of the site is the 16-story main gallery building, which takes the form of a cube clad in grey, translucent glass. At the center of the 53rd Street complex is the 52-story residential tower, built in 1983; to its east is the original 1939 International-style building, renovated during construction of the Tamaguchi expansion. It has a facade of white marble with opaque white glass in a curtain wall across the 2nd-3rd floors. The ground floor is clear glass and stainless-steel with a concave recessed area at the east end that has a set of doors near its west edge, and is covered by a semi-circular steel canopy. The 4th & 5th floors have wide bands of windows, three panes high, and the top floor is recessed below a piano canopy. At the east end is Philip Johnson's 1964 addition, clad in black steel and dark-tinted glass. This section has four bays of large windows that, along with the glass spandrels, have rounded corners. The windows of the top floors are recessed behind the framing.

Along 54th Street, the symmetrical volumes are clad in black granite, dark gray glass, and aluminum, linking the site across its full length. Two volumes of equal height frame the east and west ends of the garden, housing the Education and Research Building and main gallery complex, respectively. The sculpture garden section is behind a white metal fence.

The interior main stair and Gallery 522 was used as a filming location for S1E9 of the HBO reboot of "Gossip Girl".

www.moma.org/