Interview with Ramona Bronkar Bannayan
September 2018
Interview with Ramona Bronkar Bannayan Senior Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Collections, MOMA
1- First of all, I would like to start with the good news of an extended MOMA. The information has recently publicized and many changes have come to the fore that appear as related heavily to your department. Would you please tell us a bit about the new MOMA?
In 2019 we'll open an expanded MoMA. We remain continually inspired by our founding mission to be a laboratory of modern and contemporary art in New York. More than ever, MoMA will be an inclusive place of gathering, a place of topical conversations, and a place where people of all backgrounds and opinions find a home.
From our founding in 1929, to the current reimagined Museum, MoMA has grown to become New York's and perhaps the world’s destination for modern and contemporary art. Working with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, our continued evolution ensures that we always present the most innovative art and meet the changing needs of today’s artists and audiences.
One of the most exciting new spaces will be a state-of-the art studio and performance center imbedded in the heart of the galleries. This space will support a broad range of experimental programming and be particularly sensitive to art works and performances with sound. With new commissions, live performance, dance, music, sound works, the spoken word, and artist residencies, this unique space will situate live and time- based artworks as an integral part of the collection galleries, emphasizing the central role of this work within the history of modern and contemporary art.
In the galleries, we’ll continue to offer many ways for you to explore the different trajectories of modern and contemporary art and make your own connections. In addition, expanded spaces for moments of pause will provide opportunities for having discussions, reflecting, and relaxing, along with reconfigured entrances and a light-filled and easier to navigate lobby, creating a more welcoming and open experience.
2- Could we say that new MOMA means an extended collection? In what ways do you plan to enlarge the collection you have at the moment?
With 30% more gallery space, we’ll present the true breadth of our collection, highlighting the most resonant and innovative art, from early masterpieces to cutting-edge works. Across three expanded floors of display, you’ll discover modern and contemporary art’s many stories, shifting histories, and approaches from around the world.
We’ll continue to champion the role of artists to ask important questions and spark inspiration. We’ll introduce emerging artists through our Projects series, New Photography biennial, and New Directors/New Films festival, and open our collection to artists through Artist’s Choice exhibitions. We’ll commission new work throughout the Museum, and will invite New York’s global community of artists and creative thinkers to join in conversation through public programs and events.
Artists do not work in terms of canon or medium. They respond to their moment, their history, environment, culture, society and then make a work of art that responds accordingly. The tools they choose are simply that -- a tool -- whether a pencil, paper, brush, paint, camera, or their own body. We will be aligned in our presentation of these works not simply with the process of textbook art history, but with the process of how how artists work, embracing the process of making.
3- There is an apparent western domination in the cultural field. However, the new MOMA offers a global space for art and artists world-wide. What are your entire global goals in museum representation of all?
Great art museums not only contain exemplary works of art; they are also places where—in a single visit—surprise, learning and reflection come together in a set of experiences. MoMA is a global institution rooted in New York City and we engage with international art, artists, and audiences through gallery presentations, programs, our website, and online learning and resources. Local and international visitors will find a global perspective in the art and artists on display. We want to strike a balance between the well-known and familiar and the unexpected and unfamiliar. This means that there will be more work by more artists from more parts of the world than we have exhibited before and more space devoted to new forms of art.
Our goal is to provide visitors with the pleasure of finding their own meaning within a thoughtful constellation of 20th and 21st century artistic practices. The new MoMA will be a place where you discover the most exciting artists from around the world, revealing ideas that make you think and feel differently; a place that encourages a sense of engagement with what is happening around the world; and a place for people of all ages and experiences to share their thoughts and questions with each other.
We’re also extending the global experience and understanding of the Museum and its collection through programs like the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP), a cross-departmental, internal research program that fosters the multiyear study of art histories outside North America and Western Europe. Founded in 2009, C-MAP comprises 50 staff members from 11 departments, in three research groups that focus on modern and contemporary art produced in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
Each group invites eminent scholars, artists, and curators to lead regular seminars at the Museum according to a geographically focused curriculum and conducts research trips to build local contacts and firsthand knowledge around the world. C-MAP also fosters long-term strategic partnerships with distinguished cultural institutions worldwide. These research activities have contributed significantly to a greater geographical diversity in the Museum’s exhibition and acquisition programs.
4- Today museums have partner organizations for their exhibitions and this is highlighted as a vital strategy for the institutional survival. How do you assess this partnership relation?
From its inception, MoMA has enjoyed sharing its commitment to modern and contemporary art with the largest possible public. Since 1938, when the Museum circulated its first exhibition abroad, it has endeavored to find ways to partner with colleagues around the world in order to create a robust conversation about new artistic practices. We strive to be a generous lender of works in our collection so that we are supporting artists and our sister institutions. We lend between 600 and 1100 artworks annually. We organize around 13 offsite programs around the world per year (including touring, co-organized, and partnership exhibitions). With all of this activity MoMA has a presence in about 18 different countries each year. Often these projects have had an enduring and profound impact on local arts communities as they helped to introduce new audiences to unfamiliar or hard-to-access works of art.
For example, Etre moderne: Le MoMA à Paris , co-organized by The Museum of Modern Art and Fondation Louis Vuitton, offered a cross- disciplinary selection of works reflecting the history of the institution and its collecting. The exhibition explored what did it mean to be a museum of modern art in 1929, when the Museum opened its doors, and also what does it mean today in 2018? In other words, what does being modern mean? It traced the evolution and multifaceted scope of MoMA’s collection through works ranging from widely recognized masterpieces to lesser- known yet important artists; their place in the exhibition is determined by their specific story within and importance to the collection.
Co-organized by The Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art i s another important partnership and exhibition acknowledging MoMA’s commitment to interdisciplinary artistic practices since its founding. The exhibition is structured as a multidisciplinary survey of the past 130 years of art history through the lens of the collection. It aims to convey a sense of the trends and threads that run through the story of 20th-century art, identifying instances where history collapses upon itself, and artists’ subjects and strategies suggest a return to or a repetition of the past. In recognition of NGV's long-standing dedication to the study and presentation of architecture and design, special sections of the exhibition explore the deep-seated connections between 20th-century art and design practice, with a particular focus on developments that shaped Europe in the 1920s and ‘30s and the globalized world of the 1960s and ‘70s.
5- The numbers given regarding your performance in the department are extraordinarily huge. A collection of 200,000 works of art with more than 100 staff on 125,000 square feet of exhibition space. This absolutely needs a keen eye for detail indeed. What do you think your particular management principles are that enable perfectly overseeing them all?
I am involved in all aspects, but my team does not need me to micromanage. I try to lead by example. I started at the Museum in 1990, have worked my way up and across the ranks, having along the way been exposed to a variety of roles and departments. As a result, I know what is needed from the ground up as well as how to do it. I hope to provide engaged leadership rather than one of operating in a vacuum. My goal is to set the tone, provide guidance, convene conversation, and remove obstacles in order that everyone can get their work done in a manner that permits the greatest participation in combination with proper planning, so that the end result is of a quality they may feel proud.
I have a rarified position in that I get to hear the genesis of curatorial thesis while still in an ephemeral stage and then realize that idea as a physical moment that comes alive when our visitors arrive and experience the works as installed in our galleries. My team, whom I respect greatly, consist of highly skilled and detail oriented professionals, including architects, designers, art handlers, photographers, framers, engineers, painters, carpenters, registrars, and administrators. Many of whom in addition to their work at the Museum are also artists (myself included) and in a sense when we all work together we form what you might call a very, very large artist collective. We like challenges and solving problems. We are deeply honored to work with these wonderful works of art. In the end, when the work of realizing the physical installation of an exhibition or display is complete, together we have created a beautiful new experience.
As we prepare to install our collection in new and exciting ways, virtually every work—from Van Gogh’s The Starry Night to Yayoi Kusama’s Accumulation No. 1—that we display or move will need review, detailed documentation, monitoring, and in some cases, new framing, imaging, or treatment from our conservation team. In addition, not only are we considering stewardship and how to care for and install each and every work, we are also thinking about visual display, such as the style of each frame, the color of the walls, the lighting, and the rhythm and cadence of the galleries. The scale of the work ahead as we expand from approximately 125,000 square feet to approximately 165,000 square feet is exciting and unprecedented. Thank you for considering the questions..
This text first appeared in the September 2018 issue of Artam Global Art.