Remaking MoMA for the 21st century: To see art anew, change your vision

Picasso and Braque were looking a little forlorn: unsure of their new home, unsure of their new acquaintances. It was early September, six anxious weeks from the reopening of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. After three years of piecemeal renovations, the museum had shut its doors for the summer, preparing for a top-to-bottom rehang of the world’s finest collection of modern and contemporary art, with about 47,000 additional square feet to play with. Two senior curators were still installing the cardinal gallery, the one with “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” Pablo Picasso’s grand, violent painting of five contorted Catalan prostitutes. For decades, MoMA’s curators have paired the aggressive “Demoiselles” (1907) with the smaller, perspective-shattering cubist works he and Georges Braque painted a few years later. Two of them were here, propped against the wall on foam blocks.