Philip Johnson and The Museum of Modern Art (Studies in Modern Art 6)

Late last year I wrapped up writing a book devoted to landscape designs. One of the 100 projects included in the book is MoMA's famous garden, known officially as the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. Although very well known and frequently visited, it seemed like most research yielded fairly superficial histories. So to get a better handle on the details behind its realization I discovered and bought this issue of MoMA's "Studies in Modern Art" series on Philip Johnson's relationship with the museum. It consists of four essays, one of them is devoted to the sculpture garden: Mirka Benes's "A Modern Classic." (The other three essays are about Johnson as a donor to the museum, as a curator, and as the museum's architect.) show more Benes's nearly 50-page essay is an excellent background on the space, from its days as an outdoor gallery designed by curators John McAndrew and Alfred Barr to Johnson's design and its changes up to the turn of the century. With Yoshio Taniguchi's renovation and expansion of the museum in 2004, the garden and its boundaries would change once again, but the basics of Johnson's design (pools, bridge, asymmetrical plan with plantings) have remained intact for all of its sixty-plus years. Johnson may be known to the wider public for buildings like the AT&T Building (now Sony Tower) not far from MoMA, but the small outdoor space he designed for the museum is one of his best and most lasting designs in any form. show less