Dead Ends

It’s fun to picture the editors of those two arch-rivals, Time and Newsweek, gnashing their teeth when, as often happens, they hit the newsstands simultaneously with the same cover. We are seldom afforded the entertaining spectacle of two museum directors in a similar plight over an exhibition. Nevertheless, that’s just what happened this winter when both the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art opened displays of twentieth century drawings within a few days of each other. Nobody on either side apologized or even appeared to notice the coincidence. But the art crowd was delighted at the sight of these two highly competitive institutions, each dedicated to the presentation of “advanced” art, having thus put themselves up for comparison.

It wasn’t a real contest, for the shows differed in aim and scope. The Guggenheim displayed American drawings from 1920 to the present—entitled Three Avant-Garde Generations—to inaugurate America’s Bicentennial observances. The Modern surveyed Drawing Now, i.e., the Sixties and Seventies, and made a stab at internationalism by including ten foreigners among its 43 artists. Naturally, there was considerable overlap, even though the Modern more or less started where the Guggenheim left off.

RB

About the Author

Ruth Berenson

It’s fun to picture the editors of those two arch-rivals, Time and Newsweek, gnashing their teeth when, as often happens, they hit the newsstands simultaneously with the same cover. We are seldom afforded the entertaining spectacle of two museum directors in a similar plight over an exhibition. Nevertheless, that’s just what happened this winter when both the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art opened displays of twentieth century drawings within a few days of each other. Nobody on either side apologized or even appeared to notice the coincidence. But the art crowd was delighted at the sight of these two highly competitive institutions, each dedicated to the presentation of “advanced” art, having thus put themselves up for comparison.

It wasn’t a real contest, for the shows differed in aim and scope. The Guggenheim displayed American drawings from 1920 to the present—entitled Three Avant-Garde Generations—to inaugurate America’s Bicentennial observances. The Modern surveyed Drawing Now, i.e., the Sixties and Seventies, and made a stab at internationalism by including ten foreigners among its 43 artists. Naturally, there was considerable overlap, even though the Modern more or less started where the Guggenheim left off.