MONEY, POWER, and MODERN ART

Click the title to link to this two-parter in the Asian Times - PolPop

PART 1: Ruthless empire builders

By Henry C K Liu

A major event of high culture unfolded in a series of elegant receptions during the third week of November in New York, a city of seriously moneyed art collectors, scathing critics and a discriminating public. Three years in design and construction, the Museum of Modern Art reopened on its 75th anniversary with a new US$850 million building on the same site as the old museum in midtown Manhattan. Loved by all who have been fortunate enough to have their lives enriched by it, this cultural flower in one of the world's greatest cities, affectionately referred to as The Modern, has been cultivated in the supercharged greenhouse of modernist milieu, aiming to define fundamental issues of meaning and truth through the vehicle of esthetic preference at the forefront of modern civilization. . .