New York's Museum of Modern Art closes for four months

Here's the story by the numbers:

• MOMA closed its doors yesterday, June 15, 2019.
• It will reopen October 21, 2019.
• Six openings in its western wall will be cut, connecting three floors of new galleries to existing galleries.
• Additional space for the permanent collection: 40,000 square feet.
• Cost of expansion: $450 million.

The project is intended to improve traffic flow, make the space more physically comfortable, and offer free access to the ground floor and its new galleries.

But most importantly, it will allow for a more progressive, inclusive approach to the display of its collection. Expect to see more representation from non-European artists, from minorities and from women. Expect to see fewer examples from the "canon" of modern art: work by the Big Names, like Picasso, Matisse, and Braque. There is some speculation that the museum plans to sell off some of these holdings to create a more representative collection. This process, known as "deaccession", is never without controversy.

You can read more about this in a recent article from The New York Times.

artist's conception of the new MOMA