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The tour begins at St. Patrick's Cathedral at 5th Ave between 50th & 51st Streets. This tour is best experienced on a mobile phone.
The idea for the Museum of Modern Art as we know it today was conceived by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and two of her friends in 1929. She was the wife of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who developed Rockefeller Center, which we’ll visit shortly. After functioning out of a series of rented spaces, MoMA moved into its current 53rd Street home in 1939. The original International-style structure was designed by architects Philip Goodwin and Edward Durrell Stone. The 1960s saw an expansion and a new sculpture garden designed by Philip Johnson, the Pritzker award-winning American architect best known for his works of modern and postmodern architecture. The garden, which is accessible through the museum’s lobby, is free to the public between 9:00 and 10:15 am daily, if you happen to be visiting during that time.
MoMA’s next expansion came courtesy of multi-award-winning architect César Pelli in 1984, followed by the 2004 renovation and expansion by Yoshio Taniguchi, which nearly doubled exhibition and program space. The most recent renovation and expansion by Diller Scofidio + Renfro with Gensler, completed in 2019, increased the museum again by one-third, adding even more exhibition space as well as a new lobby and bookstore. Diller Scofidio + Renfro also helped design the incredible High Line elevated walking journey, which, if you have time, is another wonderful way to experience New York.
This latest expansion also brought a rethinking of how MoMA displays its famed art collection. Galleries that were formerly labeled according to disciplines like photography or architecture, shifted to represent a chronological presentation of work—with different media intermingling, creating a fuller picture of what was happening in the art world at a particular time, rather than being limited to a particular medium.
Have you ever been moved by art? Felt like crying when you saw something beautiful or actually enjoyed a sad movie? How can you feel both ways at once? It’s thought that two systems in the brain that typically aren’t activated at the same time do just that—become simultaneously activated. One has to do with processing the external stimuli (the art), and the other involves inward thoughts about oneself, memories of the past, thoughts of the future, and so forth.
Think about a specific work of art that elicited these complex feelings, whether a painting, film, dance program or even a child’s drawing.
If you would like to pause here and enjoy the Museum of Modern Art, feel free to do so. Otherwise, let’s keep walking along 53rd Street, just past MoMA’s entrance to 53 West 53rd Street.
You should now see a black-faceted tower rising 77 stories from the street. This is 53 West 53rd, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. The site is split between three different zoning districts, each having different setback requirements. This guided the design of the tower, which slopes away from the street to culminate in five distinct spires. The exterior curtain wall is set within a concrete diagrid structure, which functions like an exoskeleton and opens up more interior space for each floor. The building, completed in 2020, was praised by former New York Times architecture critic, Nicolai Ouroussoff, as “the most architecturally significant addition to the Manhattan skyline in recent years.” Jean Nouvel was the recipient of the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2008.
Nouvel said of architecture, “Architecture exists, like cinema, in a dimension of time and movement. One thinks, conceives and reads a building in terms of sequences. To erect a building is to predict and seek effects of contrast and linkage bound up with the succession of spaces through which one passes.”
Now, let’s continue walking in the same direction on 53rd Street, heading west toward 6th Avenue, otherwise known as Avenue of the Americas. Once you reach 6th Avenue, turn left and head south towards 52nd Street.
After you’ve turned left onto Sixth Avenue, look across the street. You’ll see 1301 Sixth Avenue—a skyscraper flanked by three large statues.
These bronze sculptures are by American Pop artist Jim Dine. Mounted within black granite fountains, the green patina figures reference the ancient Hellenistic sculpture, the Venus de Milo. Installed in 1989, they were commissioned by Jerry Speyer, then a trustee at the Museum of Modern Art and one of New York’s biggest art collectors, after his company acquired the building.
Let’s keep walking south along Sixth Avenue toward 51st Street and then 50th Street.
This thoroughfare through the heart of the city was part of the grid plan New York adopted in 1811. It spans 3.7 miles in the center of Manhattan, from further south in Tribeca uptown to its terminus at Central Park.
In 1945, Sixth Avenue was renamed the Avenue of the Americas by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia (the same Mayor whose surname graces one of the city’s major airports). The Avenue’s renaming was intended to reflect the city’s place as a global hub and serve as a nod to the recently founded United Nations, headquartered roughly ten blocks away along the East River.
If you look ahead, you should see the famous neon lights of Radio City Music Hall, our next stop.
As you approach Radio City Music Hall, stop at the building just shy of the marquee on your left, at 1270 Sixth Avenue.
Once you reach the entrance of 1270 Sixth Avenue, on your tour screen, select Radio City Music Hall from the pull-down menu to continue the tour.
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