Long the bellwether of twentieth-century painting and sculpture, the Museum of Modern Art has had a substantial influence on how we view the modernist enterprise. Under the guidance of Alfred Barr, MOMA’s founding director, the museum rooted itself in the European avant-garde. Despite the many shifts—ideological as well as aesthetic—that it has undergone in recent years, the museum has, more or less, remained true to Barr’s vision. Which is not to say that MOMA is without important shortcomings. Who hasn’t bemoaned the rigidity of MOMA’s masterplan, one that compromises the complexity of history for a streamlined and steamrolling succession of -isms? Consider the situation of those artists whose work is hung outside of the galleries, in the hallways of the museum. Occupying a kind of limbo, half in and half out of the museum, they are nonetheless deemed significant enough for transitory acknowledgment. Museums can’t di ...

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