If you’re interested in modern art, your Mecca is the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  Room after room contain stunning examples of some of the best art in the last 150 years.  I spent an entire morning in the current Matisse exhibit and then all afternoon in the permanent collection.  On the way out, I stopped by the two MOMA bookstores.

My first test for a museum bookstore is what books are available to supplement the current exhibit.  For the Matisse exhibit, MoMA produced a stunning catalogue, Matisse:  Radical Invention 1913-1917. I bought the catalogue before visiting the museum, read most of it, and then brought it along with me.  This is a great approach if you love the art you are going to visit, I appreciated the paintings more than if I was just encountering them for the first time.  However, beware of the heft of catalogues, this one could throw out your back.  In the bookstore, there was a variety of Matisse related items, a few biographies, a book about his relationship (competition with?) Picasso, a small book about the MOMA permanent Matisse collection, and a collection of his writings.  It was very tempting not to pick up some of these gems, however, the catalogue was all I was willing to cart back 10 blocks to my hotel room.

The rest of the bookstores are equally as impressive.  There is one store located on the second floor mezzanine which can only be accessed with an entrance ticket, it is quieter and has a row of chairs for reading and perusing books.  The downstairs store has a wider selection.  MoMA publishes its own books that help access its permanent collection.  I bought a small book on Lichtenstein works in the permanent collection (simply called Lichtenstein) and read it over lunch.  I saw a Lichtenstein at SFMOMA, “Figures with Sunset,” that I fell in love with and was hoping to learn more about the artist at MOMA.  The book is terrific, in fact if I had more time at MoMA, I would by books on other artists in this series (Picasso, Van Gogh, Matisse).  In about 40 pages, the author, Carolyn LanchnerRoy, pinpointed Lichtenstein’s place in pop art and his foundation in and reference to art history in his works.  The disappointing part was that only one Lichtenstein was on view that day.  While I understand that there is limited space, if a museum is bothering to write a book about its collection of a certain artist, it should have more than one piece on view.

In addition to shelves of books published by MoMA (a catalogue of the permanent collection, a highlights book, catalogues from past exhibits), the bookstores have masses and masses of monographs on specific artists. Given the time frame that modern art covers (1860s onward) when technology created new genres of art, the stores include significant photography and film sections, topics generally not covered well in non-modern specific stores.  In general, it Read the rest of this entry »