By contrast, the Met would be pushing print catalogs alongside brightly lit souvenirs. Call it sane curating. Call it yet one more insistence on the century's relevance at the end of the century. Either way, if the Modern has a bad Y2K problem, this exhibition will definitely find out. Like the whole, each concentration ignores chronology.
Works sit side by side according to theme, comparing subjects and styles.
In addition, a handful of works from later decades slip into the mix. Another image of man, Vir Hiroicus Sublimus , the 1951 abstraction by Barnett Newman , even greeted me on the way in. Well, in line with random access, make that one way in. If the Whitney's two-part millennial drowns first art and then American history itself in cultural values, the Modern tosses historical narrative out the window. A sense of playful self-discovery never leaves.