Culture in the hinterlands, even Queens

By the time the “Matisse Picasso” retrospective closes Monday, some 350,000 art enthusiasts will have visited the working-class neighborhood of Queens to see the blockbuster show at the New York Museum of Modern Art’s temporary home, putting to rest any concerns that it wouldn’t work outside midtown.

Housed in a converted staple factory, the MoMA Queens site lacks the cachet of the Tate Gallery of London or the Grand Palais in Paris, where the exhibit drew even larger crowds last year. But director Glenn Lowry said the three-month run – a bit of a gamble in tough economic times – turned out to be a huge shot in the arm for MoMA, which has moved to the Queens building while its midtown galleries are being nearly doubled in size for 2005.

Although crowds at MoMA Queens surpassed his expectations, Lowry said the show would have attracted “double or triple” the amount at the museum’s West 53rd Street location in Manhattan.

The acclaimed exhibit, assembled from museum and private collections in Europe and the United States, chronicles the nearly half-century rivalry between the two giants of modern art, pairing 133 works to show how Matisse and Picasso challenged and influenced each other over the course of their careers until Matisse’s death in 1954. Picasso died in 1973.

From Associated Press