Long Wait for a MoMA Moment

Paul Rouille’s last visit to the Museum of Modern Art had come during a student tour that concluded in Washington, where he caught a glimpse of President Kennedy.

On Saturday, Rouille, a Parisian art importer now in his 60s, continued his lifelong romance with museums by joining thousands standing in line in Midtown Manhattan for MoMA’s reopening after a three-year $425-million renovation.

“It’s my last day in New York,” he said. “I extended my stay to attend the opening.”

Rouille was drawn both by a collection that includes icons such as Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” and Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans” and by what he called “the latest technique of museology” -- the dramatic new building by Yoshio Taniguchi that has increased the Modern’s exhibition space from 85,000 to 125,000 square feet.

The reopening has been one of New York’s most publicized and eagerly awaited events. MoMA is regarded as having perhaps the world’s greatest permanent collection of Modern and contemporary art. It includes, among scores of familiar images, Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” Matisse’s “Dance” and Jackson Pollock’s “One: Number 31, 1950.”

Taniguchi, whose task included giving the works more room to breathe, has been praised for his modesty, resisting the impulse to make his building compete with its contents.

Tad Davis of Atlantic Highlands, N.J., captured the first place in line by showing up at the museum before dawn Saturday. In the gloom and light rain, he walked up and down West 53rd Street looking for the line before realizing that he was the line.

Why MoMA?

“I’m a graphic designer and my wife is an artist,” Davis said. “Many of these pieces define the way we look at things.”

A few people in line joked that they were determined to come on opening day, when admission was free, to dodge the MoMA’s unpopular new $20 entry fee.

As museum staffers in red baseball caps barked into walkie-talkies and hauled metal crowd-control barriers into place, the queue encircled the city block containing the museum, doubled back on itself and jumped across the street into a small plaza. When the doors opened at 10 a.m., the estimated waiting time for those at the end was 90 minutes.

The crowd was cheerful despite the intermittent rain.

Hilliard Harper and Susan Oliver of San Diego said they played hooky from a leadership conference to join the line.

“There was such a hype about it that when I got off the plane I remember thinking it would be great if I could go,” Oliver said.

“It’s the cool new art thing,” Harper agreed.

Museum director Glenn D. Lowry, almost incognito in corduroys and a light windbreaker, paced in front of the entrance before the doors opened.

“We’ve been preparing for this moment for so long that we still haven’t come up for air,” Lowry said. “I think people are thrilled to have their museum back. Many of them have spent important moments of their life here. It’s a very different building, but it’s still the same museum.”

“OK, let’s go,” another official said, and beckoned the crowd forward.

Davis, the first in line, and his wife Susan Vosburgh strode into the entrance lobby to cheers and applause from the assembled museum staff. As the first members of the public through the door, they were awarded lifetime MoMA memberships.

An hour later, in a fifth-floor gallery containing Paul Cezanne’s “The Bather,” Rouille, the Parisian art importer, pronounced the experience worth the wait.

“It’s surprising how much space there is,” he said, noting that a vast room on the top floor was given over to a single painting, James Rosenquist’s 86-foot-long “F-111.” Added Rouille: “That kind of space is really a luxury today.”