Momaps1 Art Center history

One such space was the Clocktower Gallery, which Heiss founded in 1972 on the 13th floor of a municipal building in Lower Manhattan.

April 12: The Clocktower’s inaugural exhibition, Joel Shapiro: Sculpture (April 12–28, 1973) opens.

May 11: Discussions: Works/Words (May 11–June 30, 1974) opens at the Clocktower.

April 19: Collectors of the Seventies, Part I: Dorothy and Herbert Vogel (April 19–May 17, 1975), the first of a series of five exhibitions on art patrons, opens at the Clocktower.

June 9: The I.A.U.R opens P.S. 1’s inaugural exhibition, Rooms (June 9–26, 1976). Seventy-eight artists install artworks or create them onsite in the classrooms and hallways, basement and attic, closets and bathrooms, and in the parking lot/courtyard and elsewhere outside the building.

February 15: The exhibition New York/New Wave (February 15–April 5, 1981), curated by Diego Cortez, opens.

Together with the previous year’s exhibition Icebreakers: Contemporary Swedish Expressionists (November 11–December 11, 1982), Expressions signals P.S. 1’s growing attention to European and international artists.

June 29: The Institute’s international activities continue to expand as Alanna Heiss curates the exhibition Isamu Noguchi: What Is Sculpture? (June 29–September 28, 1986) in the American Pavilion at the 42nd Venice Biennale.

June 9: Following John Cage’s death the previous year, Alanna Heiss curates a tribute to the artist, The Swift Sound of Things: Cage & Co. (June 9–20, 1993), at the 45th Venice Biennale.

Since first working at P.S. 1 in 1997, Biesenbach has held the positions of Curator in MoMA’s Department of Film and Media and Chief Curator of MoMA’s Department of Media and Performance.

The occasion is commemorated with a cover article in Art in America (January 1998), the first time since Rooms that the building itself is so featured.

All Special Project rooms are on the second floor of P.S. 1, and artists also make use of the corridor, closets, and bathrooms. (Special Projects continue today, though beginning in 2000 they usually comprise a smaller set of curated solo exhibitions.)

MoMA QNS served as the base of the Museum’s exhibition program and operations through September 27, 2004, when the facility was closed in preparation for The Museum of Modern Art’s reopening in Manhattan.