On a recent trip to New York I had one of those rare epiphany like moments where I found myself standing in front of a group of works that spoke clearly to how the work we do as artists might actually matter in the world. Such was the impact of this show on me that almost every other exhibition I saw both before and after in those three days came to feel almost meaningless, like so much empty, aestheticized and useless decoration. Certainly it made that work seem much less imperative. During past visits to MoMA recently I had gotten the feeling that something about the Museum of Modern Art had changed. Encountering the small crowd of deeply engaged people reading, writing, and attaching their own wishes to Yoko Ono's "Wish Tree" in MoMA's Sculpture Garden a few months ago was one recent breath of fresh air, one that suggested a very different way in which the museum public might engage with both the space, objects and each other. That piece created a space for both contemplation and participation. And several other shows there lately have seemed more conceptually daring, provocative, and more inclusive, with works not always where you would expect to find them (i.e. photography being shown outside of the Photography galleries and in relation to sculpture, architectural projects not in the design galleries, etc.), and not necessarily by artists you would have always expected to encounter in these quarters. But of course, that is just the point: exactly who and what work one should come to expect to find in the 21st century museum in this age of global culture.

The younger curators seemed to be finally holding sway (and maybe the influence of newly appointed associate director Kathy Halbreich was being felt) as more and more work outside of the long established "canon" finds its way onto the walls, integrated into the larger conversation in meaningful (and not token) ways. And the very nature of the conversation itself seemed to have expanded. I had a feeling that the museum--in spite of its recent bout of economic exclusivity brought on by the admission price hike (fancy real estate and serious square footage must be paid for somehow I guess)--was trying to reinvent itself, to make itself more relevant to the contemporary moment in a way that didn't necessarily merely re-inscribe the status quo of the larger art world. My most recent visit a couple of weeks ago convinced me that the institution had, in fact, become a very different kind of institution. Of course the irony of the price restructuring coinciding with a more ambitious and inclusive programming is not lost on me, but still it both looks and feels different in significant and intrinsic ways....and I'm not referring to the expanded building itself.

Walking through the Contemporary Art from the Collection exhibition and encountering the work of Ellen Gallagher, David Hammons, Mel Edwards, Kalup Linzey, Kerry James Marshall, Paul Chan, Huma Bhabha and Kara Walker among others gave an enhanced and far more accurate sense of the state of American art practice in ways that was certainly not characteristic of much of MoMA's history. Din Q. Le's Project 93--which takes a fresh look at what Viet Namese refer to as "The American War"--reinforced this feeling of being in a very different kind of institutional space, one which spoke with a smartly multifarious voice. Some may recall the placement of the important black Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam's painting--exiled to a location by the coat check-- as one among other slights visited upon the works of artists of color in the museum's past...when and if they were displayed at all. That placement of Lam's work had for so long been an apt metaphor for the museum's relationship to its "darker brothers and sisters." That began to change gradually over the past two decades and now a greater and more ambitious inclusivity seems to be an intrinsic part of MoMA's programming. Clearly in addition to making an attempt to respond to its long history of gender inequity (the recent Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography for example was a tour de force), MoMA is facing head on its former perceived racial myopia as well. As such it felt more welcoming than I remember it feeling in a long time, especially since its auspicious reopening in its greatly expanded Yoshio Taniguchi designed quarters in 2004. In 2006 the Cullman Education and Research Center opened, providing the first building for expanded programming and teachers training, further expanding the museum's outreach. The lesson that 2st century institutions cannot expect to grown and thrive in glorious isolation appears to be one that, to some degree, is being taken to heart.

The real eye opening and deeply moving show for me though--and the one that spoke most forcefully to a paradigm of a broader social engagement--was Small Scale Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement. The exhibition consisted of various projects designed and built by an international array of architects, all producing forward looking design projects in response to needs experienced in various economically disenfranchised and marginalized communities. The notion of architecture in service to an enhanced social order is, of course, not new. It has been central to much of the discourse surrounding twentieth century architectural practice. Much of this discourse centered on architecture's capacity for the creation of a kind of modern utopia, a reordering and transformation of social structures through design. Much of what became the postmodern critique of this utopian idealism pushed aside these aspirations in favor an architectural practice that sought merely to critique itself, yet another form of the postmodern "deconstruction of the text." In spite of this, groups began to emerge in response to this overly aestheticized set of dictates who began to argue anew for a return to architecture's capacity to have real social benefit. New Urbanism was a direct response to wanting to both reframe and recapture modernism's social dimension. The architects in this exhibition extend from that tradition. They believe that architecture can indeed be a powerful instrument for affecting social change and that architects have ethical and social responsibilities.

Other projects in the exhibition detail projects situated in Bangladesh (Meti-Handmade School), Burkina Faso (Primary School), Lebanon (Housing for the Fishermen of Tyre), Los Angeles, CA (Inner-City Arts), and Chile (Quinta Monroy Housing) among others. I was particularly moved by Urban Think Tank's Metro Cable project in Caracas, Venezuela. The project ingeniously connects the poor residents of the La Vega and Petare barrios to the rest of the city by means of a cable car system which connects at the end to the public transportation system at the bottom of the steep hill which isolates them from much of the city's social and economic life. Resisting the initial proposal by the city to demolish homes in the barrios to make way for a road project, the architects instead devised an overhead cable system that left the town largely intact. Further, each station along the route has its own social program such as a library, small supermarket, or community center, further enhancing the quality of life of the residents while providing much needed amenities and opportunities for community social engagement as well.

These projects, both large and small scale, all provide evidence of how a socially engaged practice can exist in ways that advance simultaneously a set of design and social agendas. These principals are adaptable to any scale; it is the intent that sets it in motion. Here in Chicago artist Theaster Gates, for example, is transforming a once abandoned house on the south side of the city into The Dorchester Project, a building which will ultimately act as gathering place, archive, and soul food restaurant for those in the community and anyone else willing to venture south. Gates, like those architects in the MoMA exhibition and other art practitioners working to join their practice to the larger social community are pointing the way to a future in which artists and community come to find that they indeed have more in common than is often thought to be the case. And that can only be a win-win for everyone. Now if only MoMA would do a price rollback on their $20 general admission fee things would begin to feel even better in these times of increasing economic apartheid. That, or giving their free hours greater public promotion so that the less well heeled know the most opportune time to visit, would enhance their newly inclusive stance even further. I am sure that there are those who would suggest that MoMA and other mainstream museums are still the bastions of exclusivity that they always were. Some are, but I would suggest they look a little more closely and consider that the smartest of these institutions realize that they are indeed public institutions and are attempting to come to more meaningful terms with that fact and their various publics, pulling them closer in the institutional conversation. From where I stand at least the house that Abby Rockefeller built seems to comporting itself in ever finer fashion these days.

Photographs (from top): Installation view, Small Scale Big Change, MoMA; installation view, Contemporary Art from the Collection, MoMA; Viewers read wishes written by other visitors on Yoko Ono's "Wish Tree"; installation view, Contemporary Art from the Collection (Mel Edwards Lynch Fragments in foreground, General Idea AIDS in background); Small Scale Big Change, Primary School project; installation view; Small Scale Big Change, $20K House; installation view, Small Scale Big Change, Metro Cable project; installation view, Theaster Gates, The Dorchester Project.