In response to:

Red-Hot MoMA from the January 13, 2005 issue

To the Editors:

In a letter to the editors, Peter Bunell is quite right in correcting our recent article on MoMA [“Red-Hot MoMA,” NYR, January 13] to call attention to the pioneer work of Beaumont Newhall, who was originally in charge of the photography department at MoMA before Edward Steichen took over. We should like, however, to add that Alfred Barr had anticipated the introduction of photography as well as cinema in a draft of the first brochure for the new institution in 1929, but this was edited out.
We wrote that MoMA can “accommodate an average of two thousand visitors a day,” but it has been pointed out to us that it can accommodate ten thousand visitors or more. (It had more than nineteen thousand on the Saturday of the opening day, when the museum remained open for twelve hours.)

Charles Rosen
Henri Zerner
New York City

This Issue

March 10, 2005