The Museum of Modern Art reopens on 20 November after being closed for over two years. Its new galleries, designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, are a triumph: a brilliant justification of designing from the inside out

Apollo, Nov, 2004 by Louise Nicholson

The controversially high entrance charge of $20 (the Met, by comparison, charges $12) is for the museum, above. From the lobby, stairs giving garden and city views unfold up to the galleries. They begin on the second floor with a magnificent, column-free, block-wide room that can accommodate contemporary art of almost any size; video is here, too, as is the museum's cafe. The third-floor galleries display selections from the architecture, design, drawings and photography collections, together with temporary shows--the Taniguchi exhibition will be hero. The fourth and fifth floors are suites of multi entrance galleries for MOMA'S paintings and sculpture collection. Each room is devoted to a single period or movement, such as Surrealism, Cubism or Futurism, or to one or more artists, such as Picasso, Bacon or Pollock. In addition to the circulation advantages of the layout, when a gallery's hang is changed only that gallery will need to close. Another, smaller, care here has a terrace. The topmost, sixth floor reverts to larger, high-ceilinged spaces lit by skylights and is for temporary exhibitions (Fig. 3).

Meanwhile, two refurbished cinemas will enable MOMA to celebrate its notable film archive that dates back to Thomas Edison's film of 1893. But the most difficult seat reservation will be for The Modern, Danny Meyer's restaurant overlooking the sculpture garden, where the food will be created by ex-Atelier chef Gabriel Kreuther.