Just when the incoherent presentation of the permanent collection or the less than exhilarating installation in the garden prompts thoughts that the Museum of Modern Art is in league with the devil, the museum uncorks something wonderful. Witness the recent brilliant survey of Paul Cézanne’s drawings and watercolors or the revealing overview of the self-taught artist Joseph E. Yoakum. Now, there’s the dazzling “Matisse: The Red Studio,” a meticulous study of one of the most celebrated and influential works in the museum’s collection—indeed, in the history of modernism: Henri Matisse’s 1911 view of his studio, at once a tally of his achievements to date and a harbinger of things to come.¹ Organized by Ann Temkin, moma’s chief curator of painting and sculpture, and Dorthe Aagesen, the chief curator at the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, the show assembles paintings, sculptures, drawings, and documentary material to illuminate the painting’s evolution, its place within Matisse’s oeuvre, the specifics of its imagery, and the history of its exhibition and ownership before it was acquired by moma, along with the fascinating results of recent technical examination. Surprisingly, given the fame and importance of The Red Studio, it has never before received such concentrated attention.

We begin with the painting itself, familiar and yet endlessly fresh, with its