Erica Orden explains in the Wall Street Journal that MoMA in New York is re-presenting its permanent collection this week. According to co-curator Kathy Halbeich, the show presents many works from the permanent collection that have rarely or never been seen, including a chance discovery of a Simon Hantai work:

“This is now a new generation of curators who are in positions of authority, and they didn’t grow up with that same canon. So the struggle is, you have this incredibly great legacy, but you know that the certainty with which things were categorized, or the hierarchy that was constructed, is up for grabs,” she said. […]

Other pieces by artists including David Hammons, Kalup Linzy and Pino Pascali are on display for the first time since their acquisition. A painting by Hungarian artist Simon Hantai, which the curators said they believe has been on display just once since its acquisition in the early 1970s, was selected after they discovered it heavily wrapped and “stuck behind two Lichtensteins” while foraging for pieces in the museum’s storage site in Queens. “We said, ‘Would you mind pulling this out?'” Ms. Halbreich recalled. “We were absolutely incredulous. It’s so fresh.”

At MoMA, All New Views of the Permanent (Wall Street Journal)