Battle of the world-class museums: Tate Modern v MoMA

When it comes to being artful, I am more dodger than devotee. I may not know much about art but I know what I like. And I like Tate Modern.

The building that houses the Tate was originally the Bankside Power Station, and the cavernous Turbine Hall entrance makes you feel like a pixel in a giclée installation.

Modern art does not have to be as pretentious as my previous sentence. And while I think I know what I like, I am happy to be told what I should like by people who know better than me. This is what curators do, and when they are given free rein, as they are at Tate Modern, they create amazing spaces.

But first, the building. The mid-20th-century brickwork of the former power station on the Thames endows an exterior of character, and following a £134 million refurb, has become a charismatic home for Tate Modern. Contrast this to the characterless building that houses MoMA in New York. "A LEGO sculpture of blocks," said Architectural Digest. "The enchantment of a bank after hours," mused art critic and smart-ass John Updike.

Even those who actually like the MoMA building concede Tate's superiority. In an article entitled 'Tate Modern's Rightness Versus MoMA's Wrongs', another art critic - of no less an ascetic home-town journal than The New York Times - put it thusly:

"MoMA is a beautiful building that plainly doesn't work. The Tate Modern is a plain one that is working beautifully. It has redefined the nature of the Modern/contemporary art museum and, in the process, the London art scene."

Tate Modern's galleries are arranged into movements, including Surrealist, Minimalist, Cubist, Futurist, Expressionist, Dadaist and Abstractionist. You will see works by Dali, Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, Pollock, Warhol and hundreds more you've never heard of. Iconic masterpieces include Pablo's Nude Woman with Necklace and Andy's Marilyn Diptych. There's even a work by Edvard Munch. Which reminds me - there are three places to get a feed here.

Tate Modern boasts plenty of non-ists too, with photography, performance, film and live art exhibits. You can also enjoy stunning panoramas of the London skyline from the viewing platform on the 10th floor, including heavenly visions of St Paul's Cathedral, right across the river.

So how much do they charge for this incredible inventive immersion? Since it opened in May 2000, more than 40 million people have paid not a single penny to get in. While mercantile MoMA will sting you $US25 just to squeeze through the metal detectors, Tate Modern is free, so even the hoi polloi can enjoy hoi art.

And for even more Tate, you can take the Tate to Tate tour on the Tate Boat from Tate Modern to Tate Britain, and take in views of Big Ben, Parliament and the London Eye along the way.

By Amy Cooper

MoMA might be modern, but it's already notched up quite a history. In 2029, the NYC institution turns 100, and that longevity makes all the difference to what you see today. With a 71-year jumpstart on the Tate Modern, MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art) has had time to amass arguably the world's most comprehensive collection of masterpieces created in the past 150 years. It's MoMA-ssive: 200,000 works dating back to the late 19th century, from expressionists to post-impressionists, Kahlo to Koons to Kollwitz; cubism, constructivism, fauvism and pretty much every 'ism' worth your attention. To accommodate this titanic trove, MoMA's Manhattan footprint has extended to 65,770sqm - almost twice as great as the Tate - with around 2500 works on show.

In 2019, a $US400 million expansion added the splendid David Geffen Wing, with three new floors of galleries including a space for live performance art where you might see spectacles worthy of nearby Broadway - with the added brag factor of being highbrow.

One of the most exciting aspects of modern art is that it can be almost anything, and so MoMA has six different art classifications, from paintings and sculpture to architecture and design, photography, film and performance, illustrated books and drawings. Its Department of Film has more than 25,000 titles and four million stills, with films constantly showing in its four cinemas.

Modern art is here in all its dazzling democracy. That might mean a pile of hay bales, paintings in cow dung or a person sitting in a chair looking at you - or the biggest art rockstars of the modern age. There's plenty from Picasso, Pollock, Monet and Matisse, Mondrian, Cezanne, Rothko, Hopper and Warhol's 32-canvas Campbell's Soup Cans. Van Gogh's The Starry Night lives at MoMA, as does Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory (the one with the wobbly melted watches, in connoisseur-speak). Just a stroll through MoMA's epic floors four and five can tick off your entire must-see modern art bingo card.

After you gaze you can graze, at MoMA's two-Michelin-starred The Modern, and shop for arty objets at the flagship MoMA Design Store. Most of all, I like to sip a cocktail on The Terrace overlooking the Abby A. Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, to honour MoMA's brilliant origin story. Like all the best endeavours, MoMA was dreamed up by women, over lunch. When art lover Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and her friends discovered while dining that they all felt the blokey museums and art galleries of their day were old-fashioned and dull, a radical idea for its time was born: a modern art museum, founded by females. Its evolution from a handful of prints to the world's leading modern art collection is testament to the power of female creativity, and MoMA's most modern idea of all.