The geodesic structure, a smaller version of the one currently installed in MoMA PS1's courtyard, is situated near the ocean between Beach 94th and Beach 95th Streets, and will serve as a temporary community and cultural space for the next few months. In conjunction with “Expo 1: New York,” the upcoming MoMA PS1 show aimed at tackling environmental, economic and sociopolitical issues, Dome 2 will host lectures, rotating exhibitions, screenings and performances addressing the challenges that the Rockaways face in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Mr. Biesenbach asked as he charged toward the nearly finished structure. Inside the clean, light-filled space, visitors queued up for coffee, miso soup and baked sweet potatoes (courtesy Rockaway Taco) before stepping back to admire the design and peer through a transparent panel facing the Atlantic. New York State Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder, Benita von Maltzahn, the head of the new culture and corporate social responsibility department at Volkswagen, community board members, Parks & Recreation representatives and members of the Rockaway Beach Surf Club (which was instrumental in Sandy relief) chatted amiably about the upcoming programming.

A few members of the 15 people who built the dome were present, hanging out by a pile of equipment on its west side. Evan Wagner, who wore a bright red jumpsuit that one of the welders lent him, noted that the bad weather had not hampered construction—it actually helped. “The wind’s how we got the skin over it,” he said. “We waited for the gusts.”

After a ribbon-cutting ceremony, Mr. Biesenbach, who owns a small house in the Rockaways and led weekly relief trips in the wake of the storm, took a group up to where the boardwalk used to be. Standing with his back to the ocean, he spoke in English and German about how much rebuilding still needs to done, his silver hair blending into the sky behind him. Back on the bus, he directed a driving tour of the devastation. Most of the shops, supermarkets, dentists and laundromats lining Rockaway Beach Boulevard, the peninsula’s once-bustling main drag, were shuttered (though at least one liquor store was open for business). Salt water had killed nearly all the vegetation, and many of the dead bushes and trees were a sickly yellow color. “The beach was everywhere,” said Mr. Biesenbach as he pointed out areas the storm buried under three feet of sand.

Approaching the tour's final stop, a stretch of beach littered with debris from half-destroyed houses, the bus driver asked whether he should turn left on Beach 139th Street. “No, we’ll park here [on the boulevard],” said Mr. Biesenbach. “We don’t want to be disaster tourists: ‘Oh, we come with a bus, we’ve come to see your misery!’” One of the most haunting monuments to how the storm arrested life last October was a house standing right at the sand. Two life-size Halloween decorations, a vampiric man and woman, looked out of a window onto the wreckage.

For images of the VW Dome 2 and the state of the Rockaways, click the slide show above.

A damaged stretch of the boardwalk in the Rockaway neighborhood. (Getty Images)

Since Hurricane Sandy struck New York last week, MoMA PS1's director, Klaus Biesenbach, has been a vocal advocate for the hard-hit Rockaways, leading volunteer groups to help clean up and repair damage in the area.

Mr. Biesenbach just sent an e-mail to press stating that he is organizing another trip to the Rockaways this Saturday at 10 a.m. from 4 West 54th Street, right by MoMA. Information about the supplies and types of skills they are looking for is below. Those interested in participating should e-mail aidforrockaway@gmail.com.

BASIC SUPPLY OF WATER, FOOD, AND CLOTHES IS PROVIDED AT THE MOMENT BUT THE FOLLOWING ITEMS ARE URGENTLY NEEDED

ROCKAWAY NEEDS LIST:

-          Gas or propane powered heat lamps (like Fire Sense Commercial Floor Standing Patio Heater)

-          Bleach (like Clorox)

-          Cleaning products: sponges, mops, contractor bags

-          Brooms (18 inch hard bristle/stiff push brush)

-          Propane tanks (for the generators)

-          Propane powered generators (like Sportsman, Generac 3000 watts and above)

-          Oil filled electric residential heaters

-          Portable forced-air propane heaters with blowers (like Dyna-Glo 30 to 60,000 BTU)

-          Batteries

-          Flashlights (like Rayovac)

-          Tools

-          Blankets

-          Tents (minimum 10x20 footprint with sidewalls, like http://www.acecanopy.com/canopyenc10x20w-115-28.html)

-          Square head shovels

-          Spades

-          Coveralls

-          Work boots (like Cordova PVC boots or cement boots)

-          Work, rubber and vinyl gloves

-          Respirators (like Cordova N95) http://bit.ly/SStD41

-          Dust masks

-          Goggles

VOLUNTEER BASICS:

-          Handle serious manual labor

-          Clean sites/basements

-          Demolition help

-          Organize and distribute food/clothing

-          Wear warm clothes

-          Bring thick rubber boots

-          Bring work gloves

VOLUNTEERS SPECIFICATIONS ESPECIALLY NEEDED:

-          Repairmen

-          Plumbers with equipment

-          Knowledge and help for residents to deal with insurances and possible funds

-          Skills in social work and care-giving

-          Home renovation experts

-          People experienced in crafts, construction

-          Mold treatment experts

-          Russian speakers

-          Architectural skills

IF YOU WANT TO PARTICIPATE, PLEASE RSVP BY EMAIL TO AIDFORROCKAWAY@GMAIL.COM TO SECURE A SEAT ON THE BUS

Roitfeld with Marc Jacobs. (Courtesy FIAF)

Klaus Biesenbach, director of MoMA PS1 and chief curator at large at the Museum of Modern Art, will be interviewing former French Vogue's editor in chief, Carine Roitfeld, on Monday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m., at the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) about her creativity and inspiration. The talk, which is going forward as planned—a feat post-Sandy, to be sure!—is part of FIAF's Art de Vivre series, Creative Leaders, for which the cultural center has invited influential French and American leaders in the fields of gastronomy, style and architecture to discuss their artful practice. Mr. Biesenbach is stepping in for Stefano Tonchi, the editor in chief of W Magazine, who is unable to make the event.

“This series presents important influencers shaping our cultural environment today," said Melissa Ceria, curator of the Art de Vivre program. "We want to open the conversation so that they can tell their story and share their creative vision with our audience.” The series has featured Shake Shack's Danny Meyer and will also feature starchitect Bernard Tschumi on Nov. 14.

Ms. Roitfeld, the fashion visionary and former model, fashion writer and stylist, who last year published a book about her career, entitled Irreverent, is starting up her own magazine, CR Fashion Book. With Mr. Biesenbach in tow, it's sure to be a lively cross-cultural discussion.

(Courtesy @klausbiesenbach)

This Sunday MoMA PS1 Director Klaus Biesenbach and Courtney Love Cobain, as she's called in the flier, will host the museum's first ever artist's Halloween carnival and parade.

The event will include a "costume parade" around PS1, with costumes to be judged by Mr. Biesenbach and Ms. Love Cobain.

Music by Mykki Blanco, Gatekeeper DJs, Zach Cole and Jon Santos. Well now, that's a thing to do, isn't it?

Biesenbach. (Courtesy Patrick McMullan)

Klaus Biesenbach, director of MoMA PS1, chief curator at large at the Museum of Modern Art and, in general, man about the art world, has a few things to share about art and love over at Bullett today. In fact, he has precisely five things to share—the five artworks that to him best personify love.

One that we particularly like—not least because it reflects Mr. Biesenbach's (and his friends') affinity for white—is Felix González-Torres's Untitled (1991), an image of a white crumpled bed still indented with the marks of the people who had been sleeping there, which Mr. González-Torres erected on 24 billboards around the city as a memorial to his long-standing partner who died of AIDS.

Here's a snippet:

Of this piece, which, like the majority of González-Torres’ work, is untitled, Biesenbach says, “The empty bed shows romantic longing and is a reminder of intimate moments of sleep and dream, of intimacy and sexual desire. The minimal, white surface of the abandoned site of sleep clearly visualizes the absence of the two lovers who had just spent the night there. In the background of the AIDS crisis of the 1990s, this work is courageous proof of the belief in love.”

Thanks, Bullett! Our cup runneth over.

Klaus Biesenbach at the Marc Jacobs spring 2013 fashion show. (Courtesy Patrick McMullan)

A bit of refreshing news for all of you on this decidedly bleak Monday comes from the WSJ magazine's Soapbox column, this week featuring MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach:

"I remember in the 1990s, 'curator' sounded a bit odd, then it became incredibly fashionable and now I think might be overused."

Candid thoughts from a man who, in addition to his directing duties at PS1, has the title of "chief curator-at-large" at the Museum of Modern Art. We couldn't agree more!

Here are a few other insights from Mr. Biesenbach (the piece, written in his own words, was edited from an interview with The Journal's Kelly Crow):

I think the challenge is to understand this completely media-saturated society while keeping up the criteria for what ultimately should go on the time shelf...Museums have to realize that the influential images that might change our lives are not necessarily paintings, drawings and sculptures.

We'll direct you to a fine counterpoint by Choire Sicha in Bookforum, an essay about Mr. Biesenbach's foray into social networking called "Klaus Werk." Referring to MoMA's Kraftwerk retrospective in the spring, Mr. Sicha writes:

As a proposal, it had all the signs of being a brilliant moment of curation . . . and then all the tickets sold out immediately. It’s tough for a curator to rightsize when his work is really about the conflicts of commerce, cool, and aspiration.

As a kind of rebuttal, here's Mr. Biesenbach, arguing for the place of commercialism in the realm of art, when it's appropriate:

[M]useums have to embrace contemporary practice as something as wide-spanning as a German band like Kraftwerk—along with visual performance, music, synesthesia and fashion, and all these possible articulations of boundless creativity whenever they reach a certain innovative excellence.

Hey, it ain't easy being a curator, which is the word we'll continue to use until we think of something better.

Peter Brant II, 2011. (Courtesy Patrick McMullan)

The ever-enterprising Architectural Digest has just published a post called "The Inquisitive Guest," for which it asked a variety of art types, like MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach and artists Maurizio Cattelan, Marina Abramovic and George Condo, about their favorite places for viewing art outdoors. Their answers are astounding. Which artist loves the Tuileries in Paris? Who considers Pompeii a sculpture garden? And who could do without art in nature altogether? Read on.

Here are some of our favorite responses from the bunch:

Klaus Biesenbach's surprising answer, "My favorite sculpture garden is definitely MoMA."

Performance goddess Marina Abramovic gave a spiritually pitch-perfect response, “I don’t think nature needs art.... The art is like oxygen. But I don’t really like sculpture gardens.”

But our favorite came from the young and snappy Peter Brant II, who knows where it's at: “I have friends in Beverly Hills who have something like 250 Rodins in their garden.”

David Hammons, 'America the Beautiful,' 1968. (Courtesy the artist and Hammer Museum)

For the past few months, following Los Angles Times writer Jori Finkel's lead, we've noted the fact that none of the scores of shows about postwar art in Southern California, organized under the aegis of the Getty's "Pacific Standard Time" initiative, were scheduled to travel to New York.

Happily, MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach provided a burst of sunlight this morning at a press conference at MoMA, announcing that the Hammer Museum's "Now Dig This!" exhibition, about art made by African-American artists in Los Angeles from 1960 to 1980, will run at the Long Island City kunsthalle from October, 2012, to February, 2013, confirming rumors that the show would be coming to New York.

"Now Dig This!" was organized by Kellie Jones, a guest curator at the Hammer. Reviewing the show in the L.A. Times, critic Christopher Knight credited the show with presenting the context in which its featured artists--David Hammons, John Outterbridge, Betye Saar and many others--were working "with clarity and compelling insight."

In fairness, a representative for "PST" told The Observer that the intention of the program was to encourage people to visit Southern California and the surrounding area, not to travel shows. Nevertheless, it's heartening to see all of that scholarship get a second life. Let's hope that a few more "PST" visit our shores in the coming months.

"alanna heiss and i photographed by araki in winter 1997" Courtesy @KlausBiesenbach

In the new issue of Bookforum, Choire Sicha takes on the issue of the rise of celebrity in the tony worlds of art and literature, in particular the boom in renown of "cultural truffle hounds," people like Klaus Biesenbach, chief curator at large of MoMA and director of MoMA PS1, whose job it is to find and bring to our attention great cultural treasure.

The "quality celebrity" is one, according to Mr. Sicha, like James Franco and Antony Hegarty, who has both recognition and is considered an artist. Then there are those who are great at both and operate in a way somewhat akin to journalists, like Moby. But then there are those whose donning of the journalistic-beat makes us slightly uncomfortable because of their position. Enter @Klausbiesenbach.

Believing it instructional to read as one text a collection of Mr. Biesenbach's Twitters as evidence of his "brand" and how it is developed in the Twitterverse, Mr. Sicha analyzes a sampling of Mr. Biesenbach's tweets from the more personal to those aimed at other celebrities—such as on Valentine's Day, when the curator asked Derek Blasberg, the socialite-journalist, how the Marc Jacobs show went, when he tweeted at actress Katherine Heigl asking if she would be at the premiere of Marina Abramovic's film in Berlin or when he tweeted at the Scissor Sisters frontman, "@jakeshears any good party tonight or tomorrow night in sundance?" It's the tension between these "personal texts" and the nature of the business of this man who is "an institutional network unto himself" that is both fun and problematic. Mr. Sicha says:

There is something quite charming in the lack of plural; also something German about the quest for the night's one best social event. Then there was this, too: "tomorrow is jean genet's 101 birthday." Something about that reflection tucked alongside all the party planning and celebrity name-checking, seems very lonely.

In light of this text, these interests, performance activities under Biesenbach's direction become a bit suspect. They are a species of cool-hunting, of celebrity obsession."

While Mr. Biesenbach's celebrity obsession is not exactly news, Mr. Sicha does remind us that it does still make us a tad uncomfortable to see the curator at one of the world's top institutions getting into the pit with the rest of us. And while his tweets may not reveal a life of the mind anymore interesting than our own—or that he has anyone editing his Tweets anymore than we do (from today: "in redhpok: max brand's studio @monopolmagazin http://pic.twitter.com/QwNMUIC2" then, "oops, redhook, of course")—we're happy the "sexy back rooms" of these institutions are being open, if only to be crushed by a few dropped names.

M. Wells. (Photo by Wallyg/Flickr)

It's official. The much-loved Quebecois M. Wells Diner, which closed its Long Island City home last year after a dispute with its landlord, is set to open a "cafeteria-style restaurant" in MoMA PS1 in May of this year, ending months of rumors about the move.

MoMA PS1 director and MoMA chief curator at large Klaus Biesenbach had this to stay in a news release:

"In our growing emphasis on presenting all aspects of contemporary practice, MoMA PS1 is welcoming M. Wells as adding the experience of innovative and excellent food to our offerings of contemporary art, performance, experimental architecture, music, fashion, and design."

M. Wells proprietors Hugue Dufour and Sarah Obraitis have been serving a small but delicious selection of items at events at the kunsthalle for the past few months.

Awarding two stars to M. Wells, last year Times critic Sam Sifton wrote, "You know those biographies where the great artist first moves to New York, has a cold-water flat in a desolate part of town? We are in that chapter now."

Just 12 months later, that young artist has caught the eye of an enterprising curator and earned her first show at a premier contemporary art center.