The Museum of Modern Art is slouching toward a shutdown starting June 15, in order to complete its latest expansion — which is really an attempt to fix the last one. With the museum on the brink of change, the art and architecture critics of The New York Times took the occasion to revisit favorite (or famous) artworks, review shows not yet covered and consider the implications of the ghost in the machine — the loss of the American Folk Art Museum, once next door but now part of the Modern’s new footprint.

Over the next four months, the museum will cut six openings in its western wall to connect three floors of new galleries to existing ones, and will install the largest-ever display of its vast permanent collection, a feat that curators have been planning for years.

When the museum reopens on Oct. 21, after its $450 million overhaul, we are told it will be physically more comfortable, allow better traffic flow, offer free access to the ground floor and its new galleries, and add about 40,000 square feet for the permanent collection. But most important, the story of modernism as we know it — linear and dominated by European male geniuses — will be radically revised, expanded and rendered more inclusive.