NEW YORK.- The temporary home of New York’s Museum of Modern Art is now opened to the public in Long Island City, in the former Swingline staple factory, replacing the New Thompson’s diner and a little fruit stand at the corner of Queens Boulevard as the main draw on 33rd Street. Actually, the region has quietly been evolving for years as a locale for artists and museums, of which the Modern’s arrival is only the latest sign. The Modern has opened with part of its permanent collection of paintings and sculpture on view, to provide comfort to regulars and satisfaction to tourists, and with a few other shows, including a contemporary survey called "Tempo." The place in Queens, cleverly designed by Michael Maltzan, with Scott Newman of Cooper, Robertson & Partners, is not small. The cafe seats around 50, so among other things expect gustatory bedlam when the Matisse and Picasso show arrives next year.

No windows, polished gray concrete floors, movable white walls and black-painted ductwork on the ceiling approximate the classic industrial loft aesthetic, an openwork plan with movable partitions that befits the open-endedness of modern art. The Modern’s galleries are efficient and airless, like the inside of a storage center, which is exactly what this building is. On the other hand, there is something touching and apt about seeing priceless Cézannes, Seurats and Braques in a makeshift, unadorned setting: they look fresh and by contrast seem to pop off the walls even more than usual. The galleries will do for a few years, and there’s plenty to mull over in them now, starting with the films and videos flickering on the walls around the lobby, a decorative distraction that brightens the elegantly complicated choreography of Mr. Maltzan’s serpentine ramps.

The paintings collection has enough of the museum’s favorites (Picasso’s "Demoiselles d’Avignon," Cézanne’s "Male Bather") to placate traditionalists, but what is interesting is that the tilt of the display seems more toward the recent past than it was on 53rd Street. The last room of paintings, mixing postwar art with the 90’s, is overstuffed but includes a few surprises, including an unlikely lineup of unconventional works by Yayoi Kusama, Dieter Roth, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Chris Ofili and Richard Tuttle, eccentric artists fond of eclectic materials.