Within the Museum of Modern Art’s announcement on Tuesday of coming exhibitions were signs of a seismic shift underway in how it collects and displays modern and contemporary art — changes that are expected to have a powerful impact on the museum’s renovation.

While curatorial activities used to be highly segregated by department, with paintings and sculpture considered the most important, the museum has gradually been upending that traditional hierarchy, organizing exhibitions in a more fluid fashion across disciplinary lines and redefining its practice of showing art from a linear historical perspective.