Josh Siegel, Curator in MoMA’s Department of Film, has organized more than 150 film, media, and gallery exhibitions, many of which have appeared on Best of the Year lists in the New York Times, Artforum, Film Comment, Cahiers du cinéma, and the New Yorker. He serves on the selection committees of the annual festivals New Directors/New Films and Doc Fortnight, and he is the founding director of To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, now in its 20th edition. Siegel is the co-editor and author of Frederick Wiseman and Modern Contemporary: Art at MoMA since 1980, and the monographs Baby, It’s Cold Outside: A History of Finnish Cinema, and The Łodź Film School of Poland: 50 Years. He serves on the executive boards of MacDowell (as well as its nominating, admissions, and DEAI committees), Light Industry, Cinema Tropical, and the Maurice Sendak Foundation.
He has lectured widely, including at Yale University, Columbia University, Cranbrook Academy of Art, New York University, and Pixar; has served on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alpert Award in the Arts/CalArts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship at Harvard University, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Penny McCall Foundation; and has been a jury member of many international film festivals, including Venice, Locarno, BAFICI (Buenos Aires), Torino, Dublin, Cartagena, and Vancouver. He has acquired more than 1,000 films and media installations for MoMA’s collection, including major collections of Robert Frank, Frederick Wiseman, Jack Smith, Errol Morris, Ingmar Bergman, Kelly Reichardt, Tissa David, Jem Cohen, Lucy Raven, and Peter Hutton.