THE DIVERSE BEGINNINGS AND LEGACIES OF MODERNISM EXAMINED IN FIRST CYCLE OF MOMA2000 EXHIBITIONS
EXHIBITION
Modern Starts
DATES
October 7, 1999-March 14, 2000
CONTENT
The first cycle of MoMA2000 exhibitions, Modern Starts will focus on the period 1880-1920. This cycle will occupy three floors of the Museum, with each floor conceived as an innovative grouping of several exhibitions, organized under the rubric of People (second floor), Places (third floor), and Things (first floor). Unlike more traditional presentations, in which works are arranged by chronology, style, medium, or school, these exhibitions will explore relationships and shared themes, as well as divergent movements and conflicting points of view, by juxtaposing works in new and often provocative ways. Adjacencies among the exhibitions themselves will further reveal interrelationships and currents that cut across diverse styles, movements, and media. Works from more contemporary periods will also be incorporated into these installations to show how later artists have treated, and been influenced by, the traditions, themes, and subject matter of the period.
Each floor of this exhibition features an installation work by a contemporary artist; and the installation Making Modern Starts, mounted in the first-floor Garden Hall Gallery, is conceived as an orientation gallery, containing selected works, that affords an overview of the multiplicity of early modernist visions and innovations.
People
(October 7, 1999-February 1, 2000)
People, which will open on October 7, 1999, will explore aspects of figural representation in early modernism through several exhibition themes. The Monumental Figure features large-scale paintings and sculptures, including works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Aristide Maillol, and others. Topics addressed in Composing with the Figure will range from theatrical postures to the spatial relationship between the figure and its environment, and the reshaping or decomposition of the figure, with works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edvard Munch, Fernand Léger, and Marcel Duchamp. A thematic exhibition, Bathers, traces the development of this genre from Paul Cézanne and André Derain to contemporary photography. The Language of the Body investigates gesture, portrait heads, and facial expressions in all media, including prints by Odilon Redon and Paul Klee. Posed to Unposed: Encounters with the Camera explores the development of figure compositions throughout the entire history of photography. Expression and the Series juxtaposes Auguste Rodin's sculpted heads of Honoré de Balzac and Matisse's heads of his neighbor Jeanette Vaderin. Finally, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space is an installation of large figurative sculptures.
Places
(October 28, 1999- March 14, 2000)
Places, which will open on October 28, 1999, will demonstrate the broad interpretations of site, both real and imagined. Among the exhibition themes are Seasons and Moments, an evocative installation devoted to the epic landscape with works such as Claude Monet's Water Lilies, Joan Miró's Birth of the World, Cy Twombly's Four Seasons, and Wassily Kandinsky's so-called Four Seasons, shown for the first time in a rotunda gallery as intended by the artist. Other exhibitions will explore themes such as: the French Landscape, as interpreted by artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Cézanne, and Georges-Pierre Seurat and accompanied by documentary photographs of the views depicted; and Landscape of Retreat, a presentation of woodcuts by Paul Gauguin, Munch, Emil Nolde and others on the broad theme of escape from urban life. These are contrasted with galleries devoted to an exploration of the urban realm, with works in various media. These range from a fin-de-siècle environment of furniture and objects, in Guimard and the Art Nouveau Interior; to a documentation of the modern world in a largely photographic exhibition, Rise of the Modern World, that reveals the dynamism and "under-belly" of urban life and the industrial age. Unreal City, an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and photographs, depicting the city, both exterior and interior, as a site of condensed and disrupted space, modern anxiety, and destabilized points of reference includes works by Giorgio de Chirico, Piet Mondrian, Matisse, Lyonel Feininger, and Léger.
Things
(November 18, 1999- March 14, 2000)
Things, which will open on November 18, 1999, explores the presentation and representation of ordinary objects, including still-life painting, collage, constructed sculptures, prints, posters, furniture and design objects, and architectural fragments, in often unexpected juxtapositions. The transformation of changing pictorial conventions and notions of artistic originality in the early modern period underlie the various themes of this exhibition. The importance to this period of objectlike works of art, from Duchamp's Readymades to the sculpture of Constantin Brancusi, and of the representations of things, from Picasso's still-life paintings to advertising posters of objects from across the century by artists including Lucian Bernhard and Nicklaus Stoecklin. Design objects, including Gerrit Rietveld's Red and Blue Chair and Frank Lloyd Wright's stained glass windows, will be shown in the context of other works that also demonstrate various approaches to abstraction.
FILM PROGRAM
The Film Exhibition Program mounted by the Department of Film and Video as part of Modern Starts will be the most comprehensive survey of early cinema (1893-1920) ever presented from the Museum's film archive. In concert with central themes in Modern Starts, many of these films will deal with issues surrounding the human figure and gestural codes (people), and landscape in early cinema (places), especially in the western film. The programming will be highlighted by the enormous number of films from the period that the department has restored in the last decade, including many recently restored 35mm copies of previously unseen titles from our Edison and Biograph studios collections. There will also be several shows that highlight core strengths of the Archive, including works by D. W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks, Thomas H. Ince, Mary Pickford, William S. Hart, early Pathe, and early slapstick comedy.
PUBLICATION
Modern Starts will be accompanied by an illustrated publication designed to serve as an introduction to the many component parts that comprise the cycle. The Museum is also preparing three additional monographs, that will provide a more in-depth look at particular thematic installations.
EDUCATION
The galleries for this program of exhibitions will be carefully designed to allow ample space for kiosk information centers and reading areas. These spaces will be programmed collaboratively by curators and educators at the Museum, and will provide contextual information on the installations as well as a place for the viewer to rest and think. The Museum will provide gallery cards and brochures that serve as navigational devices for visitors in the exhibitions, and will also develop an accompanying Web site.
Outside of the galleries, extensive education programs will be organized to accompany this series. Gallery Talks (with special lectures by Museum curators), Brown Bag Lunch Lectures, symposia and lectures, courses, conversations with artists and curators, family programs and publications, special needs programs and publications, and special installations in the Museum's Edward John Noble Education Center will all be designed to help visitors of all ages and backgrounds enjoy the exhibitions.
In conjunction with the film program, special musical presentations will be held, one each month, featuring noted musicians and musicologists. In this way, the reception of early cinema and the theater-going experience will be explored, as it will with the special presentation of a magic lantern show.
ORGANIZATION
The Modern Starts core group is John Elderfield, Chief Curator at Large; Peter Reed, Curator, Department of Architecture and Design; Mary Chan, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings; Maria de Carmen González, Department of Education; and George Bareford, Administrative Assistant, Office of the Chief Curator at Large.
Collaborating with the core group are: Darsie Alexander, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography; Mary Lea Bandy, Chief Curator, Department of Film and Video; Véronique Burke, Research Assistant, Office of Chief Curator at Large; Magdalena Dabrowski, Senior Curator, Department of Drawings; Starr Figura, Assistant Curator, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books; Sarah Ganz, Research Assistant, Office of Chief Curator at Large; Judith Hecker, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books; Steven Higgins, Curator, Department of Film and Video; Beatrice Kernan, Assistant Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs; Susan Kismaric, Curator, Photography; Elizabeth Levine, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture; Laura Rosenstock, Assistant Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture; Carol Smith, part-time Research Assistant, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books; Jenny Tobias, Associate Librarian, Reference; Wendy Weitman, Associate Curator, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books; Deborah Wilk, part-time Research Assistant, Office of Chief Curator at Large. Outside contributors to Modern Starts include David Francis, Chief of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division of the Library of Congress.
ABOUT MoMA2000
In October 1999, The Museum of Modern Art launches a 17-month-long series of exhibitions that presents well-known and less-familiar art works in unusual juxtapositions and new contexts. An exploration both of the Museum's unparalleled collection and of new ways of displaying it, MoMA2000 provides a provocative look at some of this century's most compelling and powerful art. Conceived as a preliminary laboratory for the reinstallation of the Museum's collection after the completion of our new building project, it offers fresh interpretations of the premises, meanings, and diversity of modern art.
MoMA2000 will present three major exhibition cycles that focus on distinct historical periods: 1880 to 1920, 1920 to 1960, and 1960 to the present. Each historical cycle will be interspersed with works from other periods, creating a dialogue between various historical moments. Installed throughout the entire Museum, works in all mediums will be presented in innovative, multidisciplinary ways.
