As Archives Specialist in the MoMA Archives, I am always on the prowl for images depicting how our exhibitions were installed. Sadly, up until the 1960s only about 75% of MoMA’s exhibitions were documented with official installation photographs, usually due to budget constraints. So imagine my excitement on one dark, drab winter day earlier this year when, while working in the Photographic Archive, I came across a folder labeled, “Visitors in Galleries,” and discovered that these visitors were in galleries for an exhibition for which we had no visual record: Norman Bel Geddes’ War Maneuver Models (January 26–March 5, 1944). There was a constellation of 35 photographs in the folder, and a few of these stars are presented here.

At the onset of World War II, Life magazine commissioned and reproduced photographs of scale models of land and sea warfare reenactments, and others showing possible future tactical operations, all designed by Norman Bel Geddes. Because many Army and Navy officials expressed an interest in the models as a training aid, the trustees of the Museum, in cooperation with the editors of Life and Bel Geddes, decided that a public display of the models would provide Museum visitors with valuable insight on the ongoing war efforts.

Along with photographs of the panoramic models installed as backdrops, the exhibition included models of the world’s fighting navy ships, airplanes of all types, tanks, jeeps, trucks, and vehicles. The models, made by jewelers employed in Bel Geddes’s office, were fabricated out of sterling silver, as its malleability allowed for exacting detail. Models of soldiers and officers of the opposing forces were made from a soft white metal. All the models and photographs of panoramic models in the exhibition either documented real attacks, simulated what might have happened, or proposed what might yet occur. The models were constantly being altered by the jewelers in the Bel Geddes office to keep up with actual changes to the war machines being used in the battlefields. The models of terrain, landing operations, and attacks were based on descriptions provided by Life researchers. The effect of rain from a distance seen in the photographed panoramic models was created by a screen of slanting threads that were then photographed slightly out of focus. Bel Geddes originally used powdered sugar for white-capped waves and wakes of ships, but had to halt because of a war time shortage. Table salt was substituted. At certain intervals during the exhibition, the public was able to observe, from a six-foot catwalk, model workers building a large model that depicted different phases of a battle. A short soundtrack explaining the models and combat scenes was played throughout the galleries.

As noted in the Museum press release,  Life art director Worthen Paxton was the director of the exhibition, with Allan McNab and Thomas Farrer of the Norman Bel Geddes company supervising the creation of the models and their installation.

Attendance records for the show, which are kept in the Exhibition Files in the Archives, indicate that 58,069 people attended. Sarah Newmeyer, then publicity director for the Museum, wrote to Hugh Rogers of Life magazine, on February 4, 1944:

“Army and Navy enlisted men (who come to the Museum in large numbers) frequently stop at the Desk and say the Geddes show is swell. One woman commented in great excitement that it was simply thrilling.

The Desk tells me that it seems to be very evident that it is definitely a ‘man’s show.’ They have noticed a great many men—apparently business men—who come in at lunch time and ask for ‘that exhibition of models (or pictures) from LIFE.'”

Publicity was favorable on all accounts from the reviews gathered by the press office; the reviews can be researched in the Department of Public Information Scrapbooks and Records, 1929–1997</span>, in the Archives. Elizabeth McCausland, from the Art Department at Sarah Lawrence College, wrote in her review of the exhibition on January 30, 1944, in the Sunday Union and Republican newspaper, Springfield, Massachusetts:

“Whenever a new ‘use’ for art appears, it is an occasion for thanksgiving. Such an event is the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art of ‘War Maneuver Models’ created by Norman Bel Geddes for Life Magazine.

…the war maneuver models make use of concepts and devices of modern art to visualize and make intelligible intricate and vast themes.”

The full suite of images can be viewed in the MoMA Archives; the photographs have been digitized and cataloged and are accessible on an internal database. Appointments can be scheduled by completing the online request form.