MoMA | Author: Esther Adler

Posts by Esther Adler

July 31, 2014 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions

MoMA’s Tiniest Drawing: A Max Ernst Microbe

Posted by Esther Adler, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints

Max Ernst (French, born Germany. 1891–1976). Adam and Eve Expelled from the Garden of Eden. 1946–47. Gouache on cardstock, 1/2″ x 1 3/8″ (1.4 x 3.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Pierre Matisse in memory of Patricia Kane Matisse. © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

One of the great privileges of being a curator at MoMA is firsthand access to the works that make up our outstanding collection. Yet, even in the case of the Drawings collection, with its share of easily handled, two-dimensional works, this access often begins with an exploration of our digital database. The basic information on a work—artist, title, date, etc.—is readily available here, and makes it an invaluable resource for early research on any project.

October 3, 2013 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions

Dorothea Rockburne: Drawing Which Makes Itself

Posted by Esther Adler, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints

Dorothea Rockburne. Drawing Which Makes Itself: Neighbourhood. 1973. Duralar, pencil, colored pencil, and felt-tip pen on wall. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of J. Frederic Byers III, 1978. © 2013 Dorothea Rockburne/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

I’ve been intrigued by Dorothea Rockburne’s wall drawing Neighbourhood (1973) since I began working at MoMA. It was acquired by the Museum in 1978, just five years after it was first made, but has been on view infrequently since then, and I really wanted to see it in person.

August 21, 2013 | Collection & Exhibitions, Videos

Reframing Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World

Posted by Esther Adler, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints

One of the best parts of working on an exhibition drawn predominantly from MoMA’s own outstanding collection is the opportunity it provides for close looking at old favorites. When my co-curator Kathy Curry and I began compiling the checklist for the exhibition American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe

February 3, 2011 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions

Last Chance to See Monika Grzymala and the exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century

Posted by Esther Adler, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints

Monika Grzymala’s work always pushes the viewer—it forces us to question how we categorize artworks, what they’re made of, and where they can be installed. Monika has worked with adhesive tape, handmade washi paper, and a diverse range of other materials to create large scale drawings-in-space— works that are grounded in the idea of drawing and the artist’s direct engagement with materials, but that expand into three dimensions, filling and shaping the viewer’s own space.

January 10, 2011 | Collection & Exhibitions, Performance Series

Drawing in Space: On Line Performances at MoMA

Posted by Esther Adler, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints

There’s a long history of dance and performance both inspiring and being influenced by the visual arts. The current MoMA exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, on view on the sixth floor, is full of examples of artists trying to capture dancers’ moving bodies in drawings, paintings and sculpture, as well as documenting them on film. If a line is the trace of a point in motion—an idea at the heart of On Line—then a human figure moving through space can be seen as a drawing in air, an insertion of drawing into the time and three-dimensional space of our lived world.

December 21, 2010 | Collection & Exhibitions

Drawing in Motion—Zilvinas Kempinas’s Double O at MoMA

Posted by Esther Adler, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints

Zilvinas Kempinas’s sculptures are magic. Somehow, the air currents created by two industrial-strength fans turn the two loops of videotape in Double O into a living, dancing sculpture, performing tirelessly for hours in MoMA’s Agnes Gund Garden Lobby.