MoMA | Author: Klaus Biesenbach

Posts by Klaus Biesenbach

December 28, 2010 | Performance Series

A “Walk-in Performance” at MoMA by Patti Smith and Michael Stipe

Posted by Klaus Biesenbach, Director, MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large, The Museum of Modern Art ,

On Sunday, December 19, MoMA visitors were treated to a “walk-in performance” by artist and musician Patti Smith, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of prominent and challenging French writer and political activist Jean Genet. The performance, in MoMA’s Marron Atrium, could not have been better. I picked Patti up in a car at 11:30 a.m., and Michael Stipe had joined her, so we all drove to MoMA with the guitars, and at noon sharp, Michael opened for Patti with a heartbreakingly beautiful song by David Bowie about Jean Genet, “The Jean Genie.”

Preserving Warhol’s Films

Posted by Klaus Biesenbach, Director, MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large, The Museum of Modern Art

Installation view of Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures at The Museum of Modern Art, 2010. Left to right, Screen Test: Susan Sontag (1964), Screen Test: Dennis Hopper (1964), Screen Test: Kathe Dees (1964), Screen Test: Edie Sedgwick (1965), Kiss (1963–64), Screen Test: Lou Reed (1966), Screen Test: Kyoko Kishida (1964), Screen Test: Baby Jane Holzer (1964), and Screen Test: Donyale Luna (1964). © 2010 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Photo: Jason Mandella

The exhibition Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures marks the continuation of the long-term effort to preserve one of the artist’s most important bodies of work. Before his death in 1987, Warhol stipulated that his works should be cared for by The Museum of Modern Art, and in 1997 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts completed the donation of the surviving 4,000 reels of original footage and print materials.