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Before I read MoMA’s new publication Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, if someone had asked me to identify a painting from MoMA’s collection that was of central importance to a generation of artists emerging from the Cultural Revolution in China, I’m pretty sure I would not have picked Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World. Read more

On October 15, MoMA launches the fifth volume in its Primary Documents series, Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents, which was edited by Professor Wu Hung. The publication brings together, translates, and contextualizes primary documents that are pertinent to a deeper understanding of recent artistic practice in China, but which were not previously available in the English language. Read more

For the publication Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art, Michelle Elligott, the Museum Archivist, contributed a wonderful essay entitled “Modern Women: A Partial History,” a kind of lexicon comprising historical entries on and capsule biographies of selected noteworthy women throughout the Museum’s history. In this video, she discusses some of these women and their impact both at MoMA and within the museum field in general. Read more

One of the foremost younger scholars working today on art and gender, Aruna D’Souza wrote “Float the Boat: Finding a Place for Feminism in the Museum,” one of three introductions to the book Modern Women: Women at The Museum of Modern Art (2010). In her essay, and in the above video interview, she talks about the evolution of feminist art history and criticism, and the role within it of the museum in general and of MoMA in particular. Read more

Clement Greenberg speaking in New Delhi in 1967 at a presentation of the MoMA exhibition Two Decades of American Painting

In 1952, The Museum of Modern Art established the International Program of Circulating Exhibitions, which was supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, with the aim of sending exhibitions to museums around the world. The following year, the International Council was organized to provide long-term financial support to the program.

Amy Horschak: In light of MoMA’s upcoming installation Abstract Expressionist New York and the exhibition of many of the “AbEx” artists abroad by the International Program (IP) in the 1950s, can you comment on the often-made claims that the IP was, at that time, part of a CIA project? Read more

In the video interview above, Gretchen Wagner, an assistant curator in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, talks about the essay she wrote for the publication Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art, titled “Riot on the Page: Thirty Years of Zines by Women.” Read more

In this video interview, Veronica Roberts, Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, discusses her exhibition Lee Bontecou: All Freedom in Every Sense, one of the exhibitions celebrating the landmark publication of Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art. Read more

Linda Nochlin’s groundbreaking essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” was published in 1971, but more than fifteen years later, when I attended graduate school at the Graduate Center, CUNY, a second wave of important feminist contributions to the discipline appeared. Read more