|
In 2006 the Museum Archives reopened in a new location within The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building at 4 West Fifty-fourth Street. We now have modern storage and office spaces and an enlarged reading room allowing us to serve up to twelve researchers simultaneously.
Contacting the Archives
Visiting the Archives
About the Archives
Holdings
Highlights
Exhibition History List
Selected Readings
Finding aids to many of our collections are now online; please visit our Holdings page where you can view and search our collections. To ask us a question or to make an appointment, use our online form.
The Museum Archives was established in 1989 to collect, organize,
preserve, and make accessible documentation concerning the Museum's
art-historical and cultural role in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries. It is also an internationally recognized center of research
for primary source material concerning many aspects of modern and
contemporary art.
The holdings include millions of historical institutional records,
such as exhibition files; research papers and correspondence of
former Museum curators, directors, staff, and trustees (including
Alfred H. Barr, Jr.); newsclippings; and over 3,000 sound and video
recordings of Museum events. In the photographic archives, there
are tens of thousands of images of past exhibition installations,
special events, the Museum's building and grounds, and works of
art included in temporary exhibitions. Also included are photographic
materials depicting artists and other personalities.
The Museum Archives also includes an Oral
History Project, which is responsible for preserving the spoken
word and bridging gaps in written documentation. There have been
interviews with MoMA family, including former Trustees, donors,
administrators, curatorial staff, building project staff, close
observers of the Museum's program, and others. Increasingly, interviews
with artists are being undertaken to discuss the role of the Museum
in the life of the artist, as well as to interview the artist about
works of art in the Museum Collection and to discuss the artist’s
process, use of materials, and the larger context within which a
particular work of art was made.
In addition, the Museum Archives collects archival materials that
originated from external sources, but which enhance and complement
the mission of the Museum Archives. These private archives may be
the papers or business records of artists, collectives, galleries,
dealers, art historians, critics, etc.
The Museum Archives Web site was generously funded
by the Trustee Committee on Archives, Library, and Research.
Pictured above:
Left: View from Fifty-fourth street of The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building, designed by Yoshio Taniguchi.
© 2006 Timothy Hursley
Right: New archives storage. Photo by Marisa Horowitz
|
