A Curator in the Department of Film, Dave Kehr joined MoMA in 2013 after a long career as a film journalist, including stints at the Chicago Reader (1974–85), the Chicago Tribune (1985–93), the New York Daily News (1993–98) and the New York Times (1999–13). His work has been collected in two anthologies, When Movies Mattered and Movies That Mattered. He has served on numerous juries and selection committees for organizations such as the New York Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, and the Venice International Film Festival. In 2017 he was awarded the insignia of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in recognition of his support of French cinema. He was a founding member of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress in 1988 and remains on the board today.
At MoMA, he helps to program the Museum’s three theaters (and new Virtual Cinema platform) and works closely with the staff of MoMA’s film archive to identify restoration projects in the collection and bring them to new audiences. Recent projects include Ernst Lubitsch’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925), Henry King’s Stella Dallas (1925), and Leo McCarey’s Love Affair (1939).