Curator, Samantha Friedman: All of this material refers to a part of MoMA’s history called the Dance Archive. Lincoln Kirstein was very interested in the idea of dance in the Museum.
Curator, Jodi Hauptman: He had this idea that the Museum of Modern Art could be a site for the ballet itself. That idea was very prescient, as today many museums now have dance in their galleries or in their theaters.
Samantha Friedman: In 1939, he donated a large collection of his personal material of dance books and photographs, slides and films, even sculptures, and created, in 1940, The Dance Archive at MoMA.
He published the book Ballet Alphabet, which has drawings by Paul Cadmus. He also edited a journal called Dance Index. It was the first journal devoted to dance scholarship in the United States, and there are examples of that journal on view here, an issue with Balanchine on the cover, and issues devoted to some of the artists that you see elsewhere in the exhibition.