MoMA | Category: Artists

Posts in ‘Artists’

March 8, 2011 | Artists, Behind the Scenes, Library and Archives

Edward Steichen Archive: Delphiniums Blue (and White and Pink, Too)

Posted by Celia Hartmann, Project Assistant Archivist, Museum Archives

Edward Steichen with delphiniums (c. 1938), Umpawaug House (Redding, Connecticut). Photo by Dana Steichen. Gelatin silver print. Edward Steichen Archive, VII. The Museum of Modern Art Archives

Edward Steichen: painter, photographer, modern art promoter, museum curator, exhibition creator—and delphinium breeder.

Yes, in addition to his groundbreaking career as a visual artist and museum professional, Steichen was also a renowned horticulturist. While he lived in France, the French Horticultural Society awarded him its gold medal in 1913, and he served as president of the American Delphinium Society from 1935 to 1939. In the early 1930s, after leaving his position as chief of photography for the Condé Nast publications—including Vogue and Vanity Fair—and more than 10 years before beginning his career as Director of the Department of Photography at MoMA, he retired to his Connecticut farm to raise flowers.

March 3, 2011 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions, Viewpoints

Fandom for Phantom

Posted by Alexander Fang, The Louise Bourgeois Twelve-Month Intern, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books

Richard Dupont. Phantom. 2007. Etching and aquatint. Publisher: Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art, New York. Printer: Gregory Burnet, New York. Edition: 12. The Museum of Modern Art

Sometimes I just wish I were a printmaker. While I’ve embraced being able to familiarize myself with our department’s collection, mostly through preparation for study center visitors, it’s hard to avoid envying the person who gets to work in the studio and master the technical elements of printmaking. A work recently acquired by MoMA, Richard Dupont’s etching Phantom (2007)—which was among the artist’s earliest print projects—reveals the kind of artistic processes I am especially drawn to.

February 7, 2011 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions

Stück Natur: The Microenvironment-in-a-Jar Siren

Posted by Pamela Popeson, Department Preparator, Department of Architecture and Design

Haus-Rucker & Co. Stück Natur (Piece of Nature). 1971–73

When you spend a lot of time around objects, you find that some objects continue to unfold with every new encounter while other objects do not. I was charmed from the start by Haus-Rucker & Co.’s Stück Natur (Piece of Nature), a microenvironment in a preserving jar, but didn’t expect it to continue to draw me back in.

February 3, 2011 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions

Guston & Feldman: A Double View

Posted by Samantha Friedman, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints

The 1958 Philip Guston drawing Head – Double View is currently on view in The Big Picture, the fourth-floor installment of MoMA’s Abstract Expressionist New York exhibition. One floor down, in the complementary show Ideas Not Theories: Artists and the Club, 1942-1962, the black-on-white composition appears again, this time on the cover of an album by the American composer Morton Feldman. Feldman—who was friends with many of the artists associated with the New York School, Guston in particular—featured the drawing on the jacket of his 1959 Columbia Masterworks release New Directions in Music 2.

February 3, 2011 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions

Last Chance to See Monika Grzymala and the exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century

Posted by Esther Adler, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints

Monika Grzymala’s work always pushes the viewer—it forces us to question how we categorize artworks, what they’re made of, and where they can be installed. Monika has worked with adhesive tape, handmade washi paper, and a diverse range of other materials to create large scale drawings-in-space— works that are grounded in the idea of drawing and the artist’s direct engagement with materials, but that expand into three dimensions, filling and shaping the viewer’s own space.

January 21, 2011 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions

An Inspiring Collaboration: Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara

Posted by Chanice Hughes-Greenberg, Membership Sales Assistant

Larry Rivers. Springtemps, from Stones. Print executed 1958. 1 from illustrated book with 13 lithographs, composition (irreg.). page: 19. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. E. Powis Jones. © 2011 Estate of Larry Rivers/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

As a writer, more specifically a poet, I like to turn to art as a source of inspiration. The relationship between the written and the visual presents itself best in the form of collaboration, where both mediums can share the same space. Collaborations between writers and artists can range from artist books and performances to publications and series of prints. The current Abstract Expressionist New York exhibition shines a light on one of my favorite poets and well-known collaborators: Frank O’Hara.

January 13, 2011 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions

Haegue Yang’s Can Cosies

Posted by Alexander Fang, The Louise Bourgeois Twelve-Month Intern, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books

Haegue Yang. Can Cosies. 2010. Multiple of five cans in knit covers. Publisher and fabricator: the artist, Berlin and Seoul. Edition: 5. The Museum of Modern Art

At first glance, Haegue Yang’s Can Cosies, a recent addition to MoMA’s collection, seem daintily delightful. They are soft (even squishy!) to the touch, colorful, and quirky, as seen in the knitted design of the sleeves. But pick one up and peek under the cover and you are instantly reminded of the mundane object in the work’s title—they’re really cans of tomatoes.

December 20, 2010 | Artists, Performance Series

Allora & Calzadilla: Making Joyful Noise at MoMA

Posted by Jenny Schlenzka, Assistant Curator for Performance, Department of Media and Performance Art

In the video interview above, artists Allora & Calzadilla (Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla) talk about their piece Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on “Ode to Joy” for a Prepared Piano, which is being performed at MoMA through January 11 as part of the Performance Exhibition Series. The duo have the remarkable talent for being playful and political at the same time. In their work they often juxtapose two contradicting elements, creating something new and unexpected. For Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy for a Prepared Piano, the artists cut a hole in the middle of a grand piano and hired professional pianists to stand in it and play Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” upside down and in reverse, while walking the piano around the exhibition space. The result is a marvelous performance piece that is at first startling, then hilarious, and lastly, thought-provoking.

December 17, 2010 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions, Film

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.

December 8, 2010 | Artists, Conservation

Conservation of Floor Cake (Part 8)

Posted by Cindy Albertson, Assistant Conservator

This is the final blog post for the conservation of Claes Oldenburg’s Floor Cake.

Below you can see the individual layers after cleaning.

Newer Posts »

« Older Posts