MoMA | Category: Collection & Exhibitions

Posts in ‘Collection & Exhibitions’

January 14, 2010 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions

What’s in a Portrait? Rineke Dijkstra’s Almerisa

Posted by Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography

Rineke Dijkstra. From left: Almerisa, Zoetermeer, The Netherlands. March 24, 2007; Almerisa, Zoetermeer, The Netherlands. January 4, 2008; Almerisa, Zoetermeer, The Netherlands. June 19, 2008

One of the reasons I like Rineke Dijkstra’s photographic portraits so much is because of how she manages to convey the vulnerable side of her subjects, caught at a decisive moment of transition in their lives, usually from adolescence to incipient adulthood. Dijkstra was trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and since the mid-1990s she has gained international acclaim for her penetrating pictures of teenagers and young adults. Using a 4×5-inch field camera with a standard lens and a tripod, she creates exacting portraits—frontal views, centered in the frame, posed against a minimal background—that offer remarkable observation and emotional force. Her subjects gaze directly at the camera, combining brooding psychological intensity with the formal classicism of seventeenth-century Dutch portraits by painters such as Johannes Vermeer.

January 13, 2010 | Collection & Exhibitions, Film

The Colorful Tim Burton

Posted by Jenny He, Curatorial Assistant, Film

Sandra (Alison Lohman) and Edward (Ewan McGregor) are young and in love in Columbia Pictures’ fantasy-rich family drama Big Fish, directed by Tim BuSandra (Alison Lohman) and Edward (Ewan McGregor) are young and in love in the fantasy-rich family drama Big Fish. Directed by Tim Burton. Columbia Pictures. Photo credit: Zade Rosenthalrton. Photo credit: Zade Rosenthal

Big Fish. 2003. USA. Directed by Tim Burton. Columbia Pictures. Photo credit: Zade Rosenthal

One of the perks of having an exhibition on view is the excuse to go into the Museum’s galleries every day (one of my curatorial responsibilities is to regularly check on my exhibitions). After poring over the 700+ works in the Tim Burton gallery exhibition, I often make it a point to visit other shows (to bring my mind out of the Burton zone, as I call it), whether to take in my favorite painting (Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, by the way) or to check out a new special exhibition.

January 11, 2010 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions

JoanJonas_iterations of a theme

Posted by Barbara London, Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art

Joan Jonas. Mirage. 1976/2005. Installation with six videos (black and white, sound and silent), props, stages, photographs. The Museum of Modern Art. Gift of Richard Massey, Clarissa Alcock Bronfman, Agnes Gund, and Committee on Media Funds. Installation view, Yvon Lambert, New York, 2005. © 2010 Joan Jonas. Courtesy Yvon Lambert, Paris and New York. Photo: David Regen

Joan Jonas works by developing iterations of a theme. I saw the first version of Mirage as a young MoMA curator in 1975. It was performed at the Anthology Film Archives Theater, then in SoHo on a boutique-free Wooster Street. Joan transfixed me, moving slowly about the stage, stomping her feet to the rhythm of a heartbeat. Images from the cameras focused on her were projected onto a large screen and several monitors dotted around the stage. Interacting with her apparitions, Joan transformed the performance into a dense, many-actor theater piece. Then she disappeared behind the projection screen to appear merely as a silhouette.

January 7, 2010 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions, Design

A Home for PIG 05049

Posted by Paul Galloway, Collection Specialist, Department of Architecture and Design

Christien Meindertsma with Julie Joliat. PIG 05049. 2004-2006.

Christien Meindertsma with Julie Joliat. PIG 05049. 2004–06.

The growing concern for the world’s environment (hotly debated last month in Copenhagen) has inspired people to question the origins of the things they consume, leading to trends like the slow food and fair trade movements, and films like Food, Inc. A similar curiosity led the Dutch artist/designer Christien Meindertsma to track all the products made from “05049,” an actual pig selected at random from a commercial farm in the Netherlands. After its slaughter, Meindertsma discovered that the single pig was used in 185 different products, all of which are pictured in her book. PIG 05049, a collaboration between Meindertsma and the graphic designer Julie Joliat, is a visual catalog of the “afterlife” of one animal that reveals the complexity of the meat-processing industry and of our manmade world.

January 4, 2010 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions, Events & Programs

Museum Kids: Keeping It Real

Posted by Wendy Woon, Edward John Noble Deputy Director for Education

Ethan is delighted by the Formula 1 Racing Car hanging in the Education and Research building lobby.

Just after I’d accepted my job at MoMA, I brought my six-year-old son along with me to visit. He entered the Marron Atrium and, with a sweeping, 360-degree review and an air of finality, announced, “I like your new museum, mom.” Good thing it passed muster.

I often wonder what it is to grow up in a museum. From the time he was two, Ethan had a steady diet of contemporary art. Bridges made of Meccano sets; entire cities built of pots and pans; rooms glowing with neon tubes; walls covered with “parades” of people made from ripped black construction paper; cars and trailers jack-knifed, emerging out of a museum plaza; metal squares on the floor, perfect for playing hopscotch—to Ethan, art always seems full of possibilities.

His own “work” attests to that, as we find colored-tape installations proliferating throughout our apartment—often accompanied by an objet trouvé repurposed in interesting ways, or a small love note to mom and dad.

Ethan, now nine, accompanied me to the office last week.

December 23, 2009 | Behind the Scenes, Collection & Exhibitions

Bauhaus Lab

Posted by Pablo Helguera, Director of Adult and Academic Programs, Department of Education

Bauhaus Lab has been a new experiment for us at MoMA: we sought to create a space where various audiences could both get a sense of the original curricula of the famed school, and participate in events and activities that carried the Bauhaus spirit into the twenty-first century. The planning of the Bauhaus Lab was an extensive process that involved several months of research, planning, and experimentation, and represented a true collaborative effort amongst the Education Department staff. In this video, my colleagues Amy Horschak and Laura Beiles discuss some of the thinking behind the activities we developed and tell a few behind-the scenes anecdotes about the project.

December 18, 2009 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions, Tech

The Gabriel Orozco Website: Stacking the Deck

Posted by Shannon Darrough, Senior Media Developer, Digital Media

The Gabriel Orozco website

“There is no way to identify a work by Orozco in terms of physical product. Instead, it must be discerned through leitmotifs and strategies that constantly recur, but in always mutating forms and configurations.”
—Ann Temkin, the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, from the Gabriel Orozco exhibition catalogue

Uh oh.

That was my first reaction to Ann’s description of Gabriel Orozco’s practice. We were researching the artist, looking for persistent visual themes, devices, or elements in his work that could be used to anchor or accent the design of the exhibition website. The works that I was familiar with at the time—Black Kites, Citroen DL, the Atomist series—didn’t share obvious aesthetic connections, so I assumed that a common thread would be found in the pages of the catalogue. But here Ann was saying that Orozco’s mercurial practice provided little in the way of overt physical similarity. And that, given a looming deadline, was daunting.   More fruitful were meetings Allegra Burnette (Creative Director of Digital Media) and I had with Ann and Paulina Pobocha, a curatorial assistant who worked on the exhibition. Though we didn’t come up with concrete ideas about the look of the site, the curators did provide insight as to its desired spirit: simple and playful. Simple, because the curators wanted something that was easy to use and understand, and playful, because what better way to conceptualize a website dedicated to an artist whose work has included the customization of both billiard and ping pong tables (Carambole with Pendulum, 1996, and Ping-Pond Table, 1998) and chess- and checkerboards (Horses Running Endlessly, 1995, and Lemon Game, 2001)? 

December 17, 2009 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions

A Surrealist Sketchbook: Enrico Donati

Posted by Maura Lynch, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings

Enrico Donati, American, born Italy. 1909-2008. Untitled (Sketchbook). c. 1944. Ink on paper ( three details shown), 10 x 8" (25.4 x 20.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Adele Donati. © The Museum of Modern Art, New York

One of the little-known highlights in the collection of the Department of Drawings is our vast array of artists’ sketchbooks, which range from intimate diaristic notations and markings, to explicit studies for complete works in other mediums, to accomplished works unto themselves, rendered as carefully and thoughtfully as paintings, for example, of the same subject matter.

This past May we received, as a gift, an outstanding example of an artist’s sketchbook. Enrico Donati, who passed away last year at the age of 99, was considered to be “the last of the Surrealists.” His wife, Adele Donati, approached the Museum about donating one of his sketchbooks to the collection.

December 16, 2009 | Collection & Exhibitions, Film

The Sixth Viewing: Deconstructing Burton

Posted by Ron Magliozzi, Assistant Curator, Department of Film

Edward Scissorhands. 1990. USA. Directed by Tim Burton. Shown: Johnny Depp (as Edward Scissorhands). Twentieth Century Fox

Needless to say, coming up with the idea that a Tim Burton exhibition might be a worthwhile endeavor was not enough in itself to make it happen. The next step was to create a project proposal. So even before speaking to the Museum’s Exhibition Committee or to Burton himself, we set about the task of developing a thesis for the show.

December 11, 2009 | Collection & Exhibitions, Design, Events & Programs

Ellen Lupton Inspires a New Kind of Visual Literacy

Posted by August Heffner, Design Manager, Graphic Design

After nearly a month of visiting the Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity exhibition, many of us throughout the Museum took away at least one powerful message: don’t be afraid to cross disciplines. The fearlessness, enthusiasm, and collaboration of the students and masters is apparent in the show’s work.

So, upon learning that design education legend and DIY hero Ellen Lupton would be running several workshops in the Bauhaus Lab series, our Graphic Design department decided not to make a poster for her visit, but rather to shoot and edit a video. Of course, stepping out of your area of expertise requires collaboration, so we teamed up with two of the Museum’s video experts: Beth Harris, Director of Digital Learning, and David Hart, Associate Media Producer. It was a humbling and exciting experience.

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