MoMA | Category: Collection & Exhibitions

Posts in ‘Collection & Exhibitions’

November 18, 2009 | Collection & Exhibitions, Film

Light Dawns on a Marble Head: How Tim Burton Came to MoMA

Posted by Ron Magliozzi, Assistant Curator, Department of Film

Installation view of <i>Tim Burton</i> exhibition entrance with Monster Mouth

Installation view of Tim Burton exhibition entrance with Monster Mouth

If I were to begin with a formal history of the Museum’s eighty or so gallery exhibitions on filmmakers, film studios, and international filmmaking since 1939, this might make for a dull start to our Burton blogs. Instead, here’s my personal story of how MoMA’s Tim Burton began.

In fact I can tell you the precise moment when the idea popped into my head. It happened on July 31, 2005 (my birthday by the way), at an 11:00 a.m. screening of Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Kaufman Astoria Stadium 14 Cinema in Queens, NY. Today, now that all of the single-screen neighborhood movie theaters I spent my childhood in are gone, my favorite place and time to go to a movie is a large multiplex at the earliest morning screening when the melancholy of the deserted, over-sized spaces somehow speaks to my feelings of nostalgia for past movie-going experiences.

November 18, 2009 | Collection & Exhibitions

Walead Beshty in New Photography 2009

Posted by Eva Respini, Associate Curator, Department of Photography

I think it’s a really vital moment for photography right now. Over the past few years, a number of artists have re-opened the discussion on the nature of photography, investigating the materials and processes of the medium itself. Of course, this recent examination is part of a long lineage of experimentation in photography, seen in the work of artistic giants such as László Moholy-Nagy (included in MoMA’s current Bauhaus exhibition) as well as in more recent experimentation by artists such as James Welling. Walead Beshty is active in many of these discussions, as both a writer on the subject and an artist addressing the basic processes of photography.

November 13, 2009 | Behind the Scenes, Collection & Exhibitions, Design, Film

The Making of Tim Burton’s MoMA Animation

Posted by Julia Hoffmann, Creative Director, Advertising and Graphic Design

To help promote MoMA’s Tim Burton retrospective, we asked Burton himself to animate the MoMA logo for a thirty-second video that would be used to promote the exhibition on television, at the Museum, and online. Tim quickly came up with a concept utilizing stop-motion animation, and he asked Allison Abbate, his producer on Corpse Bride (2005) and the upcoming full-length version of Frankenweenie, if she could help pull things together.

November 13, 2009 | Collection & Exhibitions, Tech

Bauhaus: from Weimar to the Web

Posted by Allegra Burnette, Creative Director, Digital Media

Screenshot of the timeline section of the website

Screenshot of the timeline section of the Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity website

Though the contributors from our department (Digital Media) might occasionally indulge in geek speak, we wanted to offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse into some of the projects and collaborations in which we are involved across the Museum and beyond.

We are particularly excited about the slew of exhibitions coming up, starting with Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity, which opens this month. For the exhibition site, we worked with Hello Design in California. We hadn’t worked with them before, but we liked their approach to content and design for the subject matter. Because the Bauhaus has been such an inspiration to so many who came after, we asked Hello what inspired them. How did they create a simple, functional site that captures the spirit of the Bauhaus?

November 12, 2009 | Artists, Collection & Exhibitions

Vik Muniz: Painting with Chocolate

Posted by Eva Respini, Associate Curator, Department of Photography

Vik Muniz Action Photo, After Hans Namuth (from Pictures of Chocolate). 1997 Chromogenic color print Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros in honor of Adriana Cisneros de Griffin through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund Action Photo, after Hans Namuth, 1997 © The Estate of Hans Namuth and Vik Muniz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Vik Muniz. Action Photo, after Hans Namuth from Pictures of Chocolate. 1997. Chromogenic color print. The Museum of Modern Art. Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros in honor of Adriana Cisneros de Griffin through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund. © The Estate of Hans Namuth and Vik Muniz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Vik Muniz is one of the smartest and funniest artists that I have had the pleasure of working with. Last year, as part of the Artist’s Choice exhibition series, Muniz curated a show drawn from the Museum’s collection, and I worked closely with him to realize the project, titled Rebus. Muniz’s installation was one of the most memorable exhibitions from the series, and it gave me insight into the artist’s working process. This collaboration resulted from a long and ongoing relationship—since Muniz first exhibited his work at MoMA in 1997 in New Photography 13, the Museum has been showing and collecting his photographs. MoMA has recently added to the collection a key picture by Muniz, Action Photo, after Hans Namuth from Pictures of Chocolate, and we hope to continue our exploration and appreciation of this leading artist’s work.

November 11, 2009 | Behind the Scenes, Collection & Exhibitions, Events & Programs

Bauhaus Lounge: When the Couch Matches the Art

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

Bauhaus Lounge, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Center

Matching the artwork with the living room couch is one of the perennial concerns of any collector. But when it comes to the Bauhaus, which was as much about designing couches as it was about artworks, finding the right furniture piece shouldn’t be a problem. Or so it seemed to us at the Education Department. During the exhibition Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity, we imagined turning the reading room space in MoMA’s Cullman building into a Bauhaus Lounge, equipped with Bauhaus furniture for visitors to relax on while they watch a video of a reconstruction of Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet or browse through Bauhaus literature. We thought we had enough original Bauhaus-designed chairs lying around MoMA’s buildings that it couldn’t be too hard to put such a lounge together. We do have a Wassily chair (no one remembers where it came from) that sits in the Education offices; we also snatched away a few other chairs from a conference room and two Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs from outside of Glenn Lowry’s office waiting area (his office wants them back after the show).

November 4, 2009 | Collection & Exhibitions

Sterling Ruby in New Photography 2009

Posted by Eva Respini, Associate Curator, Department of Photography

New Photography is one of my favorite shows to organize. Generally, it means working with artists of my own generation, and introducing work that I really believe in to a larger audience. New Photography is about new ideas and new ways of working, and this year’s installment of the exhibition series (which has been around since 1985) is no different. While in previous years we have highlighted work of artists that are not artistically related, this year, I decided to take a thematic approach and bring together the works of artists that participate in the lively debate on the nature of photography in the twenty-first century. This new approach to the exhibition series is an experiment, which is very much in the spirit of the work in the show.

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