Yoshitomo Nara. Don’t say goodbye. 1992–2000. Pencil on graph paper, 8 1/4 x 5 3/4″ (21 x 14.6 cm). Gift of David Teiger in honor of Agnes Gund. © 2016 Yoshitomo Nara

Inside/Out readers, it has been a great run. Now it’s time to start something new.

After seven terrific years, we are ceasing production on Inside/Out to focus our energies on a forthcoming MoMA publication on Medium. That publication, featuring longer-form articles about the artists, ideas, movements, techniques, and disciplines that continue to shape global art and culture, will debut in mid-October, so please stay tuned for more details.

Rest assured that existing posts aren’t going anywhere, but no new articles will appear on Inside/Out moving forward.

We are sincerely grateful to all of our readers, and especially to those who have shared comments, corrections, and encouragement over the years. We hope to see all of you next month on Medium.

What is the best and worst part of being an artist working at the Museum?
Best: A sense of community is a huge plus for the transplant. Preparators are mixed in age so dialogue is diverse. I came to New York when I was already 40. Never had access to the community in Williamsburg until I met my partner. Access to the collection and the people (curators) who built it like Carolyn Lanchner, Kirk Varnedoe, Rob Storr, Debbie Wye (the most humple of the group), people who were generous with their knowledge.
Worst: The increasing workload—the stress that everyone is under.

All artwork by Elizabeth Riggle. Peonies. 2005. Oil on paper, 72″x72″

What is your favorite works in the MoMa collection and why?
Two: James Ensors’s Tribulations of Saint Anthony and Henri Matisse’s The Moroccans. Ensor’s anxiety translates very well to the present—he was coming up in a world of war (Henry Darger too and his battle scenes). Matisse’s Morroccans represent a release because of the call to prayer.

How long have you worked at MoMA? I started temping in 1996; I was hired full-time in 2000.

How has the Museum changed in 20 years? The physical expansion—it affects everything, the coming expansion and the effect it will have is already anticipated. I was hired because I had been through an expansion at The Field Museum in Chicago so I know what to expect. My hope is a sense of community continues.

Cycling. 2008. Oil on paper, 34″x24″

You have five Paintings for Dorothy works on your website. Can you tell me who Dorothy is and what inspired these works?
Dorothy is my partner’s mother. She had early Alzheimer’s and I was there to witness that transformation. I was the only one who was there for her to download her information, her stories. She loved roses and we planted a flower garden with trellis in the back for her to look at. The trellis and the shapes in the painting are disappearing—the paintings were made with a lot of wiping, dissipation of imagery; dissipation of her memory; there is always a trace when you use oil (paint)—love that.

Can you tell me what inspired you for your latest series, Studies for a Vertebral Opera? I was reintroduced to working with the figure through yoga. Drawing the spine came from a class on anatomy, which was part of yoga intensive training.

Studies for a Vertebral Opera in Riggles’s studio

Are cartoons an inspiration for your work? I noticed in the Studies for a Vertebral Opera paintings they have a real comic character feel.
I couldn’t contain it in the notebooks—it kept getting bigger until it took over the studio. That comes from my education in Chicago. We were taught to build a picture not paint a painting. Pae Yoshida, Barbara Rossi were more “imagist teachers.” Pae Ishida taught Jim Nutt and the Harry Hoo, outsider work always presented equally; we were taught in the basement of the Art Institute.

The Groundless Paintings from the same series are pretty disturbing as well.
I love them because they are transparent.

Is that why you call them groundless?
Yes and they are how I figure things out- like what something looks like—the transparency when hung on the wall—all you see is the paint—no ground, no gesso.

A mutual friend, the documentary filmmaker and artist Carol Saft, recently told me you were participating in a cultural exchange in Egypt. Can you tell me about that?
A colleague of mine from the Art Institute of Chicago asked artists from her community in Brooklyn to engage with artists in Egypt through the safe use of images. (In Islam the human figure is not allowed to be represented.) We exchanged self-portraits through silhouettes (in their silhouettes they included poetry), and Skype projects where we exchanged information in our world and they in theirs. (More info on this can be seen here)

What are you working on now? I just applied and was accepted for a residency at Yaddoo to continue work on The Scores drawings. I lost nine weeks last summer caring for my mother and Yaddoo is giving me five weeks back to continue this work

All artwork by Mark Williams. Beat. 1994. Acrylic on wood, 8” x 32”. “This is the first painting I made when I changed the guidelines of my art making.”

MoMA: When are you able to work on your artwork?
Evenings and weekends; I’m pretty disciplined about that. I look at each coming week and pencil in studio time. There is always something I can do even if it is 5 to 10 minutes. If I looked for the perfect block of time it would make it prohibitive to get any work done.

What is the best and worst part of being an artist working at the Museum?
Best:
Working with a super high-caliber team already in place. Being here as an artist you notice even within a few weeks how to both fit into a group and bring something special to it. This is different from being a solitary artist in the studio; that and seeing the masterworks in the collection.

Worst:
The juggling act of balancing time with family (wife and daughter), a full-time job, and a studio practice

What is your favorite works in MoMA’s collection and why?
I like Frank Stella’s Astoria. I’m also a fan of Agnes Martin, El Lissitsky, Malevich and Rodchenko; I think of them as my art ancestors. As for younger/current artists, Charlene Von Heyl

How long have you worked for MoMA? 22 years

How has the Museum changed in 22 years?
It has expanded tremendously—the exhibition space, the staff, the value of the works we are moving in and out of the building has become greater and greater. It has grown in every way.

How has being able so directly involved with the handling of the art at the Museum changed your work? Or has it?
It hasn’t to a great degree, but I always enjoy the opportunity to see the work unglazed, unmatted, the way the artist made them; if the painting or mark making goes up to the edge, past the edge, etc. To me everything is a decision, so when I can see the object as it is without all the safety, preservation, framing things layered on top of it I am learning something about the artist and their process.

How has your work changed over 40 years?
Just before I started working at the Museum I changed from what I would call a “hot” format—patching, curves, whirling paintings on top of constructed armatures that I made out of wood that ultimately was too slow a way to work through ideas and by the time I was done making the armatures I was too tired to paint. I wanted to work through ideas with agility, so that summer I reviewed my notes and sketches and realized they looked like I had zoomed into one section of the paintings which made me think, “what if I just made an image from a concentrated detail of the previous work?” The details were more rectilinear. After some time I changed the guidelines of my art making to a “cooler” format—no curves, no diagonals, and instead of three-dimensional structures they became low-relief planes. That opened up a whole new field of variations.

Three paintings made in 2013–14. Oil enamel and acrylic on canvas, 24” x 20”

The body of work you were doing up until approximately two years ago remind me of Robert Ryman’s work in that there are small but very important variations in each piece which at a quick glance may look similar.
I did see the Ryman show at MoMA in 1994 and loved it and went back several times.

Yes, that was a great exhibition curated by Robert Storr. I also went back again and again. That was just before I started working at the Museum.

Artist Book. 2015. Oil and tape in sketchbook, 10” x 20”

Your work has become less “mechanical” and more gestural. How did this come about?
I did a residency at The Albers Foundation where I had a chance to go through numerous catalogues by both Anni and Josef Albers inspired me to step it up and expand. I took tons of photos of everything at the foundation’s property and expanded how I was using tape in my works. I kept playing with tape on its own. Once while doing that in the studio, working with colored tape on the actual desk Josef Albers had worked on (!!), Nicholas Fox Weber, the executive director, brought in some visitors, saw what I was doing and said, “you know Josef Albers told me he was the one who suggested Mondrian use colored tape in his work.” That was exciting. I continued to experiment with grids and various colored tapes. This led me to place an overleaf of paper on top of a tape grid I had made directly on the surface of my worktable. Using a squeegee to apply paint meant I could also remove the paint with the same tool. I use this process of adding and subtracting to develop a compelling, cogent image.

View of studio, 2016. Moving forward with three new drawings from the series “The Grid and The Gesture.” Oil on Yupo, each 40” x 52”

You are retiring from the Museum; can you tell me what your plans are?
I’m going to shift my focus to making art during the day, in daylight and working on the new works for upcoming exhibition opportunities. I’ll have more time to develop and explore this new body of work.

Sounds pretty great to me.

Ansel Adams. Picasso’s Guernica. 1942. Gelatin silver print. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Departmental Collection. © 2016 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. © 2016 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The famed painting is widely recognized as one of the 20th century’s greatest works of protest art. Created for the Spanish Republic’s pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life, or the World’s Fair, for short, Guernica measures an enormous 11.5 feet tall by 25.5 feet long (349.3 x 776.6 cm). Picasso received the commission to paint a mural in January 1937; although he had lived in France since 1904, he was keenly aware of the civil war that raged in his native Spain between the Republic and General Francisco Franco’s Nationalists. Picasso initially had difficulty finding inspiration for the work’s subject; early sketches show he had explored apolitical scenes of an artist’s studio. Then, on April 27, 1937, German warplanes, at the service of Franco, bombed the Republican-controlled Basque town of Guernica, killing innocent civilians and decimating the town. When news of the massacre reached Paris, Picasso set out to depict the atrocities for the world to see.

The attack on Guernica occurred just weeks before the Exposition’s May 25 opening, and it would take Picasso until June to finish the mural. The custom-made stretcher, however, was likely built much earlier, soon after he received the commission. To support such a large canvas, it was important to have a strong, sturdy stretcher. Using thick, heavy wood, each piece was hand-carved to create interlocking joints where crossbars—five vertical and two horizontal—intersected, while a peg-and-hole system connected crossbars to the exterior supports. Most importantly, a diagonal joint was used to connect two pieces of wood to create each 25.5-foot-long horizontal support, an unusual design for a stretcher.

Diagram of Guernica stretcher, September 1953. Department of Painting and Sculpture Guernica Records, “General.” The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York

This diagonal joint was one of a few clues confirming Aviram’s hunch that the 11 pieces discovered in storage did indeed once support Guernica. Another important clue was the aforementioned sticker, which turned out to be a paper label used to identify incoming loans to an exhibition. Still legible on the label are “San Francisco Museum of Art” (now SFMOMA) and “Picasso.” The word “mural” is written in for the title (this was often used to refer the work before Guernica was made its definitive title), leaving little doubt about the stretcher’s origins.

The disassembled stretcher was brought from storage to the Museum, where frame shop foreman Peter Perez attempted to fit the pieces together. Yet Perez concluded that the dimensions didn’t match up; the stretcher was much too small to be Guernica’s. Stumped, Aviram consulted a fellow conservator during a trip to the Reina Sofia, the Madrid museum where Guernica is currently on display. They agreed that no other painting could belong to the stretcher, so when Aviram returned to New York she had the 11 heavy stretcher bars brought to MoMA’s conservation studio for a second examination.

The pieces were laid out on the floor of the studio and arranged according to various markings for assembly. It quickly became apparent that some pieces were missing. Conservation fellow Ellen Davis then created a diagram of the stretcher, showing the pieces they had and those that, given the design, must be missing. The dimensions of this reconstructed stretcher matched those of Guernica exactly. Documents in the conservation file revealed that Guernica’s original stretcher had been replaced in 1964—it was too heavy and worn to properly support the enormous canvas—confirming that what was uncovered in storage was the original stretcher. To find out where the stretcher had been, both before and after 1964, I went digging in the MoMA Archives.

Diagram of Guernica stretcher showing pieces found and those missing, reconstructed by Anny Aviram and Ellen Davis. Photograph shows torn loan sticker. Guernica conservation file, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Despite receiving mixed reviews at the Paris Exposition, Guernica quickly became a universal symbol of the inhumanity of modern war in an increasingly tense Europe. Following the close of the Exposition at the end of 1937, the painting toured Europe (notably, it did not travel to Spain) and then the United States, where it was displayed across the country to raise money for the Spanish Refugee Relief Campaign. On Monday, May 1, 1939, Guernica arrived in New York for display in the Valentine Gallery. It then traveled to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago before returning to New York on October 16, 1939, just weeks after World War II broke out in Europe, for the MoMA exhibition Picasso: Forty Years of His Art.

The retrospective, including Guernica, traveled to Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and San Francisco well into 1940. At the close of the exhibition, with war terrorizing Europe, Picasso asked that MoMA continue to safely house Guernica and about 95 other drawings and paintings he lent to the exhibition. These works remained at MoMA through the 1958 exhibition Picasso: 75th Anniversary, after which all but Guernica and its preparatory drawings were returned to the artist. These Picasso agreed to loan to the Museum indefinitely, stipulating that they be turned over to Spain only when Franco was no longer in power and democracy was restored.

From left: Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Pablo Picasso, Jacqueline Roque, and Margaret Scolari Barr at Picasso’s home, “La Californie,” in Cannes, France, July 1956. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Papers, 12.II.M. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photo: James Thrall Soby

The extensive traveling took a toll on the painting and its stretcher, however. Because of the painting’s size, each time it traveled the canvas had to be removed from the stretcher and rolled up, and the stretcher disassembled. MoMA’s founding director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., described the process in 1969: “Picasso had too generously lent the Guernica about twenty times all over Europe and the U.S.A. The painting had been rolled, packed, shipped, unrolled, stretched, hung, and then unstretched and rolled, not counting the times when our Museum re-installed it after its return from elsewhere” (Dorothy C. Miller Papers, VI.B.I. MoMA Archives).

As early as 1957 MoMA’s painting conservator Jean Volkmer first wrote to Barr about the need for a new stretcher. The wood had deteriorated and become weak with the frequent disassembly, and Volkmer explained that the canvas was “drooping off an inadequate strainer” and that the size and weight of the canvas made it impossible to pull taut manually. The only solution was by “mechanical means”—a new, lighter stretcher with an expansion bolt design that, by using adjustable hardware in the joints, would provide strong, lasting support to the canvas. Though MoMA did not own Guernica, Barr, Volkmer, and the staff felt it was their responsibility as the painting’s caretakers to replace the original stretcher in order to preserve the work.

Alfred H. Barr, Jr. in front of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937) at The Museum of Modern Art, 1962
Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York

A new stretcher was indeed built by MoMA’s then-framer Andrew Olah, but it would be seven years before an opportunity to replace the original stretcher arose. On the occasion of MoMA’s 35th anniversary and the opening of the Museum’s new building in 1964, Guernica was reinstalled in a new location, providing an opportunity to restretch the canvas on the new stretcher. At that point, Guernica’s original stretcher must have been sent to storage for safekeeping.

Clockwise from top left: Reinstalling Guernica in 1964. From left: Dorothy Miller, conservation assistant, Tosca Zagni, Jean Volkmer, and Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Conservation files, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Painting conservator Jean Volkmer restretching Picasso’s Guernica to its new stretcher, The Museum of Modern Art, 1964. Conservation files, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Conservators and art handlers preparing to attach Picasso’s Guernica to its new stretcher, The Museum of Modern Art, 1964. Conservation files, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. All photos: Nancy Astor

In 1981 the Museum returned Guernica to Spain and the new stretcher went with it. The original had been forgotten, never recorded or cataloged, nestled among MoMA’s ever-growing collection. For the past 52 years this well-traveled, timeworn stretcher has inconspicuously remained in our carefully monitored storage, surviving two building expansions and a move to a new facility, where it has been cared for by our diligent staff. Now the stretcher, and its 80 years of history, will travel to its final home in Spain for the first time.

Clockwise from top left: Museum staff and Spanish officials before Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937) prior to its shipment to Spain, September 8, 1981. Department of Public Information Records, II.B. 1638. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photo: Leonardo LeGrand; Pablo Picasso’s Guernica being carried down main stairs from gallery on September 8, 1981. Department of Public Information Records, II.B. 1638. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photo: Leonardo LeGrand; Museum staff packing Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937) for shipment to Spain, September 8, 1981.Department of Public Information Records, II.B. 1638. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photo: Mali Olatunji

Rediscovering Guernica’s stretcher was a tremendous joy, reminding us of the work’s long history at the Museum and demonstrating how very much alive and filled with treasures our collection storage is. Thirty-five years after then-director Richard E. Oldenburg shared news of Guernica’s departure from MoMA with his staff, his words again resonate with us: “It has been a very great privilege and a tribute to this institution to have had this work entrusted to us for so many years […] we can take comfort and further pride in parting with it with good grace, with all possible concern for Picasso’s wishes and with due recognition of the special significance which Guernica has for the people of Spain” (Guernica records, correspondence 1960s, MoMA Archives). Today, we take similar pride in continuing MoMA’s commitment to the history of modern art, sending the original stretcher to the Reina Sofia for its Guernica archive so that the historic painting’s full story can be told.

Daanish Masood presenting his team’s project, BeAnotherLab, on the first night of the program. Photo: Manuel Martagon

With The New York Times handing out free Google Cardboard viewers to its subscribers and Facebook featuring 360-video functions, virtual reality is now more visible to a general audience. And as VR becomes more accessible to both content creators and consumers, activists are also using it to further their socially focused projects.

In a two-part series I recently developed here at MoMA called The New Virtual Reality: Engage, Empathize, and Educate, three creatives presented virtual reality projects they developed to inspire social change and mobilize community action. (See the full audio files below.) Niko Koppel’s project, Crime Scene, focuses on the stories of victims of police brutality because, as he said, “I want everyone to be the stakeholders…with something that I think is a social injustice. I want people to look at the experience and feel more responsible for doing something.” [VR Panel 1, 33:15] The popularity of virtual reality has created momentum outside the tech world, and content creators are using this to their advantage. Panelist Daanish Masood asserted, “I’m not so interested in fetishizing technology, what I’m interested in is using it as a vehicle to mobilize action.” [VR Panel 1, 39:16] The BeAnotherLab project that Masood helped create puts viewers in the body of others to experience being another gender, race, etc. Similarly, Ziv Schneider’s project The Museum of Stolen Art is “a tool for law enforcement” in that it encourages Google Cardboard users to view virtual collections of stolen art, and then go out into the real world to look for them [VR Panel 2, 22:40]. And so, though all three projects take place in virtual reality, they have timely real-world applications and goals propelled by the current popularity of the medium.

Ziv Schneider showing her project, The Museum of Stolen Art, on the second night of the program. Photo: Marily Konstantinopoulou

And it is because of the content that MoMA is now a part of the conversation. It has taken some time for virtual reality to mature, but now that it has overcome its novelty and tendency toward generating pieces that “just look really cool,” projects are emerging that have depth and gravity. As moderator and MoMA curatorial assistant Michelle Millar Fisher put it, “When we invest in a public program, or an exhibition, or a collection item, it’s because of the content of that work and it’s not because of the tool or the technology necessarily…. While it is not possible as a design curator to ignore the tools and technologies that give rise to conversation and debate in the current moment, it really is not so much a case of ‘well, VR may be over in two minutes, so we shouldn’t go down this route.’ I’m totally compelled by the three works that we’ve had…and don’t think we would have had them here if not.” [VR Panel 2, 36:09]

What do you think? Has the time for virtual reality already passed? Will it continue to shape the way stories are told, or could it fall short of the expectations society has for it?

A program attendee trying out the demo of Niko Koppel’s Crime Scene. Photo: Manuel Martagon

This was just one topic that was broached during these panels, along with VR’s potential as an “empathy machine” and as a source for healing. See below for the full audio of both sessions.

VR PANEL 1

VR PANEL 2

Fairchild Aerial Surveys. Fairchild Plant, N.Y. 1949. New York State Archive

Aerial Imagery in Print, 1860 to Today, the current MoMA Library exhibition, examines the use of traditional publishing in cultivating a discourse around aerial imagery.

A section of the show focuses on 20th-century popularization of aerial photography, including its development as a tool for land use by architects, developers, governments, and the agriculture industry. Looking at some of these uses more closely reveals a persuasive element, especially regarding subtle debate about modernist approaches to architecture and planning.

Here we’ll zoom in on examples from Fairchild Aerial Surveys, which cornered the market (literally, if you think about it) on aerial photography in the U.S. Then we’ll consider this legacy in light of exciting new approaches to aerial imagery in our time.

Fairchild Aerial Surveys (1924–65) was an early venture of entrepreneur Sherman Fairchild. His career began during World War I, when he engineered an aerial camera more stable than its predecessors. Cameras based on this technology became the military and industrial standard for decades, and the company designed cameras for the early space program as well.

In her dissertation, Rebecca Ross argues that the development of aerial photography was integral to the professionalization of 20th-century city planning, examining how companies like Fairchild made possible “a productive link between the working methods of planning professionals and the broader visual culture in which they are situated.” Indeed, as historian Thomas Campanella observes, in the visual culture of the early 1920s, when the company incorporated, “Aerial imagery was . . . a wonder of modern technology—most people had never seen their own city or town from the air.”

The company’s success was based on aggressive promotion as much as technical innovation. As professor Jason Weems writes, Fairchild mobilized images such as the first aerial survey of Manhattan (1921) into “a centerpiece of his business promotions, combining fact and hyperbole to outline the advantages of using aerial photography in nearly all facets of urban planning and management.”

Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc. For Photography from the Air. 1934

The combination sales and technical manual For Photography from the Air (1934) exemplifies this strategy. Featuring a colorful cover and dramatic images along with copious technical detail, one can see how the company integrated robust technological development with organized surveying to cultivate a market for aerial imagery.

Historian Dolores Hayden articulates how, beginning with photographs and now moving into GPS-based visualizations, aerial imagery has become crucial to contemporary land use discourse: “aerial photographs reveal the scale of existing and new development [and they] can be understood by people without technical training, in a way that zoning maps, zoning codes, satellite surveys, and traditional site plans cannot.”

In these contexts, one thinks of aerial images as anonymous information sources striving for objectivity and usefulness, rather than authored photographs. At top, for example, is a typical survey image, courtesy of the New York State Archive. Titled Fairchild Plant, N.Y. (1949) it’s one largely unremarkable image in a vast survey of New York State. Even though the photographers were barnstorming their own workplace in Woodside, Queens, the image is consistent with all the others: utilitarian and dispassionate.

But by examining how Fairchild images like these circulated, we can see how they became instrumentalized in debate about modern architecture and planning. An excellent example is found in The Disappearing City (1932), Frank Lloyd Wright’s manifesto against conventional urbanism and preview for his vision of Broadacre City. Of the numerous aerial views in the book (note the abstracted map on the cover), the opening Fairchild photograph depicts New York City as a smoke-choked, dehumanized dystopia, out of touch with the natural landscape. It clearly illustrates Wright’s opinion of the vertical city as “Tier upon tier the soulless shelf, the empty crevice, the winding ways of the windy, unhealthy canyon. The heartless grip of the selfish, grasping, universal structure. Box on box beside box. Black shadows below with artificial lights burning all day in the little caverns and squared cells.”

From left: Frank Lloyd Wright. The Disappearing City. 1932; Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc. Frontispiece in The Disappearing City. 1932

Now let’s compare that with a Fairchild view from the Museum’s Photography collection: The Mount Everest of Manhattan: The Silvered Peak of the Chrysler Building (1930). Here the vertical city is heroicized through numerous photographic choices: the composition is dynamic, with the “spark plug” tower jutting vertically into the frame and the street grid tipped on to the diagonal. The perspective is deep yet every building is in crisp focus. The light is bright and shadows are at a minimum (to get that effect, Fairchild photographers would buzz by skyscrapers at mid-day).

Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc. The Mount Everest of Manhattan: The Silvered Peak of the Chrysler Building. 1930

How might such a photograph have been used? The Museum’s print came from New York Times, and while it’s not known if this image appeared in the newspaper, the visible crop marks indicate publication in some form, and a search of the Times’ digital archive shows regular use of Fairchild images, usually illustrating articles with a positive spin on New York City’s ambitious architecture. The upbeat attitude is underscored by the dramatic title, in which the Chrysler Building (a stack of offices, after all) is compared to the world’s tallest natural wonder–very different from Wright’s rant against vertical urbanism.

The new century is an exciting time for aerial imagery, especially in mashups of digitized and born-digital maps. For smartphone users, Google Maps (and Pokemon Go) are now part of everyday life, and librarians, data visualizers, and artists are mobilizing geospatial data in new and revealing ways. Just as with the earlier images, these are very much situated in time and place, reflecting today’s broader visual culture.

An example is the NYPL Digital Labs Map Warper, which layers digitized traditional maps onto their born-digital counterparts. For example, here’s a “rectified” map of Woodside, Queens, made by Fairchild for the New York City Chief Engineer and used for “estimate and apportionment.”

Fairchild Aerial Surveys. Fairchild Plant, N.Y. 1949. New York State Archive

At its simplest, the mashup enables us to time travel between 1924 and the digital now. For example, it’s hard to tell from the earlier map (above) if Fairchild had set up shop, but on today’s map (below) the facility is long gone while Kennedy Airport looms large. What was it about this area that lent itself to air travel?

But more subtly, the rectified map reveals curvature distortions around the edges of the original, characteristic of lens-based images. In fact, the way that the shape of the image slightly thrusts to the right suggests the direction the plane was flying, more precisely situating its making in time and space. One can imagine a team like this, photographed just a year after the first map was made, doing the flyover.

Fairchild Aerial Photography Crew. 1925

Comparisons like this remind us of the constructed nature of both: one made by a person in an airplane holding a camera and pointing an 8×10 sensitized negative at the earth, and the other compiled of layered, coded, and dynamically generated satellite data. Both reflect the technologies with which they were made and both are open to interpretation by historians, officials, and planners–as well as by you and me. We’ve come a long way from barnstorming skyscrapers.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed leads Agora, How Will Art Solve Problems?, Wednesday July 6, 2016.
Photo: Manuel Martagon. © 2016 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

As part of the July 6 Agora series, I had the privilege of hosting a conversation with attendees addressing the question: How Will Art Solve Problems?

Understanding the role art plays in solving problems prompts us to consider the parameters we use to define problems, the metrics we use to assess whether a problem is solved, and the elasticity of the boundaries around what we consider “art.” The word “will” places us in the context of futurity and possibility. Given the litany of problems at global, national, and local levels, many of us long for a future that is remarkably better than the past and the present space we experience quite viscerally. We may be suspended in a state of contemplation about the future tense, or a not-yet-happened state. Indeed, this future is tense.

The role art plays in transitioning into the future and the content of this future was rigorously discussed during our Agora session. Many of the participants acknowledged the aesthetic importance of art, but could not divorce the this from acknowledging art as a tool to raise awareness, to uncover marginalized histories, and to provide space to imagine other ways the future can unfold.

Below are a set of framing texts that have shaped my understanding on the intersections between art, futurity, and justice.

“Positive Obsession” from Bloodchild and Other Stories
By Octavia Butler (Seven Stories Press, 1995)

“Vision & Justice”
By Sarah Lewis (Aperture, Summer 2016)

“A Circle of Blood: Jack Whitten on Art in Times of Unspeakable Violence”
By Jack Whitten (Walker Magazine, December 3, 2015)

The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness
By Kevin Young (Graywolf Press, 2012)

“The Radical Vision of Toni Morrison”
By Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah (The New York Times, April 8, 2015)

“What Exceeds the Hold?: An Interview with Christina Sharpe”
By Selamawit Terrefe (Rhizomes, Issue 29, 2016)

“David Scott”
By Stuart Hall (BOMB magazine, Winter 2005)

“An Interview with Fred Moten, Part I and Part II”
By Adam Fitzgerald (Literary Hub, August 5, 2015)

“How Do Black Lives Matter in MoMA’s Collection?”
By Thomas Lax (Inside/Out blog, July 9, 2016

Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums
By Mabel O. Wison (University of California Press, 2012)

“Black Protest Writing, from W.E.B DuBois to Kendrick Lamar”
By Precious Rasheeda Muhammad (Literary Hub, August 10, 2016)

“These Brooklyn-Based Artists Are Building An Archive Of The Future For The African Diaspora”
By Antoinette Isama (OkayAfrica, March 1, 2016)

“Poor Meme, Rich Meme”
By Aria Dean (Real Life, July 25, 2016)

“W. E. B. Du Bois’s Modernist Data Visualizations of Black Life”
By Allison Meier (Hyperallergic, July 4, 2016)

]]> 0 https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2016/08/23/on-the-25th-anniversary-of-madonna-truth-or-dare/ https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2016/08/23/on-the-25th-anniversary-of-madonna-truth-or-dare/#comments Tue, 23 Aug 2016 16:41:07 +0000 https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/?p=42683

Madonna: Truth or Dare. 1991. USA. Directed by Alek Keshishian. Courtesy of Miramax Films/Photofest

“Sometimes I sing and dance around the house in my underwear. Doesn’t make me Madonna.” – Joan Cusack in Mike Nichols’s Working Girl (1988)

Madonna doesn’t need much of an introduction. Lest we forget, she reminded us last year with the song “Bitch I’m Madonna.” Wikipedia lists her specifically as “Madonna (entertainer),” as opposed to the representation of Mary, mother of Jesus, but I’m not sure it’s necessary; Madonna as Mary doesn’t even show up on the first five pages of a simple Google search. Suffice it to say, Madonna (entertainer) is the more instantly recognizable mother figure in American culture: the mother of pop. She continues to be a singer, dancer, actress, and one of the biggest cultural icons of this century.

I should note that my early fascination with Madonna was a direct result of my sister, who I idolized arguably as much as she idolized Madge. Born in 1982, my sister’s coming of age was closely correlated with Madonna’s career trajectory. Four Halloweens of fingerless lace gloves and strings of pearls, set to the soundtrack of “Lucky Star” and “Holiday”—the early 1990s at their best.

I recently rewatched the film Truth or Dare (originally released as Truth or Dare: In Bed with Madonna in 1991), this time not on VHS, and without the explicit goal of learning how to “vogue”—as Madge so gracefully demonstrates in her belted, black-spandex one-piece. (If you’d like to attempt to vogue now, I highly recommend checking out some of the Flashmob tutorials currently listed on YouTube.)

Truth or Dare is a documentary that follows Madonna’s famed Blond Ambition World Tour of 1990. Comprised of 57 shows across the globe, the tour showcased her album Like a Prayer and the soundtrack to I’m Breathless, including such megahits as “Like a Prayer” and “Express Yourself.” It was during this time that she introduced the Jean Paul Gaultier cone bra and her bleach-blonde ponytail hairpiece to the world. The tour was touted as the “Greatest Concert of the 1990s” by Rolling Stone magazine thanks to its perfect cocktail of singing, dance, fashion, theater, and performance art. The tour also quickly became infamous for its open portrayal of sexuality onstage and clear invocations of Catholicism. Pope John Paul II urged the public not to attend the concert, and Madonna canceled one of three shows in Italy.

Madonna: Truth or Dare. 1991. USA. Directed by Alek Keshishian. Courtesy of Miramax Films/Photofest

From her first moments onstage, Madonna makes it clear that she is there to present contradictions for her audience to grapple with: she appears onstage in a silk corset worn over men’s suit pants. Much of the rest of the tour features her subverting gender norms, knowingly embodying Freud’s Madonna–whore complex. The concept outlined two mutually exclusive ways to construct a sexual identity, and has been personified by two of Madonna’s biggest influences: the ever feminine Marilyn Monroe and the gender-subversive Marlene Dietrich.

The film works to emphasize these dualities both stylistically—the live performances are shot in color and any behind-the-scenes shots are in black and white—and in its presentation of its star. Truth or Dare tracks between Madonna as a performer and Madonna as a person, between the caring and doting mother to her dancers and staff, and the difficult narcissist who demands perfection. During an interview in the beginning of the film, Madonna admits to seeking “emotionally crippled” dancers so that she can more fully act the matron.

These dualities hit on a fundamental aspect of not only human psychology, but of art and creativity. Carl Jung, in Modern Man in Search of a Soul, writes, “Every creative person is a duality or a synthesis of contradictory aptitudes.” Truth or Dare reminds me of so much of the modern and contemporary art we talk about today. I’m reminded of other artworks that deal with unlikely contradictions, like Robert Ryman’s white canvases or John Cage’s 4:33.

Madonna references these dualities in a statement she put out following the Vatican’s dismissal of her tour:

My show is not a conventional rock show but a theatrical presentation of my music. And, like theater it asks questions, provokes thoughts and takes you on an emotional journey portraying good and bad, light and dark, joy and sorrow, redemption and salvation. I do not endorse a way of life but describe one and the audience is left to make its own decisions and judgments.

In other words…Bitch, I’m Madonna.

On Wednesday, August 24, MoMA presents a special 25th anniversary Film Plus screening of Madonna: Truth or Dare, followed by a conversation with director Alek Keshishian, Blond Ambition Tour choreographer Vincent Paterson, and dancers Jose Gutierez and Salim Gauwloos, moderated by Joe Berger. Become a Film Plus member to attend.

]]> 2 https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2016/08/19/warm-up-2016-week-10-highlights/ https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2016/08/19/warm-up-2016-week-10-highlights/#respond Fri, 19 Aug 2016 20:42:05 +0000 https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/?p=42653 This weekend marks the penultimate Saturday of the 2016 Warm Up season!

Powell, Russell Haswell, and Not Waving of Diagonal Records will start the day, followed by a thrilling set by Marcus Marr, a regular at Berlin’s famed nightclub Berghain, and exciting indie electronic sounds by Hot Chip. The day culminates in a set by UK-based DJs Joy Orbison and Ben UFO.

In reverse order of appearance this Saturday, August 20:

Joy Orbison + Ben UFO / Hinge Finger + Hessle Audio / London, UK

Hot Chip (DJ Set) / Domino / UK

Marcus Marr / DFA Records / London, UK

Powell, Russell Haswell, Not Waving / Diagonal + XL Recordings / London, UK

Doors open at noon, with performances running from 3:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Be sure to browse the full summer schedule and buy tickets here before they sell out!

In case you missed last week’s show, Special Request played an exhilarating set of frenetic breakbeats and rave classics. Before his set, Doc Scott had the crowd moving to a mix of drum and bass and trip hop, Mumdance and Logos played a heavy set of modern UK club, SADAF played a genre-hopping DJ set before an experimental performance with live strings and vocals, and SHYBOI opened the event with a poignant political set mixing found recordings and minimalist electronic sounds.

Special Request performing at MoMA PS1’s Warm Up on August 13, 2016. Image courtesy of MoMA PS1. Photo: Charles Roussel

Doc Scott performing at MoMA PS1’s Warm Up on August 13, 2016. Image courtesy of MoMA PS1. Photo: Charles Roussel

Mumdance and Logos performing at MoMA PS1’s Warm Up on August 13, 2016. Image courtesy of MoMA PS1. Photo: Charles Roussel

SADAF performing at MoMA PS1’s Warm Up on August 13, 2016. Image courtesy of MoMA PS1. Photo: Charles Roussel

SHYBOI performing at MoMA PS1’s Warm Up on August 13, 2016. Image courtesy of MoMA PS1. Photo: Charles Roussel

]]> 0 https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2016/08/19/do-you-know-your-moma-the-final-quiz/ https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2016/08/19/do-you-know-your-moma-the-final-quiz/#comments Fri, 19 Aug 2016 15:58:53 +0000 https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/?p=42657

Welcome to the final installment of the Do You Know Your MoMA? quiz!

How well do you know your MoMA? If you think you can identify the artist and title of these works from MoMA’s collection—all currently on view in the Museum—please submit your answers in the comments. We’ll provide the answers next week in an update to this post. Good luck!

UPDATE
Here are the quiz answers:

1. Roy Lichtenstein. Drowning Girl. 1963

2. Fernand Léger. Woman with a Book. 1923

3. Diego Rivera. Young Man in a Gray Sweater (Jacques Lipchitz). 1914

4. Pablo Picasso. Repose. 1908

5. Frida Kahlo. My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree) 1936

6. William H. Johnson. Three Girls. 1941

ANSWERS TO THE JULY 15 CHALLENGE:
Do you have what it takes to claim this month’s title?

1. Mason Williams, Various Artists, Photograph by Max Yavno. Bus (Copy signed by artists from the Word and Image exhibition, 1968). 1967–68

2. Wojciech Fangor. Number 17. 1963

3. Marcel Duchamp. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Green Box) (La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même [Boîte verte]). 1934

4. Nam June Paik. Zen for TV. 1963

5. Sir William Lyons, Malcolm Sayer, William M. Heynes. E-Type Roadster 1961

6. Berenice Abbott. Photogram: Wave Pattern, MIT. 1958–61

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