Hans Bellmer. The Doll. 1937. White ink on black paper. The Joan and Lester Avnet Collection. © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

In organizing the third-floor Drawings collection exhibition Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration, I opted to create groupings based on artists’ common strategies and themes rather than chronology.

As the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) intern for 2012, I am fortunate to be spending time at all three New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) libraries. The Frick Art Reference Library and those of the Brooklyn Museum and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) share many attributes. One of these is the important role that collecting expeditions played in increasing the holdings of each institution.

The Earrings of Madame de…. 1953. France. Directed by Max Ophuls

These notes accompany the screenings of Max Ophuls’s The Earrings of Madame de…on June 13, 14, and 15 in Theater 3.

A shot that does not call for tracks
Is agony for poor old Max,
Who, separated from his dolly,
Is wrapped in deepest melancholy.

Ellen leads the way as we descend into the ruins of the ballet school

After our cab driver takes us what feels far away from the city center of Havana—past brightly colored houses, ominous government buildings, and a circus tent—Ellen and I finally arrive at the Instituto Superior de Artes (ISA), or Higher Institute of Art.

How well do you know your MoMA? If you think you can identify the artist and title of each of these works—all currently on view in the Painting and Sculpture and Contemporary galleries—please submit your answers by leaving a comment on this post. We’ll provide the answers next month (on Friday, July 13).

Participants in The Department of Education’s Access Programs create collages. Photo: Kirsten Schroeder

I’m not an artist. If someone set a blank canvas and some paint down in front of me with the instructions to “go at it,” I’d have a hard time. It’s intimidating!

Sound forms the nucleus of much of American artist Christian Marclay’s practice. From innovative sound collages, with turntables and records employed as instruments; to the splicing and reconstituting of physical records to create strange, jumping concoctions of melodies

Frank O'Hara. Photo by Kenward Elmslie

In a classroom on the Lower East Side where I teach poetry writing to eighth-graders, two headlines preside over separate bulletin boards. One says: “What poets do.”

Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford in The Big Heat. 1953. USA. Directed by Fritz Lang

These notes accompany the screenings of Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat on June 6, 7, and 8 in Theater 3.

Fritz Lang (1890–1976) found his American sea legs with You Only Live Once (1937). In successive years, he adapted the themes of violence and fate that dominated his German films

Sitting before a large glass window at Narita International Airport, en route back home to New York, I contemplated endings. For the past two weeks I had been traveling across Japan on a travel grant, researching Japanese performance and print culture from the historical avant-garde to the contemporary.