As I’ve assisted Roxana Marcoci and Eva Respini with the exhibition Staging Action: Performance in Photography since 1960—which opened January 28 in The Robert and Joyce Menschel Gallery on the third floor—I’ve come to recognize the variety of layered themes that are present in the show, despite the fact that the exhibition itself only includes about 50 works (many of which are new acquisitions).

The idea of looking at music has percolated in my mind for decades. I followed how the violin prodigy Laurie Anderson successfully straddled the worlds of art and music. She cleverly harnessed media to merge visuals with lyrics. Her work unfolded in tandem with technology, as computers and software allowed her to move more fluidly between disciplines. Before long we all stopped seeing a distinction between art and music.

Several exciting things are happening now in the world of Counter Space—time for an update!

These notes accompany the screenings of Sergei Eisenstein’s </i>Bezhin Meadow and Alexander Nevsky</a> on February 16, 17, and 18 in Theater 3.</p>

Sergei Eisenstein was born in 1898 and died, at the age of 50, 63 years ago last week. By the age of 30 he was world-renowned for his theory of montage, as applied to his youthful masterpieces Strike, Battleship Potemkin, and October (Ten Days That Shook the World). These films found heroics in collectives (among workers, sailors, or, in the case of his 1929 Old and New, farmers) and in stick-figure commemoration of the Bolshevik Revolutionaries. In 1930, he was invited to come to Hollywood by Paramount Pictures, and during his time there he pursued several aborted projects, including a film version of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (which was finally made in 1931 by Josef von Sternberg, vacationing from Marlene Dietrich). To delay returning to Russia, Eisenstein persuaded Upton Sinclair and his wife to finance the intended epic Que Viva Mexico!

Working in a library, it is amazing how consistently one is asked, “Which is your favorite book?” I generally stutter and give a muddled reply about how I like the idea of an accumulation of books, or something along those lines. If really pressed, I have recently started mentioning that I like books about books.

Five for Friday, written by a variety of MoMA staff members, is our attempt to spotlight some of the compelling, charming, and downright curious works in the Museum’s rich collection.

With Valentine’s Day just a few days off (thank you, Hallmark and Tiffany’s, for the e-mail reminders), we thought a look at some love- and not-quite-so-love-themed works in the collection was in order. Enjoy, and happy Valentine’s Day!

People often ask me, “How do you discover new films for acquisition for the MoMA collection?” This is a good question that mines the basics of curatorial work, but one that is also impossible to answer in a concise manner. Our collection is growing all the time, and each work has its own unique origin story. Here’s one of them.

These notes accompany the Disney, Iwerks, and Fleischer in the 1930s program on February 9, 10, and 11 in Theater 3.

Last June we presented a brief survey of early animation in both America and Europe. On the continent, with the emergence of figures like Walter Ruttmann and Oskar Fischinger in Germany and (with the coming of sound) Len Lye in Britain, abstraction became the predominant form. Lotte Reiniger continued her silhouettes, eventually landing also in Britain. Ladislas Starevitch spent the first decade of the sound era working on the puppet feature Le Roman de Renard in France.

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.

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 throughout the Museum—please submit your answers by leaving a comment on this post. We’ll provide the answers—along with some information about each work—in two weeks (on Friday, February 18).

ANSWERS TO THE JANUARY 28 CHALLENGE: