For this series of posts, I’ve asked the teaching artists from this season’s In the Making Art Classes to reflect on what they’ve been doing over the past couple of weeks with their teenaged students. Each In the Making class meets once a week—Tuesday or Thursday nights—and focuses on introducing the participants to the materials, techniques, artistic theories, and exhibitions currently on view in MoMA’s galleries. It’s a great way for teens to find a community of positive, creative peers outside of a high school setting, and all classes are offered completely free of charge to the participating students. For this entry, teaching artist Grace Hwang explores her process of introducing students to the themes and philosophies behind our Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement exhibition.

The inspiration for MoMA’s upcoming Lillian Gish retrospective came about during the planning of the publication Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art. When I was asked to write an essay on a film artist for the book, actress Lillian Gish quickly came to mind. Not only is she integral to the history of film, but also to the history of film collecting at MoMA. She was an early champion of the Department of Film’s preservation efforts, and she was instrumental in getting her frequent collaborator D. W. Griffith to give his films to the Museum.

These notes accompany screenings of William Cameron Menzies’s </i>Things to Come on November 24 and 26 in Theater 3.</p>

I can’t deny that there may be a slight “guilty pleasures” element in my choice of Things to Come as part of this series. William Cameron Menzies (1896–1957), however, was a towering figure in the history of film, if not as a director, then as an art director. I would argue that he crossed the line into auteurism, even while working for major directors like Walsh, Dwan, Lubitsch, Borzage, Griffith, Hawks, and Hitchcock.

MoMA’s lobby is a site of perpetual flux and frenzy, a public passageway for people to meet, greet, rest, or chat before embarking on their next experience, either inside or outside the Museum’s walls. When asked by Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, to think of forms that would visually complement and invigorate the rectangular and column-filled lobby space, Paula Hayes, a New York-based sculptor and landscape designer, who enjoys “knocking something off kilter a bit,” was ready to take up the challenge.

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 Building Collections: Recent Acquisitions of Architecture exhibition—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, December 3), along with the next Do You Know Your MoMA? challenge.

ANSWERS TO THE NOVEMBER 5 CHALLENGE:

There’s always been a clock in my kitchen. I can’t imagine otherwise. I bet there’s been one in yours too. I’m not talking about the digital ones on the coffee maker, stove, microwave, etc. that I don’t even bother to set—I’m talking about the clock that’s been in charge of keeping time everywhere I’ve ever lived—my kitchen clock.

In conjuction with the Museum’s Modern Women initiative, PopRally presents An Evening with the Raincoats at MoMA on Saturday, November 20. Today’s guest blogger, Kathleen Hanna—founding member of Bikini Kill, co-creator of the zine Riot Grrrl, and lead singer of the dance-punk band Le Tigre—will DJ the event.

In 1990 I was given a mixtape with The Raincoats’ “Fairytale in the Supermarket” on it. It was the first time I’d ever heard them, and to this day it remains one of my favorite songs. As a 20-year-old who had just starting touring with a band, the song opened up a whole new world to me—one where I didn’t have to play guitar solos or make music the same way my male peers did.

If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you may already have the sense that a lot of people are involved in putting together an exhibition. Curators, preparators, conservators, exhibition designers, registrars, security, and others all have critical roles to play in what you see at the Museum. But what happens when you take the same approach when putting together an exhibition app?

This year marked the 55th anniversary of the opening of MoMA’s photography exhibition The Family of Man, a show that was groundbreaking in its extent—503 images by 273 photographers originating in 69 countries—its physical design, and the numbers of people who experienced it.

Joseph Paxton (1803–1865, head gardener at Chatsworth House, the Duke of Devonshire’s large country estate in Derbyshire, England, was also the creator of the prefabricated cast-iron-and-glass Crystal Palace, which was originally erected in London’s Hyde Park to contain the Great Exhibition of 1851, a showcase of the technological wonders of the industrial revolution.