Architecture Research Office and dlandstudio's New Urban Ground transforms Lower Manhattan with an infrastructural ecology. Courtesy Architecture Research Office and dlandstudio

At one time, climate change could be thought of as a distant threat that could be diffused through prompt collective action. That time is past. Greenhouse gas emissions will not be reduced quickly enough to prevent significant changes to the composition of our atmosphere. Even as we hope for the best, we must prepare for the unpleasant eventualities that scientists expect will arise.

Scarface: The Shame of a Nation. 1932. USA. Directed by Howard Hawks

These notes accompany screenings of Howard Hawks’s </i>Scarface: The Shame of a Nation, September 22, 23, and 24 in Theater 3.</p>

Howard Hawks (1896–1977), in his forty-four year career, was arguably the most consistently successful of all directors in satisfying the commercial demands of the Hollywood studio system while simultaneously maintaining a high level of personal expression in his films. One might say he was the “auteur’s auteur.” It helped a great deal that he was proficient in so many different genres.

Hyde Park Art Center's facade displays art for the community after hours

In my last post we visited Street Level Youth Media and talked to Steven Evans about how his nonprofit empowers and supports Chicago’s young artists by introducing them to new digital media. Today’s post is all about adults and the arts. How do arts organizations engage artists and communities? One place I think has good answers is Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC), one of Chicago’s oldest and best-known arts organizations.

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.

To fulfill your Friday-afternoon Internet-eye-candy needs, I give you . . . cute animals from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art.

David Smith. Don Quixote, state I. 1952. Lithograph. Publisher: the artist, New York. Printer: Michael Ponce de Léon and Margaret Lowengrund, New York. Edition: 14. The Museum of Modern Art. Stephen F. Dull Fund, 2010

I’ve written before about some of the various ways that works are acquired for MoMA’s collection, a primary one being in preparation for upcoming exhibitions. Abstract Expressionist New York, opening here next month, provided one such opportunity.

In this interview, artist Dani Leventhal talks about her video 54 Days this Winter, 36 Days this Spring for 18 Minutes (2009), which she conceived as a site-specific installation for MoMA PS1’s Greater New York 2010 exhibition.

Boudu Saved from Drowning. 1932. France. Directed by Jean Renoir

These notes accompany the </i>Jean Renoir Birthday Celebration screenings on September 14, 15, and 16 in Theater 3.</p>

Jean Renoir (1894–1979) would have been 116 years old tomorrow (September 15). One is hard pressed to name a twentieth-century artist in any medium whose work reflects a richer diversity of feelings and ideas. Renoir’s broad and serious concern with the social state of mankind is combined with a warmly romantic sense of humor, and the whole is given expression through an almost effortless command of the complex tools of his métier. He was a self-proclaimed realist, an improviser, and the infinitely loving apostle of egalitarian humanism.

Working on the Counter Space exhibition, particularly in relation to the third section, Kitchen Sink Dramas, reminded me of an obscure British pop song of thirty years ago.

Hello, Juliet and Aidan here. We’ll be posting here regularly to share behind-the-scenes stories and to expand on themes and objects explored in the Counter Space exhibition, as well as to feature some bits that did not make the final cut.

One of the foremost younger scholars working today on art and gender, Aruna D’Souza wrote “Float the Boat: Finding a Place for Feminism in the Museum,” one of three introductions to the book Modern Women: Women at The Museum of Modern Art (2010). In her essay, and in the above video interview, she talks about the evolution of feminist art history and criticism, and the role within it of the museum in general and of MoMA in particular.