Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate in Chicago's Millennium Park gives the city a chance to reflect on itself

I’m interested in the big picture. How do arts organizations function and build support, survive and thrive? During a recent visit to Chicago I had the opportunity to sit down with four nonprofit leaders working at different levels of the city’s art scene. At a time of financial rollercoasters, shifting demographics, and a globalizing world, I was interested to see how these art organizations continued to reach out to changing communities and tap in to the creative energy they have to offer.

Under the Roofs of Paris. 1930. France. Directed by René Clair

These notes accompany screenings of René Clair’s </i>Under the Roofs of Paris, August 25, 26, and 27 in Theater 3.</p>

René Clair (1898–1981), a disappointed poet, novelist, and actor, lived and worked on the fringes of the French Surrealist movement in the 1920s. (We included his Entr’acte (1924) in the French Avant-Garde program earlier in the series.) In total, he made eight silent films of varied lengths—most notably 1927’s Un Chapeau de Paille d’Italie (The Italian Straw Hat)—establishing a reputation for humor and fanciful imagination.

This short video piece was created around the mural project I’ve been doing with YWCA’s Fresh Start program at Murry Bergtraum High School in lower Manhattan. (You can read more about the project in a previous blog post.) The program targets freshman students who are in academic trouble and finds new and interesting ways to get them involved in their school and excited about their educational career.

The design collection at MoMA has some great items of cultural significance, including the beloved Lego brick. A while back, Christoph Niemann created a memorable version of iconic New York items in Lego. Niemann also created an illustration for MoMA.org last fall (here’s the blog post). The Lego has grown up quite a bit in the past few decades, and you can even get a Lego version of Fallingwater at the MoMA Design Store.

Bruce Nauman. Days (installation view). 2009. One audio source consisting of seven stereo audio files, fourteen speakers, two amplifiers, and additional equipment. Dimensions variable. Audio (fourteen channels). Continuous play. The Museum of Modern Art, New York (Committee on Painting and Sculpture Funds, Gift of The Mimi and Peter Haas Fund, Agnes Gund, The Hess Foundation, Michael Ovitz, Jerry I. Speyer, Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Foundation, Donald B. Marron, and The Jill and Peter Kraus Contemporary Acquisition Fund) and Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation, Basel, Switzerland.

Bruce Nauman’s exhibition Days, which currently occupies MoMA’s third-floor special exhibition gallery, provokes a reaction, if nothing else. One need wait only a moment in the sun-dappled corridor outside the entrance to witness a gallimaufry of expressions—grins, scowls, exclamations, sighs, guffaws—on the faces of people as they exit.

Alexander (Sándor) Bortnyik. Ma VII - IK (Grafikai) Kiállitása. 1919

While we always believe in the works we propose for addition to the MoMA collection, some works stand apart in extraordinarily strong ways. They speak to us because of their great historical significance, aesthetic power or, in my case with the above poster, because of true love.

Photo by Brenda Zamora

You probably didn’t hear about the huge exhibition opening last week at MoMA—it didn’t make the front page of The New York Times Arts or Style sections; no one was interviewed on NPR about it; no pictures of the artists appeared on Art Fag City. And yet it was definitely the place to be if you are interested in mingling with the freshest faces in contemporary art.

Jeannette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier in The Love Parade. 1929. USA. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

These notes accompany screenings of Ernst Lubitsch’s </i>The Love Parade, August 18, 19, and 20 in Theater 3.</p>

Ernst Lubitsch (1892–1947) followed up The Marriage Circle (1924) with eight more silents (three of which are sadly lost). In 1929, that probably made him the odds-on favorite among all then-prominent directors to succeed as sound was coming in. With The Love Parade, Lubitsch did not disappoint.

In this video interview, artist Deana Lawson talks about her photography-based work, including her thought-provoking piece in the Greater New York 2010 exhibition—Assemblage (2010), an installation consisting of hundreds of four-by-six-inch glossy photographs T-pinned to the walls of one of MoMA PS1’s third-floor galleries.

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 Museum’s fifth-floor painting and sculpture galleries—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, August 27), along with the next Do You Know Your MoMA? challenge. You should be able to identify some of these old friends.

ANSWERS TO THE JULY 30 CHALLENGE: