How well do you know your MoMA? It’s summer, so what better time to test your knowledge of collection works currently on view in the Sculpture Garden?

Bernd and Hilla Becher. Winding Towers. 1966-97. Nine gelatin silver prints, overall. The Museum of Modern Art. Acquired in honor of Marie-Josée Kravis through the generosity of Robert B. Menschel. © 2010 Hilla Becher

The addition of a major work to the collection is always an exciting event at MoMA. Bernd and Hilla Becher’s nine-part photographic work Winding Towers (1966–97) is one such highlight among recent acquisitions in the Department of Photography.

An automobile planter at the entrance to The Metabolic Studio, in downtown Los Angeles

During my first solo trip to the West Coast, which I wrote about in my first blog post, I continued to cover ground across Los Angeles and visited several of the many city museums. In addition to a walk through the LACMA collection and the Hammer Museum, I also managed to visit MOCA where I met up with Ed Giardina, one of five people in the Los Angeles–based collective Finishing School.

All Quiet on the Western Front. 1930. USA. Lewis Milestone

These notes accompany screenings of Lewis Milestone’s </i>All Quiet on the Western Front, July 28, 29, and 30 in Theater 1.</p>

Lewis Milestone (1895–1980) was born Lev Milstein near Odessa, Ukraine. He immigrated to America in 1913 and served in the photographic unit of the Army Signal Corps during World War I. He began working in Hollywood in 1919, and directed his first film in 1925. Even before his Oscar for All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), he had won a “Best Comedy Direction” statuette for Two Arabian Knights (1927), beating out Charles Chaplin’s The Circus.

In the video above, Rashaad Newsome talks about his captivating video installation The Conductor (Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi) (2008), currently on view at MoMA PS1 as part of the the Greater New York 2010 exhibition.

In my admittedly limited experience, Venice in the summer is hot—water-guzzling, gelato-melting, desperate-for-shade hot—not unlike what we’ve experienced here in New York over the last several weeks. In the summer of 2007, as I dashed between air-conditioned venues at the Venice Biennale, I remember the relief I felt at finding myself in a cool, dark space inside an exhibition hall. I remember equally clearly the work that was on view there, a video, dolefullhouse, by the young Japanese artist Tabaimo.

What’s so unconventional about painting?  According to the teens in MoMA’s Unconventional Painting class, a lot.

The Dawn Patrol. 1930. USA. Directed by Howard Hawks

These notes accompany screenings of Howard Hawks’s </i>The Dawn Patrol, July 21, 22, and 23 in Theater 1.</p>

Like his friendly rival John Ford, Howard Hawks (1896–1977) began work as a Hollywood property man (in Hawks’s case, while still attending school). He received a degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell, and his films reflect both the precision this implies and the erudition of a college boy. (Ford, by contrast, spent about two minutes in college.) After a stint in the Army Air Corps and a job designing airplanes, Hawks wound up directing his first film at the Fox studio—where Ford was also under contract—in 1926.

On Tuesday evening, MoMA held an opening party for our first-ever Community Partners Art Show. On view through July 30 in the lower gallery of the Cullman Education Building, the exhibition showcases artwork created in collaboration with the various populations served through the Museum’s twenty-nine different community partnership organizations. These organizations serve a wide variety of social, economic, and educational needs across a wide section of New York City, and the issues that our Community Partner Organizations address (issues that include but are not limited to homelessness, HIV/AIDS, juvenile incarceration, adult basic education, immigration services, prostitution, drug addiction, family literacy, and job training) are not issues that are immediately associated with traditional museum education.

How well do you know your MoMA? Above are images of works from the MoMA collection that are currently on view throughout the Museum. If you think you can identify the artist and title of each work, 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, July 30), along with the next Do You Know Your MoMA? challenge.

ANSWERS TO THE JULY 2 CHALLENGE: