MoMA
July 2, 2010  |  Do You Know Your MoMA?
Do You Know Your MoMA? 07/02/2010

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 16), along with the next Do You Know Your MoMA? challenge.

ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S CHALLENGE:

July 1, 2010  |  Design
MoMA by Hand
Working in MoMA’s Department of Graphic Design, the iconic shape of our logo has been permanently burnt into my mind. Maybe that’s why, on my daily errands through the Museum—to the frameshop in the subcellar, past painters’ scaffolding in a gallery, to the audiovisual department to borrow a screen for a presentation—I am always startled by hand-drawn MoMA logos.
July 1, 2010  |  Library and Archives
“ART WORK”: Famous Former Staff

Left to right: Robert Motherwell, Frank O'Hara, René d'Harnoncourt, Nelson Rockefeller at the opening of the exhibition Robert Motherwell, curated by O’Hara. September 18, 1965. Photograph by Allyn Baum. Photographic Archive, The Museum of Modern Art Archives

A number of notable individuals began their relationship with MoMA not as noteworthy artists and established personalities, but as conventional Museum employees. To name a few: actress Kathy Bates was a cashier in the MoMA Stores; artist Allan McCollum was hired as a preparator for the Museum’s 1980 Picasso retrospective; writer and poet Frank O’Hara curated exhibitions, mainly for circulation, at the Museum in the 1950s and 1960s; photographer Edward Steichen served as the director of the Museum’s Department of Photography from 1947 to 1961; and filmmaker Luis Buñuel worked under contract with the Museum on its Latin American Project in the early 1940s.

June 30, 2010  |  Artists, Fluxus
Unpacking Fluxus: An Artist’s Release

Note signed by James Riddle (American, born 1933). The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, 2008

We found this note attached to an object shrouded in tissue and quarantined within three Ziploc bags.

June 29, 2010  |  Events & Programs, MoMA PS1
Greater New York 2010: Artists Present

David Brooks. Terra Incognitae—Rainforest Canopy (Cronos version) (installation at the Sculpture Center through July 27, 2010). 2010. Photo courtesy of the artist

How much can you say about a work of art in twenty-five seconds? That’s the challenge we posed to ten artists whose work is featured in Greater New York 2010, on view through October 18, 2010, at MoMA PS1. Last Wednesday, we invited five of these artists to join us at MoMA for the first session of Greater New York 2010: Artists Present, a two-part public program wherein artists in the show are invited to give the public a behind-the-scenes look at their work and their creative processes using a twenty-image PowerPoint presentation. The catch? Each image is only onscreen for twenty-five seconds, and the artists don’t have control of the slideshow! It’s almost like art speed-dating!

June 29, 2010  |  An Auteurist History of Film
D. W. Griffith’s Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln. 1930. USA. Directed by D. W. Griffith

Walter Huston as our sixteenth President in Abraham Lincoln. 1930. USA. Directed by D. W. Griffith

These notes accompany screenings of D. W. Griffith’s </i>Abraham Lincoln, June 30 and July 1 and 2 in Theater 3.</p>

D. W. Griffith (1874–1948) came to the end of his professional road in 1931. It is now time both to bury and praise him.

He remained an enigma to the end. His final feature, The Struggle (1931), was a passionate plea against alcohol made by a committed, unredeemable, and self-destructive drunk, and if Abraham Lincoln (1930) was intended as some sort of apologia for The Birth of a Nation</a> (1915), the director seems to have missed the point of the outrage he inspired.

June 28, 2010  |  MoMA PS1
Xaviera Simmons: Image Builder

In this video, mixed-media artist Xaviera Simmons talks about her work and her striking new photo installation, Superunknown (Alive In The), currently on view in Greater New York, MoMA PS1‘s quinquennial showcase of works made in the past five years by artists and collectives living and working in the metropolitan New York area.

June 25, 2010  |  Events & Programs
Mining Modern Museum Education: Briley Rasmussen on Victor D’Amico

 

Victor D'Amico. Photograph by David E Scherman

I often to try to imagine what it was like for MoMA’s first director of education, Victor D’Amico, to build a new, expansive education program dedicated to art with a radically different modern aesthetic at a time when the public was hard hit by the Great Depression.

June 25, 2010  |  Do You Know Your MoMA?
Do You Know Your MoMA? 06/25/2010


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—next Friday, along with the next Do You Know Your MoMA? challenge.

ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S CHALLENGE:

June 24, 2010  |  Events & Programs
Mining Modern Museum Education: Kim Kanatani on Hilla Rebay

Hilla Rebay in her Carnegie Hall studio, 1935. The Hilla von Rebay Foundation Archives. Photo: Eugene Hutchinson.

I first discovered Hilla Rebay while reading a fascinating book about the life of Peggy Guggenheim, Mistress of Modernism by Mary V. Dearborn, who happened to be my office mate while I was New York City Scholar at the Heyman Center for Humanities at Columbia University several years ago. Peggy’s life was filled with a cast of interesting art world characters, but Hilla Rebay was clearly someone I needed to know more about.