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Rendering of Pole Dance at MoMA PS1. Designed by Solid Objectives–Idenburg Liu (SO–IL). Photo courtesy SO–IL

Every summer weekend, thousands of people pour into MoMA PS1’s courtyard to enjoy the best in art, architecture, and music during the weekly Warm Up parties. As the winner of this year’s Young Architects Program competition, which provides the setting for Warm Up, we took the opportunity to further contemporary explorations of architecture’s potential to create sensory-charged environments, rather than finite forms.

Robert Ryman. Classico 5. 1968

My colleagues in the Department of Drawings and I are often asked about our criteria for defining what a drawing is. The short answer is that a drawing is typically defined as any unique (non-print) work of art with a paper material support. Taking this question one step further, I often think: Why did the artist use paper and not, for instance, a canvas? In what ways do the materials used by an artist lend themselves to the work, and how do they play out in the composition itself?

Blackmail. 1929. Great Britain. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

These notes accompany screenings of Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail, June 23, 24, and 25 in Theater 2.

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) is the leading example of a commercially successful film director who never lost his taste for innovation and experimentation. He must be something of an anathema to those on the avant-garde fringes of film whose whole career may not attract the audiences that Psycho (1960) or The Birds (1963) could garner in a single day. Yet, his body of work remains extremely personal and unified in its vision of a precarious universe.

Arthur Lismer, A.R.C.A.

It’s a commonly held notion that a Canadian can be easily identified by the end-of-sentence “eh?” However, true connoisseurs of all things Canadian know that what separates citizens of the north from the south, the true identifier, is that when naming someone notable, the name is followed by a knowing nod and the enthusiastic comment “Canadian!”—as in, Peter Jennings (Canadian!), Brendan Frazier (Canadian!), or Eugene Levy (Canadian!). The impulse to not only include Canadian cultural contributions in the broader American context, but to distinguish them, is deeply ingrained.

For this reason I thought it important, when planning Mining Modern Museum Education, an upcoming panel discussion on four seminal figures in early- to mid-twentieth-century museum education, to consider the significant contributions of my fellow Canadian Arthur Lismer. An iconic Canadian artist of the modern era (Group of Seven), Lismer was also an influential museum educator whose work in this field merits investigation.

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:

Installation view of the exhibition Lee Bontecou: All Freedom in Every Sense, on view at The Museum of Modern Art through August 30, 2010. Photo: Thomas Griesel.

Slowly whirling in space at the center of Lee Bontecou: All Freedom In Every Space, now on view on the fourth floor of the Museum, is a suspended sculpture that the artist created over an eighteen-year period from 1980 to 1998. In this remarkable galaxy of forms, the catalyst for the current exhibition, many of Bontecou’s greatest interests converge—in particular, her longstanding fascinations with outer space, flight, and the natural world.

On June 25, MoMA will host Mining Modern Museum Education, a panel discussion on four seminal figures in early- to mid-twentieth-century museum education: Victor D’Amico, Hilla Rebay, Arthur Lismer, and Katharine Kuh. The next few blog posts will provide short synopses of what each panelist will discuss, as well as key thoughts by the prominent museum and education scholar George Hein of Lesley University (Cambridge, MA) on the major influences on modern museum education, including the seminal work of education reformer John Dewey.

Below, panelist Robert Eskridge, executive director of education at the Art Institute of Chicago, addresses the influential interpretative work of pioneering art historian, curator, and educator Katharine Kuh.

Hallelujah. 1929. USA. Directed by King Vidor

These notes accompany screenings of King Vidor’s Hallelujah, June 16, 17, and 18 in Theater 2.

1894 was a uniquely auspicious year for the movies. Not only is that when film history as we have come to know it began, but three of the medium’s greatest directors were born: Jean Renoir, John Ford, and Josef von Sternberg. It was also the year of King Vidor’s birth, and, while he may not have achieved quite the unity of vision of the other three, he came close.

Various artists. Fluxkit. c. 1965. Vinyl-covered attaché case with screenprint, containing objects in various media. The Museum of Modern Art. The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, 2008

“Thus there is in the life of a collector a dialectical tension between the poles of disorder and order,” philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin observed in his 1931 lecture Unpacking My Library. In the museum’s tidy spaces, where a predominant curatorial objective is to make sense out of the jumbled reality of things, this opposition between organization and chaos captures the imagination. As my colleagues and I begin to work with the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift recently acquired by the MoMA—highlights of which are currently on view in the Fluxus Preview exhibition on the fourth floor—Benjamin’s proposal repeatedly comes to mind.

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: