The Museum of Modern Art’s Christmas card program was initiated in 1954 by the Museum’s Junior Council. The Junior Council, an affiliate group, had been founded five years earlier “to bring together a group of younger people who have a common interest in the arts and a desire to see them fostered soundly and liberally in this country.”
Posts tagged ‘MoMA Library and Archives’
Archives on Display: Activating the Past, Challenging the Present
As an intern in the MoMA Archives, my favorite part of the day is paging through the material that our researchers have requested. Though pulling document files doesn’t seem like the most exciting task in the world, it is for me, because it’s the exact moment when archives come alive. Sitting in the stacks in hundreds of archival boxes, these documents are inactive forces of potential energy waiting to be picked up.
FOUND! Photographs from MoMA’s 1944 Norman Bel Geddes’ War Maneuver Models Exhibition
As Archives Specialist in the MoMA Archives, I am always on the prowl for images depicting how our exhibitions were installed. Sadly, up until the 1960s only about 75% of MoMA’s exhibitions were documented with official installation photographs, usually due to budget constraints. So imagine my excitement on one dark, drab winter day earlier this year when, while working in the Photographic Archive, I came across a folder labeled, “Visitors in Galleries,” and discovered that these visitors were in galleries for an exhibition for which we had no visual record
Have a Cow, Man
Recently I explored a collection of mail art held by the MoMA Library and put together a small show titled Analog Network: Mail Art, 1960–1999. It’s on view in the Education and Research Building through January 5.
Modern Art through Contemporary Eyes: Correspondence from MoMA’s International Program
This past year the MoMA Archives processed and opened to the public the full record history of MoMA’s International Council and International Program, a collection so large that it required the work of three staff members to complete it in one year. One benefit of processing a large collection as a team was the opportunity to share our most interesting discoveries with one another.
Leonora Carrington’s House of Fear
Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst’s The House of Fear (La Maison de la peur) is currently on view in the mezzanine of MoMA’s Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building, as part of the display Artist/Novelist.
Making Millennium Magazines
As we were brainstorming a name for our Library exhibition of contemporary experimental magazines, Millennium Magazines stuck because of its concise alliteration. The name also specifically isolates this recent period of time—post-Y2K—during which these publications have been flourishing despite constant conversations about the end of print culture.
An Island Observed in Black and White
I have the privilege and challenge of working with artists and other collaborators to produce artist’s books for The Library Council of The Museum of Modern Art. These limited-edition publications are intended to explore the art of the book as they benefit and shed light on MoMA’s research collections.
Off the Shelf: Our Poetry Muses
The Off the Shelf series explores unique MoMA publications from the Museum Archives.
April is National Poetry Month! To celebrate the final days we thought we’d look at MoMA poetry books. MoMA has published a number of books of poetry, from the lyrically illustrated and hand-lettered A Partridge in a Pear Tree (1951), by Ben Shahn, to 12 Fables of Aesop (1954), illustrated by Antonio Frasconi and narrated by Glenway Wescott. One of my favorites is Three Young Rats and Other Rhymes, the delightfully illustrated book of 83 nursery rhymes selected by former MoMA curator James Johnson Sweeney and illustrated by Alexander Calder.
Off the Shelf: Design Finds
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