MoMA | Tag: Museum Archives

Posts tagged ‘Museum Archives’

June 22, 2016 | Intern Chronicles

In Search of MoMA’s “Lost” History: Uncovering Efforts to Rescue Artists and Their Patrons

Posted by Christina Eliopoulos, 2014–16 Dedalus Fellow, Museum Archives

Photograph taken on the occasion of the exhibition Artists in Exile, Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, March 1942. First row, left to right: Matta Echaurren, Ossip Zadkine, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger; second row: André Breton, Piet Mondrian, André Masson, Amédee Ozenfant, Jacques Lipchitz, Pavel Tchelitchew, Kurt Seligmann, Eugene Berman. A number of these artists were aided by the Museum. Photo: George Platt Lynes. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York

During WWII, The Museum of Modern Art played an integral role in assisting artists, art historians, dealers, and their immediate families in escaping from Europe to America. After the fall of Paris to the Nazis in June 1940 the Museum began to receive numerous requests for help to flee to the U.S.

April 1, 2016 | Artists, Library and Archives

From the Archives: Seeing Double with Ray Johnson

Posted by Elena Cordova, Project Archivist, MoMA Archives

It’s no secret that Ray Johnson’s tongue-in-cheek and often ambiguous style was meant to both highlight and obscure meaning through an appropriation of words and images. His life-long commitment to that practice is visible in a collection of correspondence sent to Robert Rauschenberg between the years 1952 and 1965, which is newly available in MoMA’s Archives. This collection—which includes small collages, newspaper clippings, postcards, and flyers—serves as an excellent example of Johnson’s enigmatic mail art of the 1950s and 1960s.

December 17, 2015 | Library and Archives

From the Archives: Holiday Cards from MoMA

Posted by Michelle Elligott, Chief of Archives

Robert Indiana’s LOVE (1965) is one of many holiday cards commissioned by The Junior Council of the Museum. The image subsequently became well-known in various other contexts. © 2015 Morgan Art Foundation Ltd./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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.”

November 4, 2015 | Library and Archives

From the Archives: “GOOD NEWS PICASSO HAS AGREED TO EXHIBITION AT MOMA”

Posted by Jonathan Lill, Project Manager, MoMA Archives

That all-caps title was the message relayed by MoMA staff from Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the Director of Museum Collections, to René d’Harnoncourt, the Museum’s director, confirming that the landmark exhibition The Sculpture of Picasso would indeed

October 23, 2015 | Library and Archives

From the Archives: Dance and Theater

Posted by Michelle Elligott, Chief of Archives

Dance and performance are enjoying a renaissance at MoMA—take for example, performances happening at MoMA this fall, such as Trajal Harrell’s The Return of La Argentina or Walid Raad’s Scratching on things I could disavow: Walkthrough. This tendency is apparent at other modern and contemporary arts organizations around the world as well, like the Live program at Tate Modern. But at MoMA the interest in dance and theater is not new. In fact, since its inception in 1929, The Museum of Modern Art has adopted a radical approach to presenting the art of our time.

October 13, 2015 | Library and Archives

The Margaret Scolari Barr Papers: Now Open for Research at MoMA Archives

Posted by Elena Cordova, Project Archivist, MoMA Archives

Margaret Scolari Barr with Alfred H. Barr, Jr., January 7, 1971. Photograph by Gjon Mili. Margaret Scolari Barr Papers, V.9*. The Museum of Modern Art Archives

The Margaret Scolari Barr Papers, which document the life and career of Margaret Scolari Barr—noted art historian, teacher, supporter of the arts, and wife of MoMA’s founding director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr—are now open for research at the MoMA Archives.

April 28, 2015 | Intern Chronicles

Archives on Display: Activating the Past, Challenging the Present

Posted by Christina Eliopoulos, 2014–16 Dedalus Fellow, Museum Archives

Hrair Sarkissian. istory. 2011. Archival inkjet print, 150 x 190 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Kalfayan Galleries, Athens – Thessaloniki

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.

February 25, 2015 | Behind the Scenes, Library and Archives

FOUND! Photographs from MoMA’s 1944 Norman Bel Geddes’ War Maneuver Models Exhibition

Posted by Thomas Grischkowsky, Archives Specialist, Museum Archives

"Sterling silver models of tanks, jeeps, trucks, etc." being installed during exhibition. Exhibition Dates: January 26, 1944 through March 5, 1944. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photographer, Herbert Gehr

“Sterling silver models of tanks, jeeps, trucks, etc.” being installed for the exhibition Norman Bel Geddes’ War Maneuver Models, January 26–March 5, 1944. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photographer: Herbert Gehr

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

May 15, 2014 | Library and Archives, MoMA PS1

From the MoMA PS1 Archives: High-Class Couture in the Classrooms

Posted by Jonathan Lill, Project Manager, MoMA Archives

Installation view of the MoMA PS1 exhibition, Fashion (Fall 1981): Homer Layne’s Collection of Charles James Fashions (October 18–December 13, 1981). Photograph by Ivan Dalla Tana. MoMA PS1 Archives, I.A.631

On May 5 The Metropolitan Museum of Art held its annual star-studded Costume Institute Gala, complete with red carpet and paparazzi, timed to coincide with the opening of a new fashion exhibition about a legendary couturier: Charles James: Beyond Fashion. But possibly the first gallery exhibit of James’s work opened 33 years ago at MoMA PS1,

May 14, 2014 | International Program, Library and Archives

Modern Art through Contemporary Eyes: Correspondence from MoMA’s International Program

Posted by Tellina Liu, Project Archives Assistant Katharine Rovanpera, Project Archives Assistant

From left: Alexander Calder. The Big Gong. 1952. IC/IP, I.A.56. The Museum of Modern Art Archives; Installation view of Calder’s The Big Gong (top) in Twelve Modern American Painters and Sculptors, Musée National d’Art Modern, Paris, 1953. IC/IP, I.A.64. The Museum of Modern Art Archives

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.

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