MoMA | Tag: Museum Archives

Posts tagged ‘Museum Archives’

October 24, 2011 | Library and Archives, MoMA PS1

From the Records of MoMA PS1: Space Is the Place

Posted by Alana Miller, Project Archives Assistant

80th Precinct Building. Exhibition and studio space on top two floors operated by Institute for Art and Urban Resources (I.A.U.R.), later known as P.S.1. Photograph by Nancy Moran. 653 Grand Avenue, Brooklyn, New York (December 1972). Resin-coated print. MoMA PS1, 2299. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York

Walking down Washington Avenue in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, I frequently pass a handsome brick building with the telltale green lanterns of a former police precinct headquarters. Regal, imposing, and even a little bit spooky, the 80th Precinct Building is one of the prominent landmarks of my pedestrian and neighborhood life.

October 17, 2011 | Behind the Scenes, Library and Archives

The Edward Steichen Archive: The Collection in Context

Posted by Celia Hartmann, Project Assistant Archivist, Museum Archives

Edward Steichen Photography Study Center. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1967. Reports and Pamphlets, 1960s. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York

The Edward Steichen Archive processing project is now complete. The collection’s finding aid is available and searchable online from any Internet-enabled device, along with MoMA’s other archival collections.

June 27, 2011 | Collection & Exhibitions, Library and Archives, MoMA PS1

From the Records of MoMA PS1: The 40th Anniversary of The Brooklyn Bridge Event

Posted by Alana Miller, Project Archives Assistant

What do you get when you put a group of artists together on a condemned pier beneath the Brooklyn Bridge? No, this isn’t a joke, but the colorfully bizarre origin story of that renowned laboratory of contemporary art, MoMA PS1.

June 13, 2011 | Behind the Scenes, Library and Archives

Edward Steichen Archive: The Photographer in Front of the Lens

Posted by Celia Hartmann, Project Assistant Archivist, Museum Archives

Unknown White House photographer. "For Edward Steichen with memories of a gay afternoon, Lady Bird Johnson." From left, Edward Steichen, Lynda Bird Johnson, First Lady Claudia Taylor (Lady Bird) Johnson, Carl Sandburg. Rose Garden, The White House, Washington, DC, (April 10, 1964). Chromogenic color print. Edward Steichen Archive, VIII. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York

Among his many contributions to photography in a long and productive life, Edward Steichen (1879-1973) was a master portraitist, capturing, in now-iconic images, sitters as diverse as Gloria Swanson, Winston Churchill, and Walt Disney (and friends).

March 8, 2011 | Artists, Behind the Scenes, Library and Archives

Edward Steichen Archive: Delphiniums Blue (and White and Pink, Too)

Posted by Celia Hartmann, Project Assistant Archivist, Museum Archives

Edward Steichen with delphiniums (c. 1938), Umpawaug House (Redding, Connecticut). Photo by Dana Steichen. Gelatin silver print. Edward Steichen Archive, VII. The Museum of Modern Art Archives

Edward Steichen: painter, photographer, modern art promoter, museum curator, exhibition creator—and delphinium breeder.

Yes, in addition to his groundbreaking career as a visual artist and museum professional, Steichen was also a renowned horticulturist. While he lived in France, the French Horticultural Society awarded him its gold medal in 1913, and he served as president of the American Delphinium Society from 1935 to 1939. In the early 1930s, after leaving his position as chief of photography for the Condé Nast publications—including Vogue and Vanity Fair—and more than 10 years before beginning his career as Director of the Department of Photography at MoMA, he retired to his Connecticut farm to raise flowers.

November 17, 2010 | Artists, Behind the Scenes, Library and Archives

Edward Steichen Archive: The 55th Anniversary of The Family of Man

Posted by Celia Hartmann, Project Assistant Archivist, Museum Archives

Visitors await entry to The Family of Man, an exhibition organized by The Museum of Modern Art, at the Government Pavilion, Johannesburg, Union of South Africa (on view August 30–September 13, 1958). From The International Council/International Program Exhibition Records. Image courtesy The Museum of Modern Art

This year marked the 55th anniversary of the opening of MoMA’s photography exhibition The Family of Man, a show that was groundbreaking in its extent—503 images by 273 photographers originating in 69 countries—its physical design, and the numbers of people who experienced it.

September 29, 2010 | Modern Women

Modern Women Through MoMA’s History

Posted by Alexandra Schwartz, Curator of Contemporary Art, Montclair Art Museum and co-editor of Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art

For the publication Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art, Michelle Elligott, the Museum Archivist, contributed a wonderful essay entitled “Modern Women: A Partial History,” a kind of lexicon comprising historical entries on and capsule biographies of selected noteworthy women throughout the Museum’s history. In this video, she discusses some of these women and their impact both at MoMA and within the museum field in general.

July 1, 2010 | Library and Archives

“ART WORK”: Famous Former Staff

Posted by Michelle Harvey, The Rona Roob Museum Archivist

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.

May 24, 2010 | Library and Archives

From the Archives: Highlights from the MoMA Guestbook, 1929 to 1944

Posted by Michelle Elligott, Chief of Archives

In 1929, three women, Lillie P. Bliss, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and Mary Quinn Sullivan, joined forces to establish a museum based in New York City that was devoted exclusively to modern art. Over the course of the next 15 years, over one and a half million visitors paid their respects to the result of their efforts: The Museum of Modern Art. As it turns out, a tiny percentage of these visitors are memorialized in a leather-bound guest register that was brought out by Museum staffers for only its most illustrious guests to sign. The guest book, which now resides in our Archives, is a fascinating document from MoMA’s fledgling years and serves as a reminder of the appeal of the Museum to well-known figures from a wide range of social, professional, and cultural backgrounds.

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