MoMA Exhibitions and Programs

Fall 2017

EXHIBITIONS AND RELATED PROGRAMS

Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive June 12 - October 1, 2017 Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the most prolific and renowned architects of the 20th century, a radical designer and intellectual who embraced new technologies and materials, pioneered do-it-yourself construction systems as well as avant-garde experimentation, and advanced original theories with regards to nature, urban planning, and social politics. Marking the 150th anniversary of the American architect’s birth on June 8, 1867, MoMA presents Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, a major exhibition that critically engages his multifaceted practice. The exhibition comprises approximately 450 works made from the 1890s through the 1950s, including architectural drawings, models, building fragments, films, television broadcasts, print media, furniture, tableware, textiles, paintings, photographs, and scrapbooks, along with a number of works that have rarely or never been publicly exhibited. Structured as an anthology rather than a comprehensive, monographic presentation of Wright’s work, the exhibition is divided into 12 sections, each of which investigates a key object or cluster of objects from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives, interpreting and contextualizing it, and juxtaposing it with other works from the Archives, from MoMA, or from outside collections. The exhibition seeks to open up Wright’s work to critical inquiry and debate, and to introduce experts and general audiences alike to new angles and interpretations of this extraordinary architect.

Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive is organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. Organized by Barry Bergdoll, Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University; with Jennifer Gray, Project Research Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

The People’s Studio: Design, Experiment, Build Through October 1, 2017 In conjunction with the exhibition Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, the People’s Studio invites visitors to think like designers and explore architecture through themes connected to community, nature, and the integration of art and daily life. Visitors can browse resources, try their hand at drawing and drafting techniques, create with building and design materials, and participate in scheduled workshops, conversations, and other experiences developed in collaboration with artists, architects, and designers.

Activities and events build on the educational principles behind the Taliesin Fellowship, Frank Lloyd Wright’s teaching program at his home and studio, and make connections to the progressive teaching practices of Black Mountain College and MoMA’s own history as a place of learning. The inclusive, collaborative atmosphere of the People’s Studio is inspired by these pivotal moments in modern-art education and the belief that learning should be achieved through active, hands-on experiences that promote social exchange.

Open during regular Museum hours. Free with Museum admission and open to all ages. Children must be accompanied by an adult.

Live programming: Drawing Session: Thinking like Frank Lloyd Wright, Sept. 5 & 19 Torolab’s Transborder Workshop: Usonian Walls, Sept. 14 Organic Architecture Today: Mushroom Bricks Workshop, Sept. 21 & 28

Collection Galleries 1880s–1950s Ongoing The works displayed on this floor roughly span the years 1880 to 1950. Within an overall chronological flow, galleries highlight individual stylistic movements, artists, and themes, including Cubism, the work of Henri Matisse, and Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, among other subjects. These galleries are frequently reinstalled in an effort to feature a wide range of artworks in various configurations, reflecting the view that there are countless ways to explore the history of modern art and the Museum’s rich collection.

Sculpture from the Collection 1960–1969 Ongoing This installation brings together a selection of sculptures from the Museum’s collection made in the 1960s, extending to the Sculpture Garden the current organizing principle of the Museum’s fourth-floor collection galleries. Included are David Smith’s Cubi X (1963), an abstract construction of stainless steel geometric forms that evokes the human figure, and Alexander Calder’s Sandy’s Butterfly (1964), a 13-foot-tall colorful steel sculpture with a mobile top that the artist gave to MoMA in 1966. These works join longtime Sculpture Garden inhabitants, such as Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk (1967). Favorites like Pablo Picasso’s She Goat (1950) and Aristide Maillol’s The River (1943) will remain on view alongside these works from the 1960s.

Organized by the Department of Painting and Sculpture

Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends Through September 17, 2017 In 1959, Robert Rauschenberg wrote, “Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)” When Rauschenberg launched his career in the early 1950s, the heroic gestural painting of Abstract Expressionism was in its heyday. He challenged this tradition with an egalitarian approach to materials, bringing the stuff of the everyday world into his art. Often working in collaboration with artists, dancers, musicians, and writers, he invented new interdisciplinary modes of artistic practice that helped set the course for art of the present day. The ethos that permeates Rauschenberg’s work—openness to the world, commitment to dialogue and collaboration, and global curiosity—also makes him a touchstone for our time.

Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends, the first 21st-century retrospective of the artist, presents over 250 works across mediums from his six-decade career. Collaboration was always critical to Rauschenberg, and his inclusiveness did not stop at the point of making; it often involved the viewer. “My whole area of art has always been addressed to working with other people,” he reflected. “Ideas are not real estate.” To highlight the importance of exchange for Rauschenberg, this exhibition is structured as an “open monograph”—as other artists came into Rauschenberg’s creative life, their work comes into these galleries, mapping the play of ideas.

The acclaimed artist and filmmaker Charles Atlas collaborated with the curatorial and design teams on the exhibition’s design to foreground Rauschenberg’s deep engagement with dance and performance. For many years, Atlas worked with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, as stage manager, lighting designer, and in-house filmmaker; in that capacity, he worked alongside Rauschenberg on some of the company’s productions.

The exhibition is organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Tate Modern, London. Organized by Leah Dickerman, The Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, and Achim Borchardt-Hume, Director of Exhibitions at Tate Modern, with Emily Liebert and Jenny Harris, Curatorial Assistants, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition design was created in collaboration with the artist Charles Atlas.

Projects 107: Lone Wolf Recital Corps August 19–October 9, 2017 The Lone Wolf Recital Corps, a multidisciplinary performance collective founded in 1986 by artist and musician Terry Adkins (American, 1953–2014), has an accumulative, rotating membership of collaborators in various musical and visual arts disciplines. During Adkins’s lifetime the Corps performed within and in conjunction with Adkins’s exhibitions; described by Adkins as “recitals,” these performances incorporated spoken word, live music, video projection, and costumed, choreographed movement. For Adkins, these “installation based experiences [issued] from an ongoing quest to reinsert the legacies of unheralded immortal figures to their rightful place within the panorama of history.” The Lone Wolf Recital Corps’ performances, which Adkins orchestrated with the collaborative improvisation of the Corps, have commemorated and celebrated such figures as John Brown, John Coltrane, Matthew Henson, Bessie Smith, and others.

Projects 107 will be the first exhibition to reunite the Lone Wolf Recital Corps since Adkins’s death. Conceived as a series of live performances by the reconstituted Corps, a changing group of artists will reprise selections from the group’s repertoire in an installation of Adkins’ sculptures. The exhibition will be supplemented by documentary video of earlier recitals, as well as performance props, costumes, and ephemera that trace the history of the Corps.

Projects 107 will bring together an intergenerational roster of artists and musicians, including Sanford Biggers, Don Byron, Jean-Paul Bourelly, Vincent Chancey, Arthur Flowers, Charles Gaines, Tyehimba Jess, Rashid Johnson, Demetrius Oliver, Cavassa Nickens, Clifford Owens, Kamau Patton, Dread Scott, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Robert Wisdom, Tukufu Zuberi, and others.

Organized by Akili Tommasino, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture.

Max Ernst: Beyond Painting September 23, 2017 - January 1, 2018 This exhibition surveys the career of the preeminent Dada and Surrealist artist Max Ernst (French and American, born Germany. 1891–1976), with particular emphasis on his ceaseless experimentation. Ernst began his pursuit of radical new techniques that went "beyond painting" to articulate the irrational and unexplainable in the wake of World War I, continuing through the advent and aftermath of World War II. Featuring approximately 100 works drawn from the Museum’s collection, the exhibition includes paintings that challenged material and compositional conventions; collages and overpaintings utilizing found printed reproductions; frottages (rubbings); illustrated books and collage novels; sculptures of painted stone and bronze; and prints made using a range of techniques. Several major, multi part projects represent key moments in Ernst’s long career, ranging from early Dada and Surrealist portfolios of the late 1910s and 1920s to his late masterpiece—a recent acquisition to MoMA's collection—65 Maximiliana, ou l’exercice illégale de l’astronomie(1964). This illustrated book comprises 34 aquatints complemented by imaginative typographic designs and a secret hieroglyphic script of the artist’s own invention.

Organized by Starr Figura, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, and Anne Umland, The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Curator of Painting and Sculpture, with Talia Kwartler, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture.

Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait September 24, 2017–January 28, 2018 Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait explores the prints, books, and creative process of the celebrated sculptor Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010). Bourgeois’s printed oeuvre, a little-known aspect of her work, is vast in scope and comprises some 1,400 printed compositions, created primarily in the last two decades of her life but also at the beginning of her career, in the 1940s. The Museum of Modern Art has a prized archive of this material, and the exhibition will highlight works from the collection along with rarely seen loans. A special installation will fill the Museum’s Marron Atrium.

The artist’s creative process is the organizing principle behind the exhibition. Over the course of her career, Bourgeois constantly revisited the themes of her art, all of which emerged from emotions she struggled with for a lifetime. Also, she said there was no “rivalry” between the mediums in which she worked, noting that “they say the same thing in different ways.” Here, her prints and illustrated books will be seen in the context of related sculptures, drawings, and paintings, and within thematic groupings that explore motifs of architecture, the body, and nature, as well as investigations of abstraction and works made from old garments and household fabrics. In addition, the evolving states and variants of her prints will be emphasized in order to reveal Bourgeois’s creative thinking as it unfolded.

Bringing together some 220 works, the exhibition celebrates the Museum’s archive of Bourgeois prints as well as the completion of the online catalogue raisonné, Louise Bourgeois: The Complete Prints & Books, available now in process at moma.org/bourgeoisprints, and ultimately documenting over 4,600 printed sheets in all.

Organized by Deborah Wye, Chief Curator Emerita, Prints and Illustrated Books, with Sewon Kang, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints.

Items: Is Fashion Modern? October 1, 2017 - January 28, 2018 Items: Is Fashion Modern? explores the present, past, and future of 111 items—garments, accessories, and accoutrements—that have had a strong impact on history and society in the 20th and 21st centuries, and continue to hold currency today. Among the 111 will be designs as well-known and transformative as the Levi’s 501s, the Casio watch, and the Little Black Dress, and as ancient and culturally charged as the kippah and the keffiyeh. Each item will be displayed in the incarnation that made it significant in the last 116 years—the stereotype—along with contextual materials that trace back to its historical archetype. In some cases, the item will also be complemented by a new commission—a prototype. Items will thus invite new generations of designers, engineers, and manufacturers to respond to some of these “indispensable items” with pioneering materials, approaches, and techniques—extending this conversation into the near and distant futures, and connecting the history of these garments with their present recombination and use. Driven first and foremost by objects, not designers, the exhibition considers the many relationships between fashion and functionality, cultural etiquettes, aesthetics, politics, labor, identities, economies, and technology.

Organized by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, and Michelle Millar Fisher, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design.

Items Abecedarium May 16, 2017 Twenty-six iconic garments, accessories, and issues from the fashion universe, spanning the early 20th century to the present, will be discussed in a daylong abecedarium on Monday, May 16. A dynamic roster of designers, curators, critics, scholars, labor activists, and entrepreneurs will explore these topics—one for each letter of the alphabet—in seven minute vignettes. Link to livestream of this program

There is a forthcoming MoMA Online Course, in conjunction with the Items exhibition that will be free and accessible through Coursera. Here is a list of other Online Courses offered by MoMA.

Club 57: Film, Performance and Art in the East Village, 1978 - 1983 October 31, 2017–April 1, 2018 The East Village of the 1970s and 1980s continues to thrive in the global public’s imagination. Located in the basement of a Polish Church at 57 St. Marks Place, Club 57 (1978–83) began as a no-budget venue for music and film exhibitions, and quickly took pride of place in a constellation of counter cultural venues in downtown New York fueled by low rents, the Reagan presidency, and the desire to experiment with new modes of art, performance, fashion, music, and exhibition. A center of creative activity in the East Village, Club 57 is said to have influenced virtually every club that came in its wake.

Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978–1983 is the first major exhibition to fully examine the scene-changing, interdisciplinary life of this seminal downtown New York alternative space. The exhibition will tap into the legacy of Club 57’s founding curatorial staff— film programmers Susan Hannaford and Tom Scully, exhibition organizer Keith Haring, and performance curator Ann Magnuson—to examine how the convergence of film, video, performance, art, and curatorship in the club environment of New York in the 1970s and 1980s became a model for a new spirit of interdisciplinary endeavor. Responding to the broad range of programming at Club 57, the exhibition will present their accomplishments across a range of disciplines—from film, video, performance, and theater to photography, painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, zines, fashion design, and curating. Building on extensive research and oral history, the exhibition features many works that have not been exhibited publicly since the 1980s.

Organized by Ron Magliozzi, Curator, and Sophie Cavoulacos, Assistant Curator, Department of Film; with Ann Magnuson, guest curator.

Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989 November 13, 2017–April 8, 2018 Drawn primarily from MoMA's collection, Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989 brings artworks produced using computers and computational thinking together with notable examples of computer and component design. The exhibition reveals how artists, architects, and designers operating at the vanguard of art and technology deployed computing as a means to reconsider artistic production. The artists featured in Thinking Machines exploited the potential of emerging technologies by inventing systems wholesale or by partnering with institutions and corporations that provided access to cutting-edge machines. They channeled the promise of computing into kinetic sculpture, plotter drawing, computer animation, and video installation. Photographers and architects likewise recognized these technologies' capacity to reconfigure human communities and the built environment. Thinking Machines includes works by John Cage and Lejaren Hiller, Waldemar Cordeiro, Charles Csuri, Richard Hamilton, Alison Knowles, Beryl Korot, Vera Molnár, Cedric Price, and Stan VanDerBeek, alongside computers designed by Tamiko Thiel and others at Thinking Machines Corporation, IBM, Olivetti, and Apple Computer. The exhibition combines artworks, design objects, and architectural proposals to trace how computers transformed aesthetics and hierarchies, revealing how these thinking machines reshaped art making, working life, and social connections.

Organized by Sean Anderson, Associate Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, and Giampaolo Bianconi, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance Art.

Stephen Shore November 19, 2017–May 28, 2018 Stephen Shore encompasses the entirety of the artist’s work of the last five decades, during which he has conducted a continual, restless interrogation of image making, from the gelatin silver prints he made as a teenager to his current engagement with digital platforms.

One of the most significant photographers of our time, Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947) has often been considered alongside other artists who rose to prominence in the 1970s by capturing the mundane aspects of American popular culture in straightforward, unglamorous images. But Shore has worked with many forms of photography, switching from cheap automatic cameras to large-format cameras in the 1970s, pioneering the use of color before returning to black and white in the 1990s, and in the 2000s taking up the opportunities of digital photography, digital printing, and social media.

The artist’s first survey in New York to include his entire career, this exhibition will both allow for a fuller understanding of Shore’s work, and demonstrate his singular vision—defined by an interest in daily life, a taste for serial and often systematic approaches, a strong intellectual underpinning, a restrained style, sly humor, and visual casualness—and uncompromising pursuit of photography’s possibilities.

Organized by Quentin Bajac, The Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator, with Kristen Gaylord, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow, Department of Photography.

Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil February 11–June 3, 2018 Tarsila do Amaral (Brazilian, 1886–1973) is a foundational figure in the history of modernism in Latin America. The first exhibition in the United States exclusively devoted to the artist focuses on her pivotal production from the 1920s, from her earliest Parisian works, to the emblematic modernist paintings produced in Brazil, ending with her large-scale, socially driven works of the early 1930s. The exhibition features over 130 artworks, including paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, photographs, and other historical documents drawn from collections across Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Born in São Paulo at the turn of the 19th century, Tarsila―as she is affectionately known in Brazil―studied piano, sculpture, and drawing before leaving for Paris in 1920 to attend the Académie Julian. Throughout subsequent sojourns in Paris, she studied with André Lhote, Albert Gleizes, and Fernand Léger, fulfilling what she called her "military service in Cubism," ultimately arriving at her signature painterly style of synthetic lines and sensuous volumes depicting landscapes and vernacular scenes in a rich color palette. The exhibition follows her journeys between France and Brazil, through Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, charting her involvement with an increasingly international artistic community, and her critical role in the emergence of modernism in Brazil: in 1928, Tarsila painted Abaporu, which quickly spawned the Anthropophagous Manifesto, and became the banner for this transformative artistic movement that sought to digest external influences and produce an art for and of Brazil itself.

The exhibition is organized by The Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Organized by Luis Pérez-Oramas, former Estrellita Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and Stephanie D’Alessandro, former Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of International Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago; with Karen Grimson, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art.

Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts October 21, 2018–March 17, 2019 Schaulager, Basel, The Museum of Modern Art, and MoMA PS1 present the first comprehensive retrospective of American artist Bruce Nauman (b. 1941) in over 20 years. Opening at Schaulager in March 2018 and traveling to New York in October of that year, the exhibition expands upon the rich holdings of the organizing institutions. Spanning the artist’s entire career, from the mid-1960s to the present, Disappearing Acts provides a singular opportunity to experience his command of a wide range of mediums, from drawing, printmaking, photography, and sculpture to performance, film, neon, and large-scale installations.

Disappearing Acts traces strategies of withdrawal in Nauman’s work—both literal and figurative incidents of removal, deflection, and concealment. Bodies are fragmented, centers are left empty, voices emanate from hidden speakers; the artist sculpts himself in absentia, appearing only as negative space. The installation proceeds chronologically (albeit with strategic pauses and breaks), granting ample space to the artist’s production across the decades. Nauman’s consummate skill as a draftsman, which has not been the focus of a retrospective since the mid-1980s, will be highlighted with a broad selection drawings, ranging from quick sketches to oversized, highly worked sheets.

Organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Laurenz Foundation, Schaulager, Basel. The exhibition is organized by Kathy Halbreich, Associate Director and Laurenz Foundation Curator, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, with Heidi Naef, Senior Curator, Schaulager, Basel, and Isabel Friedli, Curator, Schaulager, Basel, Magnus Schaefer, Assistant Curator, and Taylor Walsh, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art.

AUDIO PROJECTS

Dust Gathering: An Audio+ Experience by Nina Katchadourian Through October 1 As part of a two-year collaboration through Artists Experiment, artist Nina Katchadourian presents Dust Gathering, an audio tour offering visitors an unexpected perspective on The Museum of Modern Art by examining its dust.

Dust consists of material from both inside and outside, from Earth and the cosmos, from places very high and very low—and at the Museum, it’s literally an intermingling of different people from around the world. Noticing particularly dusty spaces in the Museum inspired Katchadourian to interview staff members about this ever-present substance that remains mostly out of sight. The audio tour features voices from within the Museum that the public rarely hears from, performing tasks that the public rarely sees. Find out what it takes to dust the suspended helicopter in the Marron Atrium atrium, learn about the building’s complex air-filtration systems, and get to know some of the particularly troublesome, dust-attracting modernist sculptures.

To listen to Dust Gathering, download MoMA’s app, visit moma.org/audio, or pick up an Audio+ device in the lobby. Download a location guide for a list of Dust Gathering audio stops or pick one up at the audio desk in the main lobby. Works referenced in this tour may not be on view at all times. Please visit our collection online for more information.

We are collecting visitor feedback about this project. If you would like to provide feedback after experiencing the audio tour, please take this online survey.

A Piece of Work Podcast Ongoing Hosted by Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson A Piece of Work is everything you wanted to know about modern and contemporary art but were afraid to ask. A bicycle wheel attached to a stool; a giant canvas splattered with paint; dozens of soup cans...for many museum visitors, works like these prompt a ton of questions. In this 10-episode podcast series, Abbi looks for some answers in lively conversations with curators, artists, and some friends, including Hannibal Buress, Tavi Gevinson, RuPaul, and Questlove.

FAMILY PROGRAMMING All Family Programs can be found here; including Family Visits, Family Gallery Talks, Family Art Workshops, Films, App and website and the current Art Lab: Nature.

Here is the link for registration. Most programs are free, but registration is required.

DIGITAL EXHIBITIONS Crossing Borders: Immigration and American Culture Ongoing Over the last two years, MoMA’s Citizens and Borders initiative has explored histories of migration and creativity through public programs and such exhibitions as Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter, Bouchra Khalili: The Mapping Journey Project, and One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series and Other Visions of the Great Movement North. In this digital exhibition, we highlight a selection of works in our collection by artists who immigrated to the US, often as refugees in search of safe haven, bringing their ideas and talents with them. The works were chosen by staff across the Museum. They represent a range of mediums—painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, performance, film, design, and architecture—and a span of nearly 100 years. Across the course of the last year, the issue of immigration to this country has become ever more central to public discourse, often cast in terms of potential threat. Yet the flow of ideas and people with varied backgrounds and experiences has been a consistent driver of innovation and creativity. Indeed, the history of modern art is a history of global turmoil, migration, and transnational exchange. American culture has flourished through the contributions of artists from around the world. The collection of The Museum of Modern Art reflects this fact.

This digital exhibition is part of Citizens and Borders, a series of discrete projects at MoMA related to works in the collection that offer a critical perspective on histories of migration, territory, and displacement.

Degenerate Art Ongoing This digital exhibition highlights a selection of works in MoMA's collection that were deemed Entartete Kunst(“degenerate art”) and ultimately removed from German state-owned museums by the Nazi government.

In the first decades of the 20th century, radical new art flourished in Germany. Established museums collected and exhibited contemporary work by Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, and others, introducing them to a wide international audience that included Alfred H. Barr, Jr., MoMA’s founding director. After Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933, Nazi agencies began to dismantle this progressive collection policy. In the years that followed, the Nazis removed more than 20,000 artworks from state-owned museums. In 1937, 740 modern works were exhibited in the defamatory show Degenerate Art in Munich in order to “educate” the public on the “art of decay.” The exhibition purported to demonstrate that modernist tendencies, such as abstraction, are the result of genetic inferiority and society’s moral decline. An explicit parallel, for example, was drawn between modernism and mental illness. Some of those works were later destroyed; others, officially declared “internationally marketable,” were sold through art dealers acting on behalf of the German government. Many, including the works presented here, ultimately found new homes in museum collections abroad.

This digital exhibition is part of MoMA’s Provenance Research Project. Since 2003, MoMA’s provenance initiative has explored the ownership history, or provenance, of works created before 1946 and acquired after 1932 that were or could have been in Continental Europe during the Nazi era in order to identify any unlawfully appropriated works in the Museum's collection.

EXHIBITION HISTORY Exhibitions from our founding in 1929 to the present are available online. These pages are updated continually.

FILM SERIES Modern Mondays Ongoing Building upon the Museum’s eight-decade tradition of fostering cinematic innovation and experimentation, Modern Mondays invites artists working in the expanded field of film, video, performance, and sound to present their work in an intimate setting. A platform for both emerging artists and pioneering figures who have changed the way we think about the moving image, this series premieres new projects and rediscovers landmark works. Considering avant-garde narratives from the 21st century, the program also celebrates legacies of influential historical figures in a contemporary context. Each evening presents a unique opportunity for audiences to engage in dialogue with artists, along with curators and other guests.

Organized by the Department of Film and the Department of Media and Performance Art.

RESEARCH AND LEARNING R&D Salons An important part of the MoMA R&D initiative is a series of salons on themes that are relevant to both MoMA and the wider world—topics that straddle the physical and the digital and apply to the experience of artists, visitors, and citizens alike.

The themes are critical to MoMA’s ongoing development, stimulating for attendees, and relevant to the cultural discourse. The salons influence MoMA R&D’s areas of research throughout the Museum and help to shape and focus the endeavors of the R&D initiative by leveraging the insights of people who care about museums and other institutions, technology, culture, education, politics, economics, etc. In other words, people who care about life in civil society.

The R&D Salons breed new insights and identify potential projects. These events are a process—a means of acquiring information and concepts, building consensus and support, and discovering potential areas of focus. Both the speakers and the audience are invited to prepare for the topic, and are provided with reading lists and stimuli before each salon.

Paola Antonelli, Director of MoMA R&D, begins each event with a presentation on the topic, providing context for the conversation. Four speakers then present for seven to 10 minutes each. The presentations are followed by a vigorous Q&A session and a moderated discussion with the audience.

Visit the MoMA R&D website

Online Courses Explore a variety of perspectives and topics related to modern and contemporary art at your own pace. Original materials include films featuring artists, educators, curators and others, along with text, audio, images, and digital resources.

Explore MoMA’s self-guided online courses or join a larger community of learners in one of MoMA’s free instructor-led Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on Coursera.

RESEARCH RESOURCES Archives The Museum Archives will be closed to the public July 24–September 4, 2017. While we are closed, we will not accept appointments or provide remote reference via our online form, telephone, email, letter, or fax. The Museum Archives will reopen to the public on Tuesday, September 5. We thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

Library The Museum of Modern Art Library is a comprehensive collection devoted to modern and contemporary art. The noncirculating collection documents painting, sculpture, drawings, prints, photography, architecture, design, performance, video, film, and emerging art forms from 1880 to the present. The Library's holdings include approximately 300,000 books and exhibition catalogs, over 1,000 periodical titles, and over 40,000 files of ephemera about individual artists and groups.

DADABASE is the catalogue of The Museum of Modern Art Library and Study Centers. DADABASE includes records for all material in the Library, including books, periodical titles, exhibition catalogues, pamphlet files, artists' books, special collections materials, and electronic resources. Primary source collections are held by the Museum Archives, a separate department. The Library is a founding member of the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC).

The library is open to all researchers, though elementary and secondary students are advised to start their research at school and public libraries.

The MoMA Manhattan Library is open to the public Tuesday–Friday, 11:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., by appointment or via library card.

All Library materials, regardless of location, require paging a minimum of 24 hours in advance. Specifically, you may request up to 10 items by 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday for delivery at 11:00 a.m. the following day. Items requested by 10:00 a.m. Friday or 10:00 a.m. Monday will be delivered at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday. Most materials located at the MoMA QNS Library are now available by request for use at the MoMA Manhattan Library.

For researchers without library cards, contact the Library.

Blog Features and perspectives on art and culture

MoMA Press Site The latest press releases and information on current and upcoming exhibitions at MoMA can be found here. You’ll also find exhibition-related videos and posts on Inside/Out, the MoMA/MoMA PS1 blog.

MoMA PS1 Ian Cheng: Emissaries MoMA PS1 presents Ian Cheng’s (b. 1984) first US museum solo presentation, featuring the artist’s complete Emissary trilogy (2015–17), a series of live simulation works created using a video game engine. Described by the artist as “a video game that plays itself,” the works are comprised of computer-generated simulations like those used in predictive technologies for complex scenarios such as climate change or elections. Populated by a cast of characters and wildlife that interact, intervene, and recombine in open-ended narratives, Cheng’s simulations evolve endlessly as self-contained ecosystems. The exhibition Emissaries marks the completion of this series of works, which contemplate timeless questions about evolution, the origins of human consciousness, and ways of relating to a chaotic existence. The trilogy was recently acquired by The Museum of Modern Art and is on display for the first time at MoMA PS1.

Emissaries is presented as a large-scale installation that transforms the gallery into a portal-like environment for Cheng’s simulations to build, generate, regress, and progress. The 10-foot-tall projections allow each simulation to unfold at life-size, positioning viewers as observers who can follow the lives of specific characters as they interact within the simulated worlds and each other in an ever-changing environment.

The exhibition is extended into the digital space through a collaboration with Twitch, a social video platform and community for gamers. Over the course of the exhibition, all three works in the Emissary trilogy will be available for viewing on Twitch in unique versions that exist online only. The Twitch live stream of these works will also be on view in the gallery space, highlighting the iterative nature of these works across platforms both physical and virtual. Available for viewing continuously at www.twitch.tv/moma, Emissary In the Squat of Gods will stream from April 9 to May 22, Emissary Forks At Perfection from June 6 to July 24, and Emissary Sunsets the Self from August 8 to September 25.

Organized by Peter Eleey, Chief Curator, MoMA PS1, with Jocelyn Miller, Curatorial Associate, MoMA PS1.

Cathy Wilkes October 22, 2017–March 11, 2018 MoMA PS1 will present the first solo museum exhibition in New York focused on Glasgow-based artist Cathy Wilkes (b. 1966), in conjunction with the inaugural Maria Lassnig Prize. Since the start of her career in the 1990s, Wilkes has created sculptural tableaux that engage with the rituals of life. Regularly employing quotidian products and residual materials drawn from her domestic life, Wilkes’s installations connect the banalities of daily existence to larger archetypes of birth, marriage, child-rearing, and death. This combination of the personal and universal parallels a meditation at the heart of her work, in which Wilkes’s art enacts an exercise in empathy, exposing deeply felt subjective experiences to reach beyond herself while also insisting upon the fundamentally private nature of artmaking.

Wilkes is the first artist to receive the Maria Lassnig Prize, a biennial award established by the Maria Lassnig Foundation in June 2016 to honor the achievements of mid-career artists. The Maria Lassnig Prize was originally envisioned by pioneering Austrian artist Maria Lassnig before her death in 2014 at the age of 94, at height of her artistic powers. Having achieved recognition only later in life, she hoped to encourage the efforts of fellow career artists not yet familiar to the public. In 2014, MoMA PS1 presented Maria Lassnig’s first comprehensive American museum survey to universal acclaim.

Organized by Peter Eleey, Chief Curator, MoMA PS1, with Margaret Aldredge Diamond, Curatorial and Exhibitions Associate, MoMA PS1.

Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting October 22, 2017–March 11, 2018 MoMA PS1 presents the first comprehensive retrospective of Carolee Schneemann, spanning the artist’s prolific six-decade career. As one of the most influential artists of the second part of the 20th century, Schneemann’s pioneering investigations into subjectivity, the social construction of the female body, and the cultural biases of art history have had significant influence on subsequent generations of artists. Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting begins with rarely seen examples of the artist’s early paintings of the 1950s and their evolution into assemblages made in the 1960s, which integrated objects, mechanical elements, and modes of deconstruction. In the late 1960s Schneemann began positioning her own body within her work, performing the roles of “both image and image-maker.” As a central protagonist of the New York downtown avant-garde community, she explored hybrid artistic forms culminating in experimental theater events. The exhibition considers Schneemann’s oeuvre within the context of painting by tracing the developments that led to her groundbreaking innovations in performance, film, and installation in the 1970s, as well as her increasingly spatialized multimedia installations from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting is organized by the Museum der Moderne Salzburg. The exhibition is curated by Sabine Breitwieser, Director, Museum der Moderne Salzburg; and consulting curator Branden W. Joseph, Frank Gallipolli Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, Columbia University, New York.

Organized at MoMA PS1 by Erica Papernik-Shimizu, Assistant Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art, The Museum of Modern Art; with Oliver Shultz, Curatorial Assistant, MoMA PS1.

MoMA PS1 Long-Term Installations Ongoing Long-term installations at MoMA PS1 can be seen year-round. These site-specific installations range in scale and medium; some are obvious to the eye while others are more subtly placed. Many installations have remained on view since the 1970s, when MoMA PS1 was The Institute for Art and Urban Resources Inc. Since MoMA PS1 is the largest non-collecting contemporary art institution in the world, these works belong to the artists.