scholarly journals The Exhibition as an Experiment: An Analogy and Its Implications

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caterina Albano
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Museum Of Modern Art ◽  
Art Exhibition ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
Scientific Paradigms ◽  
Early Use ◽  
Founding Director

The analogy of the exhibition as an experiment suggests innovative curatorial approaches that challenge institutional practices. This analogy has however a historical precedence in modernism when it became paradigmatic of the exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the 1940s, defining the curatorial approach of its founding director Alfred J Barr. This article considers this early use of the analogy of the exhibition as an experiment and further reflects on its redefinition at the turn of the 20th century by examining how both the notions of the exhibition and of the experiment have changed over time. In particular, the article examines the different meanings and practices inferred by the concepts of the exhibition and the experiment in the first decades of the 20th century and in the present. It outlines how correspondences between cultural and scientific paradigms can be deployed to tease unacknowledged synergies between two modes of knowledge production (i.e. the art exhibition and the experiment) and address questions of presentness, authority and legitimacy that they imply.

Reich, Lilly (1885–1947)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Cesare
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Set Design ◽  
Museum Of Modern Art ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Mies Van Der Rohe

Lilly Reich was a German-born designer who created interiors, displays, and exhibitions in the early to mid-20th century. She was active in the Deutscher Werkbund and in the Bauhaus, and was the first female architect to be given a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1996. Reich’s career as a female designer has been said by critic Beatriz Colomina to be an example of the collaborative nature of architecture in which women have often played an unspoken role. Reich was one of the few female designers to have played a leading role in the early 20th century, yet she has gained little academic renown. As is common for female designers of the time they are often known in relation to their work with more prominent male architects or designers; for Reich, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was both a personal and professional partner. Reich, who came from a wealthy manufacturing family, studied in 1908 at the Wiener Werkstätte and then in 1910 at the Höhere Fachschule für Dekorationskunst in Berlin. Like many women of the period she focused on textiles, needlework, and fashion as well as set design and display.

Thomas Wilfred and Intermedia: Seeking a Framework for Lumia

Leonardo ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Eskilson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
The United States ◽  
Museum Of Modern Art ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Art Critics

The most successful early-20th-century artist of colored light in the United States was undoubtedly Thomas Wilfred (1889–1968). In the 1920s, his “Lumia” compositions were praised by art critics and performed throughout the U.S. After initially embracing a musical analogy to explain Lumia, in the early 1930s he shifted to an analogy based on painting. In pursuit of this new context, Wilfred sought to legitimize Lumia through a relationship with the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His career is emblematic of the difficulties inherent in the creation of art using technology early in the 20th century, years before the postmodern embrace of pluralism.

Adaptive Institutional Change: Managing Digital Works at the Museum of Modern Art

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Van Saaze ◽  
Glenn Wharton ◽  
Leah Reisman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Digital Art ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Museum Of Modern Art ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
Object Based ◽  
Sociology Of Organizations

From digital video to software-driven installations, digital art is now present in museums around the world. Museum systems designed for object-based collections like paintings and sculpture do not address the collections management and conservation requirements for these new technologies and their associated hardware. In this article the authors investigate processes through which digital art becomes embedded in museums. Based on original research conducted at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, we argue that the introduction of digital art to MoMA did not lead, as recent literature suggests, to disruptive or radical changes of existing institutional practices. Instead, the result has been organizational subunit proliferation and adjustments to established practices and procedures. Through our study of managing digital art at MoMA, we engage Science and Technology Studies and the institutional analysis tradition in the sociology of organizations to advance the understanding of processes of change in art museums. 

Barr, Alfred H. Jr. (1902–1981)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoniette M. Guglielmo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Board Of Trustees ◽  
Abstract Art ◽  
Museum Of Modern Art ◽  
The Public ◽  
Founding Director ◽  
Architecture And Design ◽  
Film And Video

Alfred H. Barr, Jr. was an art historian and the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Manhattan, New York, from 1929 to 1943. Upon assuming his post at the museum in August 1929, Barr proceeded to establish the institution as America’s first and premiere museum devoted exclusively to modern art. His vision involved developing an intellectual foundation for the development of modern art and popularizing it for the public. As part of this work, Barr created new collection areas not previously conceptualized as part of an art museum, such as film and video, photography, architecture and design, and industrial art. Barr conceptualized a canon for the development of modern art and the origins of abstraction, diagramming it in the exhibition catalog Cubism and Abstract Art (1936). During his tenure, he organized more than 100 exhibitions largely focused on European modernism. Barr was dismissed as Director in 1943 by the chairperson of MoMA’s board of trustees, but stayed involved with MoMA in various capacities until 1968.

Exhibition 58: Modern Architecture in England, Museum of Modern Art, 1937

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 277-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Powers
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Museum Of Modern Art ◽  
Multiple Sequence ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
The World ◽  
The Usa ◽  
New Yorkers

Exhibition 58: Modern Architecture in England, held between 10 February and 7 March 1937 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), was a notable event. Amidst claims that ‘England leads the world in modern architectural activity’, the exhibition ‘amazed New Yorkers’ and equally surprised English commentators. However, it has not subsequently received any extended investigation. The present purpose is to look at it as a multiple sequence of events, involving other exhibitions, associated publications and the trajectories of individuals and institutions, through which tensions came to the surface about the definition and direction of Modernism in England and elsewhere. Such an analysis throws new light on issues such as the motives for staging the exhibition, the personnel involved and associated questions relating to the role of émigré architects in Britain and the USA, some of which have been misinterpreted in recent commentaries.Hitchcock's unequivocal claim for the importance of English Modernism at this point still arouses disbelief, and raises a question whether it can be accepted at face value or requires explaining in terms of some other hidden intention.

Eat yourself fitter: John Latham and Clement Greenberg’s Art and Culture

2000 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-44
Author(s):  
Simon Ford
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Suitable Condition ◽  
Museum Of Modern Art ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
History Of

In 1966 John Latham and some friends began chewing Clement Greenberg’s book Art and culture: collected essays. The resulting art work, entitled Art and Culture (1966-1969), is now recognised as a seminal conceptual art work and is part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Latham, however, had borrowed the book from St. Martin’s School of Art library and when he was unable to return it in a suitable condition his teaching contract was not renewed. This essay looks at the history of the work, the ideas behind its creation, and the issues it raises for the culture of the book today.

Post-War Blues (1945–1947)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
James King
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
York City ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Museum Of Modern Art ◽  
Post War ◽  
Similar Kind ◽  
At Home

This chapter details events in Roland Penrose's life from 1945 to 1947. Lee and Roland flew to New York City on 19 May 1946. Roland was elated to have the opportunity to rekindle his relationship with the Museum of Modern Art's (MOMA) director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., who likely warned him about the dangers he would face if he backed any kind of proposal to open a museum of modern art in London. Roland was taken with MOMA's collection: ‘Realizing that it was on a far greater scale that anything that could be dreamt of in London, consistently indifferent to all matters concerning the visual arts and still enfeebled by the war, this achievement nevertheless roused in me a longing to attempt some similar kind of folly at home’. Barr would also have expressed his gratitude to Roland for allowing his Picassos to be sent to MOMA during the war.

“If I Had to Do It Over Again”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan R. Ellenberger
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Medical Center ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Seventieth Birthday ◽  
Museum Of Modern Art ◽  
Sixtieth Anniversary

Although in ill health, Hopkins is convinced to attend a film retrospective of Paramount’s sixtieth anniversary at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and a showing of The Story of Temple Drake. Also that month, she gives her last interview to historian and writer John Kobal. A few weeks later, she collapses in her hotel suite and is admitted to the Harkness Medical Center. Later, she returns to the Alrae Hotel, spending time with her sister, Ruby, and friend Becky Morehouse. She dies alone at the hotel, shortly before her seventieth birthday. The reactions from her friends and family are documented, recounting her funeral in New York and memorials in Bainbridge and Hollywood.

Machine-Age Exposition (New York, 1927)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoniette M. Guglielmo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Museum Of Modern Art ◽  
Industrial Arts ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Commercial Space ◽  
Machine Art

The Machine-AgeExposition took place from 16–28 May 1927 at 119 West 57th Street in Steinway Hall, a commercial space in Manhattan, New York. It exposed the American public to the machine-age aesthetic: a modernist style based upon a belief in technological progress. The style emphasized the qualities of mass production, streamlined design, functionality, dynamism, and force. Jane Heap (1883–1964) of the Little Review Gallery was the main organizer, bringing together engineers and artists to rally momentum for this strain of modernist art. The installation juxtaposed works of architecture, engineering, industrial arts, high-modernist painting, and sculpture in order to emphasize their "inter-relation and inter-influence," as advertised on the exposition flyer. The Machine-Age Exposition highlighted a commonality among these disciplines in their exaltation of the beauty of machinery and celebration of innovation and progress. The exposition celebrated the machine-age aesthetic, as did other exhibitions, most notably Machine Art (1929) at the Museum of Modern Art.

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