In Brief
Newly Unearthed Feature Is Oldest Film with Black Cast
A 101-year-old film discovered by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is the oldest known feature film starring a cast of black actors.
MoMA
Art
The Image Fetishes of a Para-photographer
The first work one encounters in Robert Heinecken: Object Matter, the Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA) retrospective of the renowned “para-photographer,” is a 1965 piece entitled “Visual Poem/About the Sexual Education of a Young Girl.”
Art
The Radical Brazilian Artist Who Abandoned Art
As the visitor to the Museum of Modern Art walks across a swarming fifth floor this summer, she will find Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948–1988, the first comprehensive retrospective of the Brazilian artist’s career in America.
Art
Silence Is Enough: On Emily Jacir
Silenced, erased, censored — how then to represent this loss, this nothingness?
Hyperallergic
Decoding Sigmar Polke: Photos from MoMA PopRally
Last Wednesday, the Museum of Modern Art's latest PopRally, Decoding Alibis, filled the galleries of the institution's massive Sigmar Polke retrospective. Sponsored by Hyperallergic, the event offered a new and interactive way to view Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963–2010.
Art
Tracing a Line Between Conceptualism and Blackness
The soothing piano music and soulful singing of Marian Anderson’s “Trampin’” filled the auditorium as artist Adam Pendleton began his performance at the Museum of Modern Art.
In Brief
Expanded Schedule Increases Attendance at MoMA but Not Met
A seven-day schedule inaugurated last year at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art brought a 7% increase in attendance at the former but no change at the latter, Crain's New York reported.
Film
China’s Buried Past and Submerged Future: Patty Chang and David Kelley’s 'Flotsam Jetsam'
In the opening moments of the film, Flotsam Jetsam (2007) by Patty Chang and David Kelley, currently playing at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, a bridge-like structure is seen in the distance, partially traversing what seems to be a wide river.
Art
The Provincialism of Sigmar Polke
The Museum of Modern Art’s current offerings include, just possibly, the world’s most brilliant student of a certain kind of art. The student would be the German postmodernist Sigmar Polke (1941–2010), and the work in question would be pieces dating from after approximately 1960, when art was turnin
Art
Sigmar Polke’s Sad, Sinister Little Movie of a Monkey and a Bear
A little more than a week after sitting on a short, narrow bench and watching a video projection of Sigmar Polke’s 34:38-minute 16mm film, “Quetta’s Hazy Blue Sky (Quetta’s blauer dunstiger Himmel)/ Afghanistan-Pakistan” (c. 1974-76), I returned to the exhibition, Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010, cur
Books
Maira Kalman's Empathetic Portraits
The girl stands awkwardly, her arms crossed over her stomach. Below them she wears high-waisted shorts, wrinkled through with creases and rolled at the bottom; above them she wears a frilly top. And above that, her deeply furrowed brow, mirrored by the part in her neatly done hair.
News
MoMA's Acquired App-etite
The Museum of Modern Art has acquired the first downloadable app for its collection.