MoMA The Museum of Modern Art

06/22/2021

“Drawing is merely the configuration of what you see.” — Paul Cézanne

Consider the languages of drawing in a live Q&A discussion with artist Julie Mehretu and curators Jodi Hauptman and Samantha Friedman this Thursday at 6:00 p.m. ET about the exhibition "Cézanne Drawing."

Explore the exhibition at mo.ma/cezannedrawing.

#MoMAVirtualViews #Cézanne #JulieMehretu

[Paul Cézanne. “Forest Landscape” (detail). 1904–06. Pencil and watercolor on paper. Private Collection; Julie Mehretu. “Empirical Construction, Istanbul.” 2003. Acrylic and ink on canvas. Fund for the Twenty-First Century]

06/20/2021

Happy #solstice!

Join us tomorrow (June 21) to celebrate the #summersolstice with “T.V. to See the Sky,” inspired by Yoko Ono’s work “SKY T.V. 1966 (furniture piece)”. The original video sculpture, which she described as “a closed circuit T.V. set up in the gallery for looking at the sky", broadcast a live video feed of the sky from above the building where it was installed—a way to bring the sky inside, even if a space lacked windows.

Created in 1966, “SKY T.V.” is one of the earliest works of art to harness the instant feedback capability of the video camera. This event is inspired by Yoko Ono’s second conceptualization of “SKY T.V.” in 1967 for the Lisson Gallery in London, which she described as “a TV just to see the sky. Different channels for different skies, high-up sky, low sky, etc.”

In collaboration with Yoko Ono, the Getty Research Institute and the Feminist Center for Creative Work will present a 24-hour video streaming of the sky via Zoom. A network of international institutions, including MoMA, will also participate in the broadcast by streaming the skies above their locations.

At a time of profound revolution and reflection, a time of restricted travel but great desire for connection, we seek to draw upon Ono’s invocation of the sky as a space of generative possibility and renewal as well as a territory beyond the reach of capital and ownership. The event takes place on June 21 at 8:42 a.m. ET and streams for 24 hours to coincide with and celebrate the #solstice and the strawberry moon eclipse (June 20-24).

Register for the event at mo.ma/2UcGu9o.

["Sky T.V. for Washington," Yoko Ono, 1966/2014, closed-circuit video installation, dimensions variable. Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund, 2016. Photography by William Andrews. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden]

Happy #solstice!

Join us tomorrow (June 21) to celebrate the #summersolstice with “T.V. to See the Sky,” inspired by Yoko Ono’s work “SKY T.V. 1966 (furniture piece)”. The original video sculpture, which she described as “a closed circuit T.V. set up in the gallery for looking at the sky", broadcast a live video feed of the sky from above the building where it was installed—a way to bring the sky inside, even if a space lacked windows.

Created in 1966, “SKY T.V.” is one of the earliest works of art to harness the instant feedback capability of the video camera. This event is inspired by Yoko Ono’s second conceptualization of “SKY T.V.” in 1967 for the Lisson Gallery in London, which she described as “a TV just to see the sky. Different channels for different skies, high-up sky, low sky, etc.”

In collaboration with Yoko Ono, the Getty Research Institute and the Feminist Center for Creative Work will present a 24-hour video streaming of the sky via Zoom. A network of international institutions, including MoMA, will also participate in the broadcast by streaming the skies above their locations.

At a time of profound revolution and reflection, a time of restricted travel but great desire for connection, we seek to draw upon Ono’s invocation of the sky as a space of generative possibility and renewal as well as a territory beyond the reach of capital and ownership. The event takes place on June 21 at 8:42 a.m. ET and streams for 24 hours to coincide with and celebrate the #solstice and the strawberry moon eclipse (June 20-24).

Register for the event at mo.ma/2UcGu9o.

["Sky T.V. for Washington," Yoko Ono, 1966/2014, closed-circuit video installation, dimensions variable. Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund, 2016. Photography by William Andrews. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden]

06/20/2021

Thanks Dad! Happy #FathersDay!

[View of the fourth-floor collection galleries. Shown: Marisol. "The Family." 1962. Painted wood, sneakers, doorknob, and plate. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Advisory Committee Fund. © 2021 Marisol. Photo: Gus Powell]

Thanks Dad! Happy #FathersDay!

[View of the fourth-floor collection galleries. Shown: Marisol. "The Family." 1962. Painted wood, sneakers, doorknob, and plate. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Advisory Committee Fund. © 2021 Marisol. Photo: Gus Powell]

06/19/2021

Pleasure Gardening with Tourmaline

To commemorate Juneteenth and Pride month, join artist-filmmaker Tourmaline for "Pleasure Gardening," a deeply personal and historically rich audio tour of Manhattan. From the Boarding House for Black Sailors to the home of abolitionist David Ruggles, learn about real places where Black and trans people dreamed up and practiced their wildest visions of freedom. With Tourmaline as your guide, you’ll also hear from educators, historians, and activists about the scenes of beauty, life, and love that flourished, even in the midst of unfreedom.

For maps, audio from Cynthia R. Copeland, Mariame Kaba, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Laraaji, illustrations by award-winning cartoonist Ebony Flowers, and more, visit mo.ma/tourmaline.

MoMA Audio is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

06/18/2021

#ArtSpeaks: Heidi Hirschl Orley on Séraphine Louis’s "Tree of Paradise"

"At first maybe it looks decorative, but actually spending more time with this work... there's sort of an unsettling power about it."

Heidi Hirschl Orley, assistant director of Curatorial Affairs, talks about the conservation effort that brought new life to Séraphine Louis’s 1928 painting "Tree of Paradise." The long-overdue restoration of this work, which had never been cleaned, included removing soot from the candlelight Louis used while painting it.

Explore our collection work by work as we release a new #UNIQLOArtSpeaks video each Friday, and experience Louis’s work in our fifth-floor galleries.

UNIQLO USA is MoMA’s proud partner of #ArtForAll.

06/18/2021

#MoMAPhotoClub challenge #2: Shadows

Our next #MoMAPhotoClub challenge is here! Dance Theatre of Harlem member Ingrid Silva and curator Sarah Meister invite you to join for this month's challenge: Shadows. Take a closer look at the way shadows can affect a photograph and the role they can play in telling a story, and share what you make with us! Learn more → moma.org/photoclub

06/17/2021

Celebrate the summer solstice on June 21 with “T.V. to See the Sky,” inspired by Yoko Ono’s work “SKY T.V. 1966 (furniture piece)”. The original video sculpture, which she described as “a closed circuit T.V. set up in the gallery for looking at the sky", broadcast a live video feed of the sky from above the building where it was installed—a way to bring the sky inside, even if a space lacked windows.

Created in 1966, “SKY T.V.” is one of the earliest works of art to harness the instant feedback capability of the video camera. This event is inspired by Yoko Ono’s second conceptualization of “SKY T.V.” in 1967 for the Lisson Gallery in London, which she described as “a TV just to see the sky. Different channels for different skies, high-up sky, low sky, etc.”

At a time of profound revolution and reflection, a time of restricted travel but great desire for connection, we seek to draw upon Ono’s invocation of the sky as a space of generative possibility and renewal as well as a territory beyond the reach of capital and ownership. The event takes place on June 21 at 8:42 a.m. ET and streams for 24 hours to coincide with and celebrate the solstice and the strawberry moon eclipse (June 20-24).

Register for the event at mo.ma/2UcGu9o.

["Sky T.V. for Washington," Yoko Ono, 1966/2014, closed-circuit video installation, dimensions variable. Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund, 2016. Photography by William Andrews. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden]

Celebrate the summer solstice on June 21 with “T.V. to See the Sky,” inspired by Yoko Ono’s work “SKY T.V. 1966 (furniture piece)”. The original video sculpture, which she described as “a closed circuit T.V. set up in the gallery for looking at the sky", broadcast a live video feed of the sky from above the building where it was installed—a way to bring the sky inside, even if a space lacked windows.

Created in 1966, “SKY T.V.” is one of the earliest works of art to harness the instant feedback capability of the video camera. This event is inspired by Yoko Ono’s second conceptualization of “SKY T.V.” in 1967 for the Lisson Gallery in London, which she described as “a TV just to see the sky. Different channels for different skies, high-up sky, low sky, etc.”

At a time of profound revolution and reflection, a time of restricted travel but great desire for connection, we seek to draw upon Ono’s invocation of the sky as a space of generative possibility and renewal as well as a territory beyond the reach of capital and ownership. The event takes place on June 21 at 8:42 a.m. ET and streams for 24 hours to coincide with and celebrate the solstice and the strawberry moon eclipse (June 20-24).

Register for the event at mo.ma/2UcGu9o.

["Sky T.V. for Washington," Yoko Ono, 1966/2014, closed-circuit video installation, dimensions variable. Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund, 2016. Photography by William Andrews. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden]

06/15/2021

Sung Hwan Kim, the artist behind “Temper Clay,” the new Kravis Studio installation, talks to curators Ana Janevski and Martha Joseph about Shakespeare, real estate, and how an artwork continues to evolve. Borrowing his work’s title from a line in “King Lear,” Kim was inspired by “a play written around a father and daughters exchanging real estate properties for love, loyalty, and class reaffirmation.” In this video, the artist combines images of his parents’ home in the Hyundai apartment complex in Seoul and his family’s country home, analyzing the dynamics of the contemporary Korean family from the perspective of different generations and social classes. This exhibition in the Kravis Studio, part of The @HyundaiCard Performance Series, expands the single-channel video through an installation of drawings and objects created specifically for MoMA.

“I wanted the film to have the qualities I like in drawing. Most of the film is shot with a long telephoto lens from very far away into a close-up because I wanted the foreground and the background to look even, and not distorted by the lens. I didn’t want color to interfere in the graphic nature of the lines that composed each frame. One sees a lot by getting rid of color.” Read more at mo.ma/3iFCQP.

[Sung Hwan Kim. Stills from "Temper Clay". 2012. Video (black and white and color, sound), 23:41 min. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fund for the Twenty-First Century. © 2021 Sung Hwan Kim]

06/12/2021

German-Argentine photographer Grete Stern created the 140 photomontages in the series "Sueños," or "Dreams," between 1948 and 1951 for the column "El psicoanálisis le ayudará (Psychoanalysis will help you)." Appearing in the popular women’s magazine "Idilio," it featured readers’ dreams interpreted by sociologist Gino Germani and psychologist Enrique Butelman, writing together under the pseudonym Richard Rest.

A critical figure in the hybrid history of avant-garde photography and feminist psychoanalysis, Stern approached her assignments through a filmmaker’s lens, delivering entire narratives within a single frame. “Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home” superimposes the image of a woman, the dreamer, on the base of a table lamp next to a man’s giant hand, his finger on the switch. Here, electricity becomes a metaphor for sexuality, with scale and contrast suggesting an imbalance of power and the objectification of women.

Anxiety and domination pervade many of the images in "Sueños," which mine the feminine unconscious and explore the politics of gender. Drawing on her own experiences as a mother and an artist, Stern negotiated between privacy and exposure, blissful domesticity and a sense of entrapment, cultural sexism and intellectual rebellion. Behind a layer of playfulness and surreal wit, her portrayals of women’s dreams urged viewers to resist the pleasures and discontents of prescribed gender roles in mid-20th century Argentine society under the Peronist regime.

See “Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home” in Gallery 517: Surrealist Objects.
—
Grete Stern. "Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home." 1949. Gelatin silver print, printed 1950. © 2021 Galería Jorge Mara-La Ruche

German-Argentine photographer Grete Stern created the 140 photomontages in the series "Sueños," or "Dreams," between 1948 and 1951 for the column "El psicoanálisis le ayudará (Psychoanalysis will help you)." Appearing in the popular women’s magazine "Idilio," it featured readers’ dreams interpreted by sociologist Gino Germani and psychologist Enrique Butelman, writing together under the pseudonym Richard Rest.

A critical figure in the hybrid history of avant-garde photography and feminist psychoanalysis, Stern approached her assignments through a filmmaker’s lens, delivering entire narratives within a single frame. “Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home” superimposes the image of a woman, the dreamer, on the base of a table lamp next to a man’s giant hand, his finger on the switch. Here, electricity becomes a metaphor for sexuality, with scale and contrast suggesting an imbalance of power and the objectification of women.

Anxiety and domination pervade many of the images in "Sueños," which mine the feminine unconscious and explore the politics of gender. Drawing on her own experiences as a mother and an artist, Stern negotiated between privacy and exposure, blissful domesticity and a sense of entrapment, cultural sexism and intellectual rebellion. Behind a layer of playfulness and surreal wit, her portrayals of women’s dreams urged viewers to resist the pleasures and discontents of prescribed gender roles in mid-20th century Argentine society under the Peronist regime.

See “Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home” in Gallery 517: Surrealist Objects.
—
Grete Stern. "Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home." 1949. Gelatin silver print, printed 1950. © 2021 Galería Jorge Mara-La Ruche

06/11/2021

UNIQLO ArtSpeaks: Arlette Hernandez on Alvin Baltrop’s series The Piers

"...he reminds us that, at the end of the day, architecture is about people. It's about the ways that we move through and inhabit space. It's about the stories that we can tell and the ways that we can find a sense of belonging."

Arlette Hernandez, Volkswagen Fellow for Digital Learning, takes a close look at two photographs from Alvin Baltrop’s series The Piers, which have preserved long-disappeared spaces where marginalized communities could enjoy a sense of belonging.

Explore our collection work by work as we release a new #UNIQLOArtSpeaks video each Friday, and experience Baltrop’s work in our second-floor galleries.

@uniqlousa is MoMA’s proud partner of #ArtForAll.

06/11/2021

In the early years of the 20th century, a new generation of artists made a radical shift toward abstraction. Rather than depict objects in the world, they experimented with interactions between forms and colors.

These trailblazers of abstraction hailed from a number of European cities, but many of them flocked to Paris, the burgeoning center of the art world. Some, like Olga Rozanova, used shifting, kaleidoscopic forms to capture the dynamism of modern, mechanized life. Others, like Hilma af Klint, turned inward to explore the spiritual dimensions of pure color.

Experience Hilma af Klint’s large-scale painting, along with works by František Kupka, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, and more in Gallery 505: Circa 1913.

[Hilma af Klint. "The Large Figure Paintings, The WU/Rose Series, Group III No 5, The Key to All Work to Date." 1907. Oil on canvas] #HilmaafKlint #Abstraction #MoMACollection #MoMANYC

In the early years of the 20th century, a new generation of artists made a radical shift toward abstraction. Rather than depict objects in the world, they experimented with interactions between forms and colors.

These trailblazers of abstraction hailed from a number of European cities, but many of them flocked to Paris, the burgeoning center of the art world. Some, like Olga Rozanova, used shifting, kaleidoscopic forms to capture the dynamism of modern, mechanized life. Others, like Hilma af Klint, turned inward to explore the spiritual dimensions of pure color.

Experience Hilma af Klint’s large-scale painting, along with works by František Kupka, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, and more in Gallery 505: Circa 1913.

[Hilma af Klint. "The Large Figure Paintings, The WU/Rose Series, Group III No 5, The Key to All Work to Date." 1907. Oil on canvas] #HilmaafKlint #Abstraction #MoMACollection #MoMANYC