Inside/Out

• 

  Making the Rain

  Posted: 17-May-2013, 10:00am EDT by Random International

  Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art with dancers from WayneMcGregor | Random Dance. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Charles Roussel" />

  Random International. Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art with dancers from WayneMcGregor | Random Dance. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Charles Roussel

  Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art with dancers from WayneMcGregor | Random Dance. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Charles Roussel" />

  Random International. Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art with dancers from WayneMcGregor | Random Dance. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Charles Roussel

  Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art with dancers from WayneMcGregor | Random Dance. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Charles Roussel" />

  Random International. Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art with dancers from WayneMcGregor | Random Dance. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Charles Roussel

  Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Kathryn Yu" />

  Random International. Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Kathryn Yu

  Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Kathryn Yu" />

  Random International. Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Kathryn Yu

  Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Kathryn Yu" />

  Random International. Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Kathryn Yu

  Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Joe Holmes" />

  Random International. Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Joe Holmes

  Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Joe Holmes" />

  Random International. Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Joe Holmes

  Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Joe Holmes" />

  Random International. Rain Room. Installation view at The Museum of Modern Art. Rain Room is part of MoMA PS1's EXPO 1: New York, 2013. Photo by Joe Holmes

  Rain Room‘s conception was swift. We were coming up with ideas for dropping an image from above, so each individual pixel would fall into place, using water on water-reactive ground. Considering the structure that would need to be created for this to happen, we refined the idea into something more immediate: making monumental rain through which you can walk without getting wet.

  Complete immersion in a unique environment has long been a driving interest of the studio. We’re intrigued by how people and objects behave and respond to one another and how that can bring a spatial sphere to life.

  

  From left: Random International. Audience. 2008. Mirror, metal cast bases, motors, custom motion tracking software, camera, computer, dimensions variable, each mirror: 150 x 250 x 150 mm. Edition of 8 + 4 AP. Carpenters Workshop Gallery; Swarm Study / III. 2011. Electronics, Corian, steel frame, 123 x 456 x 789 mm. Installation view at the Victoria and Albert Museum

  Our 2008 work Audience explored how people could engage with something clearly inanimate as though it were human and the ensuing sense of intrigue and joy. Later in 2011, Swarm Study / III showed how natural life can be simulated in art and the animating effect this has on surrounding space. With Rain Room we wanted to push this further; you actually enter the environment to engage with the artwork, you become part of the piece.

  Rain Room‘s gestation period was long?four years from start to finish. The studio is fortunate to have true patrons and supporters in Maxine and Stuart Frankel and RH Contemporary Art, both of whom took a leap of faith into Rain Room when it existed only as an idea on the page, as did the Barbican Centre in London. We are also lucky to have a team within the studio willing to embrace researching and prototyping something completely outside their areas of engineering expertise and, in MoMA, an institution with the vision to take this further.

  We went through the process together, setting up a first working prototype in our studio during the summer of 2011. Even on this small scale, we began to see the piece’s sensory effects: the scent of the water during a London August, the overpowering sound, the impossibility of seeing the drops against the white cube of our studio space. We also glimpsed the varied emotional reactions; everyone feeling bizarrely afraid to enter, nobody wanting to be the first to do so,  and the childlike wonder that followed once we did.

  These small beginnings have large outcomes. Now, in the realization of the piece at MoMA, we see how all these factors combine to form the surreal experience of Rain Room: the hesitancy, the faith, the sense of astonishment.

  MoMA presents Rain Room as part of EXPO 1: New York?MoMA PS1′s festival of exhibitions, a school, a colony, a cinema, and more?and adds an entirely new layer to the piece. While it wasn’t originally intended as a didactic work, it is an open-ended environment which invites people to take away personal reflections from their individual experiences. The context of EXPO 1: New York can inspire new levels of contemplation. People form the piece, as such it is always different.

  Rain Room is on view at MoMA through July 28. For more details and admission information please visit MoMA.org.

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  FIAF Congress 2013: A Visit to Barcelona?s Filmoteca de Cataluyna

  Posted: 16-May-2013, 10:00am EDT by Anne Morra

  

  Filmoteca de Catalunya in Barcelona

  Chief film curator Rajendra Roy and I attended the 69th congress of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), in Barcelona, Spain, April 21?27. Each year the member and associate film archives convene in a city where the annual congress is hosted by a local FIAF institution, and 2013?s congress was hosted by the Filmoteca de Catalunya, under the leadership of director Esteve Riambau.

  The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) was officially founded on June 17, 1938, with an agreement signed in Paris by the British Film Institute, Germany?s Reichsfilmarchiv, La Cinémathèque Française, and The Museum of Modern Art. The four original signatories remain active members 75 years later, alongside an additional 154 affiliates across 78 countries. The formation of FIAF was not only essential, but also philosophically applied an urgency and importance to the work they were doing by seeking international partnerships. There were no university film schools in 1938, film societies were scarce, and film festivals had yet to become popular. The general public was keenly aware of film as a leisure pursuit, but had not yet been educated to film as an art form. Certainly the need for film preservation was on no one?s radar, except for the FIAF pioneers. The federation fostered an international perspective that led not only to the exchange of film materials, but of knowledge, industry contacts, and formative preservation methodologies. With the threat of war percolating in Europe, the American, French, German, and British film archives disregarded politics and set about preserving film culture.

  

  Members of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), April 2013

  Seventy five years later, the FIAF still meets each year to discuss matters of interest to the federation; to offer an educational symposium in which papers on a particular topic are presented by archivists, scholars, critics, and filmmakers; and to hold screenings of national cinema selections and films related to the symposium topic. The host of the 2013 FIAF congress, the Filmoteca de Catalunya, was founded in 1981, joined FIAF in 1992, and today has the status of a full member archive. The Filmoteca collects, preserves, and exhibits both Catalan and international films. The symposium topic, developed by Esteve Riambau, focused on the concept of multiversions in the cinema. On day one, Riambau presented an image on the screen of a massive iceberg afloat in a cold, blue ocean, and stated:

  ?For many years, the history of cinema has looked on films with more than one version as isolated cases. Today, however, we know that the second negatives of silent films, the multiversions of the early days of sound, the variants between ‘sixties European coproductions and recent director?s cuts are not exceptions. They are part of a generalized practice, added to the effects of the censor or dubbing, that have been the order of the day to such an extent that the concept of original version is questioned. Film archives and libraries should be well aware of what is hidden under the tip of the multiversion iceberg in undertaking their tasks of classification, restoration, and dissemination.?

  

  From left: Anastasi Rinos (film editor), Esteve Riambau (Director, Fimoteca de Catalunya) and Rosa Vergés (filmmaker) at the homage to filmmaker Bigas Luna

  Upon the conclusion of his opening remarks, Riambau switched iceberg images on the screen to reveal the vast undersea mountain of ice just below the surface. His metaphor was an apt one for the film archives, archivists, and scholars tackling the mammoth subject of multiversions. Papers were presented on various topics and permutations of the concept, from how the awareness of multiversions evolved to methodological problems in the study of these variant versions. A case study presented by Donata Pesenti, of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, Italy, on the films produced by Stefano Pittaluga Ltd. in Turin from the 1910s through the 1930s, focused on multiple language versions of a 1930 Italian sound film La canzone dell?amore  (The Song of Love) that were simultaneously shot in French and German. How did (or did?) the narrative change from language to language to accommodate local customs and traditions? Another fascinating paper was given by Bryony Dixon, from the BFI National Film Archive, London, called The Second Negative: The Problem of Multiple Versions in Film Restoration. As a case study Dixon presented issues that arose during the project to preserve all of Alfred Hitchcock?s surviving silent films, using the example of Champagne (1928). Dixon expertly laid out the archivist?s process of research: gathering of surviving Champagne materials, familiarity with original distribution copies, and studio and exhibition practices from the late 1920s. One of the most important ideas I took away from this paper in particular was that the work of the archivist in the preservation/restoration process also adds to the collective history of the film.

  After two days of paper presentations, the remainder of the congress was occupied with workshops, such as the technical, cataloging, and programming/access commissions; the Second Century Forum; the General Assembly; and the regional group meetings. MoMA is a member of the Congress of North American Film Archives (CNAFA), and we joined our colleagues from the Harvard Film Archive, Academy Film Archive, The Library of Congress, Indiana University Libraries Film Archive, Film Reference Library TIFF Cinemathque, La Cinematheque Quebecoise, and Filmoteca de la UNAM to discuss matters of mutual archival concern. The regional meetings at the FIAF congress and the annual Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) conference allow us informal face time with our colleagues to bat around matters of both confidential and general concern. While not giving away any insider secrets, as it were, I can tell you that at the FIAF CNAFA meeting we talked about the possibility of a future FIAF congress taking place in the United States, how long color film stock will continue to be produced, and a matter of mutual concern about access practices. These meetings alleviate the overload in our inboxes and encourage international and regional collaboration.

  Our hosts at the Filmoteca de Catalunya were enormously hospitable. The opening night event at the Palau de Pedralbes featured a lovely musical interlude of film themes written by Nino Rota, followed by a reception in the verdant palace gardens. There was also a daylong cultural visit to the city of Terrassa, just west of Barcelona, to tour the Filmoteca?s newly built preservation and restoration center. At this facility, the Filmoteca is able to store both film and digital material related to Catalan and international cinema culture. Additionally, the Terrassa complex has a film laboratory and an audiovisual production center that often partners with businesses and professionals in the Spanish motion picture industry. For those seeking a glimpse into cinema history, another excursion, offered simultaneously with the Terrassa trip, visited the ancient walled city of Girona, north of Barcelona. In Girona we toured the Tomàs Mallol Film Museum, which specializes in the collection of cinematographic and pre-cinema objects. The Mallol Film Museum had an incredible collection of phantasmagorical hand-painted glass slides from 19th-century magic lantern presentations. The closing night ceremony was held at the Gran Teatre de Liceu, Barcleona?s opera house, where a 1924 Fritz Lang version of Die Nibelungen was screened with an original score by Gottfried Huppertz and performed by the Catalonia National Youth Orchestra. Die Nibelungen was restored by the Murnau Foundation in conjunction with the Filmoteca de Cataluyna. Following the film, the FIAF affilates gathered in the Liceu?s rotunda for a warm farewell address from Mr. Riambau and a glass of cava.

  The 2014 FIAF Congress will take place in Skopje, Macedonia, and will be hosted by the Kinoteka Na Makedonija.

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  A Modern Way to Explore Three Great Figures of Mexican Art

  Posted: 15-May-2013, 11:13am EDT by Hannah Kim

  Taking monumental frescos to a multitouch screen, MoMA’s eBook Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco offers a fresh exploration of three great figures in the revival of mural painting that brought modern Mexican art to international attention after the Mexican Revolution of 1910?20.

  Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco" />

  Screenshot from Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco

  Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco" />

  Screenshot from Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco

  Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco" />

  Screenshot from Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco

  Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco" />

  Screenshot from Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco

  Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco" />

  Screenshot from Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco

  Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco" />

  Screenshot from Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco

  The Museum of Modern Art holds arguably the most important collection of modern Mexican art outside Mexico, including more than 175 objects by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco. This book presents ten significant works from this groundbreaking collection, including two frescos commissioned by the Museum. James Oles, a leading scholar and curator of Mexican art, takes readers on a journey through the political, cultural, and geographic underpinnings behind each of these works.

  As Oles explains, ?all of the muralists?inspired by Renaissance and Baroque masters?rejected abstraction for realism with the goal of accelerating political and social change in the wake of the Revolution, but ultimately they shared neither style nor political ideology.? Though they had their artistic and political differences, the artists came together through working relationships in organization like the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors, a union formed by Rivera and Siqueiros and supported by artists like Orozco.

  Oles’s essay is interwoven with external visual references, from vintage photographs to Aztec sculpture, to help the reader contextualize the artists’ ideas and influences. It is fascinating to trace Rivera’s departure from Cubism during his time in France and to study the similarities between Siquieros’s Echo of a Scream (1937) and Edvard Munch’s iconic painting, The Scream (1893). The multitouch functionality of the iPad screen allows for larger reproductions of images than in a printed book, inviting a closer look at the artwork.

  For more on Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Josè Clemente Orozco, visit the iBookstore to download a free sample of the eBook. A paperback version is available from the MoMA store. Other titles in the MoMA Artist series available for the iPad include Constantin Brancusi, Paul Cézanne, Fernand Léger, and Henri Matisse.

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  Claude Chabrol?s The Cousins

  Posted: 14-May-2013, 10:00am EDT by Charles Silver

  

  The Cousins. 1959. France. Directed by Claude Chabrol

  These notes accompany screenings of Claude Chabrol’s The Cousins on May 15, 16, and 17 in Theater 3.

  When Andrew Sarris published Interviews with Film Directors in 1967, he could already write that Claude Chabrol (1930–2010) had ?quickly become one of the forgotten figures of the nouvelle vague.? Of the most prominent New Wave directors, Chabrol had been the first to complete a feature film (Le Beau Serge in 1958), resulting from an inheritance received by his then wife. The film was shot in Chabrol?s home village of Sardent, where his grandfather and father were pharmacists and where Chabrol established a film society as a young teen during World War II. This inaugurated a pattern of Chabrol setting his films in the French provinces, and, indeed, Les Cousins is largely concerned with the perennial tension between Paris and the rest of country. He brought back the two leads from his first film, Gerard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy, both of whom went on to successful careers as actors and directors. The former had had a brief period of comparison with James Dean and actually broke into the English-language market with the 1962 Howard Hawks/John Wayne film Hatari.

  Chabrol, of course, had been one of the critics at Cahiers du Cinéma (along with Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, and Erik Rohmer) mentored by André Bazin. With Rohmer, Chabrol had written a book on Alfred Hitchcock, and the themes and obsessions that preoccupied Hitchcock, including an ambivalent attitude toward Catholicism, recur throughout Chabrol?s work. Chabrol quickly became identified as the French counterpart of the ?Master of Suspense,? yet while he was enormously prolific, I would argue that none of his films quite approach the complex stature of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, or Psycho. Still, in the films he made starring his second wife, Stephane Audran (beginning with Les Bonnes Femmes, in 1960, through Violette, in 1978), Chabrol produced a collaborative body of work that might be compared to that of D. W. Griffith with Lillian Gish or Josef von Sternberg with Marlene Dietrich. The couple divorced in 1980, and the director?s later work, much of it in television, was intermittently successful, although he was still directing at 80.

  Les Cousins received generally bad press in America, not unusual for the early arriving New Wave films. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times said it had ?the most dismal and defeatist solution for the problem it presents?of any picture we have ever seen.? Of Chabrol, the ?dean? of critics wrote that his ?attitude is ridden with a sense of defeat and ruin.? This and similar reviews caused Pauline Kael to make an extensive effort to extol the film?s virtues, saying it ?glitters? and referring to its ?glossy stylishness.? Kael wrote: ?The Cousins, more than any other film I can think of, deserves to be called The Lost Generation, with all the glamour and romance, the easy sophistication and quick desperation that the title suggests.? Kael, probably more than she realized, was onto something.

  The New Wave, of which Les Cousins serves as a major harbinger, was indeed something new, and cinema would never be the same again. The comfortable verities and virtues of classical Hollywood (so admired by the Cahiers crowd) and the equally classical linear stodginess of European production (mostly reviled by the same group) would give way. The American studio system, staggered by television, would soon reap at least short-term benefits from the rise of people like Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Arthur Penn, Woody Allen, Blake Edwards, and Stanley Kubrick. In Britain, realists like Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson, and Tony Richardson arrived; in Italy and Sweden, bleak visionaries like Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman would predominate; and in France, the New Wave submerged the past. But where were the likes of Renoir, Ford, Ophuls, Hitchcock, Chaplin?? In the parlance of the day, where had all the flowers gone?

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  The Ghosts of Gallery 20: Discovering Dan Flavin

  Posted: 13-May-2013, 10:00am EDT by Jackie Delamatre

  

  Installation shots of students? Dan Flavin?inspired post-visit project

  After seven years of working at MoMA as a school programs educator, I still treated Gallery 20 as a glorified hallway. As we scurried through on the way to the more crowd-pleasing Pop art in Gallery 19, I virtually shielded my eyesand those of my students. What was this dreaded room, you ask? Nothing more harrowing than the Minimalism gallery, a room filled with the kinds of materials I pass every time I walk through Midtown: fiberglass, galvanized iron, florescent light tubes.

  What was I so scared of? I knew other educators who taught in these galleries with much success. I?d read Donald Judd?s Specific Objects. I?d even been to Marfa, Texas, where the Dan Flavin galleries will make you wonder how anyone can say Minimalism isn?t art. Perhaps I was worried that students would be intimidated or that it could turn them off of modern art entirely. Perhaps I felt like I could only teach Minimalism if it was interactive, like Richard Serra?s Delineator or Olafur Eliasson?s 2008 MoMA exhibition.

  Then, this spring, a group of commercial photography students at the High School of Art and Design asked for a three-part visit (pre-visit, tour, and post-visit) that addressed ?Shadow and Light.? MoMA’s new Bill Brandt photography exhibition was perfect, but we couldn?t spend the whole tour there. We needed more.

  I thought immediately of Claude Monet?s Water Lilies. Kids large and small appreciate their size, their gestural marks, their immersive depictions of the undulating light from dawn to dusk, and the Museum?s commitment to replacing the first two canvasses that were destroyed in a fire. So now I had two stops. I needed a third, and I needed something different. One day, as I was hurrying a group through Gallery 20 for the umpteenth time, it finally hit me: Dan Flavin was the best choice. The only choice.

  The photography students arrived on a chilly day early in April. I had already visited their classroom and introduced them to the works of Bill Brandt and Cindy Sherman. They discovered how these photographers used the elements of shadow and light to imply mood or character. They were interested in photography, but I worried about what they would think of something as unfamiliar as Flavin’s work.

  Flavin’s Untitled (1969) consists of one vertical 25-inch-long pink florescent bulb facing a corner of the gallery at about eye level and, on top of it, an identically sized horizontal yellow florescent bulb facing toward the viewer. Together, they form a very bright cross. We arrived there after a lively discussion at Monet’s paintings, and I immediately asked the students what they noticed. They didn?t say anything at first. Their eyes blinked; they made their hands into visors as if staring into the sun. Then, a couple students held up their cameras and began to shoot it from different angles. I feared they were just hiding behind their devices.

  ?Well?? I asked.

  ?It?s just light bulbs,? said one student.

  ?True,? I said, ?That?s probably surprising?that an artwork could be made of regular, everyday, standard-issue florescent light bulbs. But what if I said that this artist is interested in how these bulbs affect the whole space??

  ?I can see that!? said one, his eyes rising from behind the great obscuring mass of his camera lens. ?The pink light bulb is facing toward the corner and lighting it all up!?

  ?And there are shadows everywhere,? said another. ?All the way up the corner toward the ceiling.?

  ?Wait!? said one student, pointing to the ground. ?Is that a shadow or is the floor a different color there??

  We all stared. Flavin?s piece had created a dark triangular shadow on the ground in front of us and something about it looked too perfect, too much a part of the space, to be an illusion. I asked them to compare Flavin to Monet. How were they approaching shadow and light differently?

  ?Monet was representing it. Flavin was making it.?

  By the time we were finished with our tour, many of the kids, and their teacher, said Flavin was their favorite.

  I had one more lesson with these students, and I wanted to make up for my own past failings with Minimalism. On a tip from a fellow educator, I searched all over the city for LED ?throwies,? little 5mm lights. A few days later, I was back in the photography students? classroom with a big bag of battery holders and LED lights in green, red, white, and yellow, coaching them on how to create installations between foam-core ?walls.? I reread to them a Flavin quote I?d introduced during the tour: ?I knew that the actual space of a room could be broken down and played with by planting illusions of real light (electric light) at crucial junctures in the room’s composition?. A piece of wall can be visually disintegrated from the whole.?

  I then challenged them to experiment with how their foam-core space ?could be broken down and played with.? Finally, I asked them to photograph their results. In groups of four or five scattered throughout the room, they discovered the beauty and disintegrating power of light and shadow. One group created an installation that looked like it had been visited by a psychedelic butterfly, another like a circular spotlight out of the Spanish Inquisition.

  As I looked out on the class, I wondered what they would take away from the experience. Hopefully, it had opened their eyes to the connections between different mediums and how the fine arts could inspire their commercial art projects. Surely, they could see now the power of light to transform a space. One thing I knew for sure was that they had discovered an artist they now appreciated: Dan Flavin. And so had I.

  I’d also learned something else: never fear an artwork. Even the ghosts of Gallery 20.

• 

  Practice and Progress: The MoMA Alzheimer?s Project Exchange

  Posted: 13-May-2013, 3:01pm EDT by Meryl Schwartz

  I used to take dance classes as a kid, and I remember the first time I walked into MoMA I was struck by the gallery floors—perfect for dancing. So you can imagine my pleasure last week when John Heginbotham, of Mark Morris Dance Center and a founding teacher of Dance for PD, asked me to sashay across MoMA?s galleries to the imagined rhythm of Piet Mondrian?s Broadway Boogie Woogie and, later, to perform a reverence like Henri Matisse?s dancers in Dance (I).

  

  Choreographer John Heginbotham leads a movement workshop for participants in the MoMA Alzheimer’s Project Exchange. Photo: Kirsten Schroeder

  John was demonstrating ways a museum educator might incorporate movement into a gallery program, using artwork as inspiration. His was just one of the many exciting perspectives offered during Practice and Progress: The MoMA Alzheimer?s Project Exchange.

  The Exchange, a two-day conference hosted by The MoMA Alzheimer?s Project, brought together 84 professionals from across the globe who deliver arts programming for people with Alzheimer?s disease or other forms of dementia and their care-partners. Not only did Exchange attendees boogie down, but we shared program developments, traded tips on teaching practice, considered new and cross-disciplinary ways of engaging people with dementia with art, and discussed programmatic successes and challenges, both large and small. We heard presentations from our fellow practitioners, broke out into smaller groups to brainstorm, strategize, and debate, and had opportunities to put discussions into practice with hands-on sessions in MoMA?s galleries and studios.

  Participants of the Exchange hailed from many of the almost 100 museums worldwide that have implemented art-discussion or art-making programs for people with dementia. Twenty-seven participants from 12 countries across four continents attended. We also had representatives from 10 states and Washington, D.C., and from seven of our fellow New York museums.

  Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. One participant wrote, “The conference made me realize that people around the globe have a common bond in our work in the arts for people living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Together we are making a difference.”

  Video from the two days will be posted this spring on The MoMA Alzheimer?s Project website. Keep checking our events page for updates!

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  Le Corbusier Kitchen Conservation: Video Update

  Posted: 9-May-2013, 10:00am EDT by Roger Griffith

  In the March of 2012, conservators in MoMA’s sculpture conservation lab undertook a yearlong treatment of an original kitchen by Charlotte Perriand and Le Corbusier from the seminal urban construction the Unite d?Habitation. All of the kitchen components (including the drain!) were transported from Marseilles, France, to our lab in New York City, and reassembled for research and treatment. This was a collaborative project between conservators and curators to restore this well-used, 60-year-old kitchen to a state that would be reflect the original conception of Le Corbusier?s and Charlotte Perriand?s pivotal design. The video below presents an overview of this process, and the decisions we’ve made so far along the way.

  And be sure to visit the blog again soon for our final post on the Le Corbusier kitchen conservation project.

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  Do You Know Your MoMA? 5/10/13

  Posted: 10-May-2013, 10:00am EDT by Jason Persse

  

  How well do you know your MoMA? If you think you can identify the artist and title of each of these works?all currently on view in the Painting and Sculpture Galleries?please submit your answers by leaving a comment on this post. We?ll provide the answers next month (on Friday, June 7).

  ANSWERS TO THE APRIL 12 CHALLENGE:
  Congratulations to Rick Ho, who for the second month in a row was the first of several people to correctly identify all six works. Do you have what it takes to claim this month’s title?

  

  1. Pavel Tchelitchew. Hide-and-Seek. 1940–42

  2. Franz Kline. White Forms. 1955

  3. Frida Kahlo. My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree). 1936

  4. Frank Stella. Empress of India. 1965

  5. Willem de Kooning. Woman, I. 1950–52

  6. Agnes Martin. Harbor Number 1. c. 1959

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  Henri Labrouste?s ?Precision and Liberty?

  Posted: 8-May-2013, 10:02am EDT by Hannah Kim

  

  Cover of the exhibition catalogue Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light, published by The Museum of Modern Art

  French architect Henri Labrouste (1801?1875) may not be an instantly recognizable name, yet he is one of the most influential precursors of modern architecture. Most well known for two luminous library reading rooms built in Paris in the 1800s, the Bibliothèque nationale de France (1838?50) and the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (1859?75), Labrouste has been long admired by both modernists and postmodernists for his innovative embrace of then-new technologies, like cast iron and gas lighting.

  For the first time ever in the United States, and the first in nearly 40 years worldwide, an exhibition devoted entirely to Labrouste is currently on view at MoMA through June 24. The cover of the accompanying catalogue?the result of four years of research and collaboration between MoMA, the Cité de l?Architecture et du Patrimoine, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France?features an interior shot of the domed roof of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The image captures what it must feel like to stand underneath one of Labrouste?s greatest achievements, taking in the exquisite geometry of the glass skylights that diffuse natural sunlight onto lustrous ceramic panels, slender iron columns, and the library patrons below.

  

  Henri Labrouste. Bibliothèque nationale, Paris. 1854?75. View of the reading room. © Georges Fessy

  Labrouste once remarked that architecture was a marriage of ?precision and liberty,? and his work is often as poetic as it is rational. As the exhibition curators explain in the introduction to the catalogue, ?Labrouste created a very personal architectural language and means of conception, combining a deeply classical culture and sentiment with a strong inclination for boldness and innovation.? Indeed, his architecture maintains a timeless aesthetic while embracing new materials and technologies. An example of this approach can be seen in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, perhaps recognizable to some moviegoers as the fictional Film Academy Library in Martin Scorcese?s 2011 film Hugo. Labrouste experimented with indoor gas lighting in the archetypal library setting of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève.

  

  Henri Labrouste. Bibliothèque Sainte?Geneviève, Paris. 1838?50. View of the reading room. Photograph: Michel Nguyen. © Bibliothèque Sainte?Geneviève/Michel Nguyen

  

  Henri Labrouste. Bibliothèque Sainte?Geneviève, Paris. 1838?50. Study of the cast iron trusses of the main floor and of the iron roof trusses. © Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

  The catalogue is richly illustrated with intricately detailed drawings and watercolors that showcase Labrouste?s technical expertise as a draftsman and his sublime imagination, along with documentary photographs that transport readers to historical spaces as well as those designed by the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright and Pier Luigi Nervi that demonstrate Labrouste?s influence. Essays by a range of international scholars explore various aspects of the architect?s career, including his relationship to materials, his departure from received ideas, his desire to use architecture as a catalyst for the betterment of society, and much more.

  For a sneak peek at the first chapter of Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light, check out a free PDF sample here.

  

  Henri Labrouste. Bibliothèque Sainte?Geneviève, Paris. 1838?50. Cross section of Reading Room and stair hall, interior elevation of West facade (as built). © Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

  

  Henri Labrouste. Bibliothèque Sainte?Geneviève, Paris. 1838?50. Steel trusses of the reading room. Bibliothèque Sainte?Geneviève. Photograph: Priscille Leroy. © Priscille Leroy

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  Conserving a Nam June Paik Altered Piano, Part 2

  Posted: 8-May-2013, 2:00pm EDT by Glenn Wharton

  
  After exhaustive research prior to conserving Untitled (Piano), it was time for reflection. MoMA curators and conservators discussed the difficult decisions ahead. We knew that Nam June Paik playfully changed his works with each installation, and often incorporated new audio and video technologies into his older video sculptures. Should we continue this tradition, or freeze the existing technologies at the moment of his death?

  The project that unfolded represents a series of negotiations, always followed by documenting our decisions for future staff and researchers.

  First we decided to purchase a full backup set of cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors. Paik preferred this technology even in the face of thin, flat screened models appearing on the market. Two of the monitors no longer worked. For these we purchased used monitors of the same size and swapped their cathode ray tubes with the originals, allowing us to use the original monitor casings. This was carried out by CT Lui and Raphaele Shirley of CTL Electronics. CT Lui worked closely with Paik for many years and still runs a TV repair shop off of Canal Street in New York City where he increasingly works for museums. We also purchased backups for the two security cameras, and extra bulbs for the spot light.

  

  Testing the CRT monitors at MoMA. Photo: Glenn Wharton

  Next came the piano. After further discussion we decided to replace the original 5 ½? floppy-disc player-piano unit, knowing that future repairs and disc replacement would be impossible because of technical obsolescence. Fortunately PianoDisc, the company that made the unit, still exists. They now make wireless units that play encoded MP3 files. We worked with Paul Keogler of Dancing Ivories on Long Island to replace the unit and repair the piano. Our decision was to leave the original floppy-disc player-piano unit on the piano as evidence of the original technology, and install the new MP3 unit hidden away behind it.

  

  Original piano-player unit and exposed circuitry under the keyboard. Photo: Glenn Wharton

  Hopefully future staff will approve of our decision. Of course they can always remove the older unit or rewire the original unit in the future.

  The piano itself was in poor condition. The wood was scratched and dented from use, and the mechanical systems were damaged and heavily restored. Once again, our discussion led to nuanced decisions. We decided not to repair the wood, but replace the completely worn hammer shanks and felt pads.

  The final phase of the project was to preserve the two videos that were on laser discs. After determining that they were in good condition, we digitized them to create uncompressed files for archiving on our repository for digital collections.

  One problem was left unresolved. Now that the videos are in digital format, they can be played from a computer or other digital playback device. Should we hide this device behind a wall and leave the laser-disc play decks on the floor since the artist approved this technology? Should we install little green LED lights to make the decks appear like they are functioning? Or would that be dishonest?

  

  Installing the video sculpture after completing the conservation work. Photo: Glenn Wharton

  What would Nam June Paik do? The question haunts us since he did not leave a clear roadmap for decision making in conserving his work. The decision about whether to display nonfunctioning laser-disc play decks will be made by curators and conservators in the future, as they continue to keep the media sculpture alive by retaining old technologies, hiding new technologies, and inevitably change the artwork.

  Anthropologists tell us that objects develop social biographies as they accrue new meanings over time. A conservator would tell you that they have material biographies as well. I am reminded of a comment made by the late Stanley Eveling, ?An object is a slow event.? Video sculptures must change materially over time as museum staff struggle to keep them operative. Their meanings inevitably change, as society brings new understanding to older technologies and older art forms. Retaining an artist?s vision for the work while managing change is at the core of our work in the Museum. I can?t help but think that Nam June Paik is giggling at our research and negotiation to keep the piano playing and the video rolling.

  

  Nam June Paik. Untitled. 1993. Player piano, 15 televisions, two cameras, two laser disc players, one electric light and light bulb, and wires, overall approx. 8? 4? x 8? 9? x 48? (254 x 266.7 x 121.9 cm), including laser disc player and lamp. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Bernhill Fund, Gerald S. Elliot Fund, gift of Margot Paul Ernst, and purchase. © 2013 Estate of Nam June Paik