Essay by Magdalena Dabrowski.Foreword by Richard E. Oldenburg.

Kandinsky Compositions

Dabrowski, Magdalena

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Cinema buffs will treasure this one-of-a-kind facsimile edition of the first published history of film, reproduced from W.K.L. Dickson’s own annotated copy of his ground-breaking 1895 volume. Dickson, co-author with his sister Antonia of this book and of The Life and Inventions of Thomas Alva Edison (1894), headed the team at Edison’s New Jersey laboratory that was attempting to build “an instrument which does for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear. “The results of their efforts were the kinetograph (the camera used for photographing motion pictures) and the kinetoscope (the means for viewing them). Acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 1940, Dickson’s book is a unique document that allows the reader to experience the wonder and promise of the cinema in its infancy.

History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope and Kinetophonograph

Dickson, W.K.L.

Dickson, Antonia

D.W. Griffith: American Film Master

Iris Barry

D.W. Griffith

In the late 1920s, conservative policies were the norm among traditional museums--that is, until three progressive patrons of the arts decided to establish an institution devoted exclusively to modern art. When The Museum of Modern Art was founded in 1929, its first director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., dedicated it to helping people understand and enjoy the new visual arts of the time, his hope was that this new institution would offer New York "perhaps the greatest museum of modern art in the world." The public responded with enthusiasm--and has continued to do so over the history of the Museum's extraordinary development: from an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing, MoMA's collection has grown to include over 100,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, architectural models and drawings, and design objects; 19,000 films and four million film stills; and 160,000 books, artists' books, and periodicals. Published on the occasion of the Museum's 75th birthday and the opening of its new building, Art in Our Time: A History of MoMA, is a picture book of historical photographs and archival documents, many of which have never before been published. Included are images of the various Museum buildings and gardens, from its original home in the Heckscher Building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, to its present location in Yoshio Taniguchi's complex on 53rd Street; installation shots of major exhibitions and important events at the Museum, and photographs of curatorial staff and Museum officials whose discerning policies helped shape our understanding of modern art. Documents include excerpts from letters, invitations, and other archival material that tell the story of The Museum of Modern Art from its beginnings to the present. The book is divided into eight sections starting with documentation of the modern art scene in New York prior to the Museum's opening; and then offering a chronology that covers the museum's 75-year history in seven parts divided into 10- to 15-year increments.

Art In Our Time

Arts & Photography

Lowry, Glenn

History & Criticism

To mark the opening of its temporary galleries in a converted staple factory in Queens--the museum's home until the renovations to its Manhattan space are completed--The Museum of Modern Art has issued this commemorative limited-edition box set. The set features three volumes: To Be Looked At: Painting and Sculpture from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tempo, and MoMA QNS: Looking Ahead.

Moma Qns Commemorative Boxed Set

McShine, Kynaston

Herkenhoff, Paulo

Marcoci, Roxanna

Reference

What would it be like to inhabit an R. Buckminster Fuller Dymaxion House? To visit Arata Isozaki's project for Hiroshima? Or to grow up in John Hejduk's Wall House? There are only speculative answers to such questions, but who wouldn't ponder them upon seeing the drawings gathered in The Changing of the Avant Garde? With 165 expertly reproduced visionary architectural drawings from The Museum of Modern Art's Howard Gilman Archive, this collection brings together a selection of idealized, fantastic and utopian architectural drawings, primarilly from the 1960s and 70s. This publication--the first to consider the drawings since the archive was established in 1998--is accompanied by essays exploring the significance of the works, and an interview with Pierre Apraxine, former curator of the collection.

The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection

Michelis, Marco

DeYong, Sarah

Russian avant-garde books made between 1910 and 1934 reflect a vivid and tumultuous period in that nation's history that had ramifications for art, society, and politics. The early books, with their variously sized pages of coarse paper, illustrations entwined with printed, hand-written, and stamped texts, and provocative covers, were intended to shock academic conventions and bourgeois sensibilities. After the 1917 Revolution, books appeared with optimistic designs and photomontage meant to reach the masses and symbolize a rational, machine-led future. Later books showcased modern Soviet architecture and industry in the service of the government's agenda. Major artists adopted the book format during these two decades. They include Natalia Goncharova, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, the Stenberg brothers, Varvara Stepanova, and others. These artists often collaborated with poets, who created their own transrational language to accompany the imaginative illustrations. Three major artistic movements, Futurism, Suprematism, and Constructivism, that developed during this period in painting and sculpture also found their echo in the book format. This publication accompanied an exhibition of Russian avant-garde books at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. All of the books in the exhibition and this publication are part of a gift to the Museum from The Judith Rothschild Foundation.

The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910-1934

Deborah Wye

Nina Gurianova

Gerald Janecek

Margit Rowell

Various, Authors

Matisse Picasso

Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso have long been seen as the twin giants of modern art, as polar opposites but also as complementary figures. Between them they are the originators of many of the most significant innovations of 20th-century painting and sculpture, but their relationship has rarely been explored in all of its closeness and complexity. In spite of their initial rivalry, the two masters eventually acknowledged one another as equals, becoming, in their old age, increasingly important to one another both artistically and personally. From the time of their initial encounters in 1906 in Gertrude and Leo Stein's Paris studio until 1917, they individually produced some of the greatest art of the 20th century and maintained an openly competitive relationship brimming with intense innovation. This period saw them create such works as Picasso's majestic "Woman with a Fan" of 1908 and Matisse's great portrait of his wife of 1913. Matisse responds to Synthetic Cubism in his "Piano Lesson" of 1916 and Picasso comes back in turn with a new, more decorative Cubism in "Three Musicians" of 1921. The 20s saw them grow apart, as Matisse moved from Paris to Nice and Picasso became involved with the Surrealists, but the 30s brought them together again, through their sheer fame and devotion to reality-based art. Their story continues until Matisse's death in 1954, when Picasso paid his friend and colleague tribute in his series Women of Algiers, of which he said, "When Matisse died, he left his odalisques to me as a legacy." Matisse Picasso presents the artists' oeuvres in groupings that reveal the affinities but also the extreme contrasts of their artistic visions. Published to accompany the landmark exhibition, a joint effort of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Modern, London; the Raunion des musaes nationaux/Musae Picasso and the Musae national d'art moderne/Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Matisse Picasso is the first major examination of the fascinating relationships between their art, their careers, and their lives. Thirty-four essays, each by a member of the exhibition's curatorial team, focus on a particular moment in the artists' evolving relationship. The authors present in-depth analyses of specific aspects of the unique artistic dialogue between Matisse and Picasso as reflected in selected juxtapositions of each artist's works. These texts are accompanied by an introductory history, commentary on the public perception of important artistic relationships, and an extensive chronology.

Matisse, Henri

Cowling, Elizabeth

Baldassari, Anne

Golding, John

Monod-Fontaine, Isabelle

PICASSO, Pablo

Individual Artists

From detailed technical plans to impressionistic sketches that reveal experimentation and the elaboration of ideas, architects's drawings are the unseen metaphoric blueprints of the buildings they precede. Envisioning Architecture is the first in a series of three titles showcasing works from The Museum of Modern Art's architecture and design collection. It features a wide variety of drawings by great architects of the modern era, from early masters such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to contemporary practitioners including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and others. Their drawings reveal the stupendous range of aesthetic approaches in architecture since the late nineteenth century and cumulatively trace the development of the field, affirming the fact that in this increasingly technological age, the age-old discipline of drawing remains vital and inventive. The book opens with an exploration of the relatively brief history of collecting architectural drawings, whose practice dates back little farther than the sixteenth century.

Envisioning Architecture: Drawings from The Museum of Modern Art

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

The Museum of Modern Art Design Encyclopedia is the most comprehensive design reference guide to date. Compiled over the last 15 years by Mel Byars, in consultation with an international team of design experts, The Encyclopedia sets out to provide the factual framework of a discipline whose own historical accounting of itself is still relatively young. (By way of contrast, art history has existed as a scholarly discipline for over two centuries, and has produced a fairly comprehensive record of itself in that time period.) Only once before has a similarly comprehensive overview of the history of design been attempted--in 1994, also by Mel Byars. The Encyclopedia is about design, of course, but these days “design” seems to encompass almost everything, from magazine layouts and sweatshirts to animatronic flower gardens and heart pumps, not to mention the more abstract “information design.” Here, however, design is considered only in its concrete application to functional objects, thus crossing with craft, decorative arts, and industrial design, but distinguishing itself from fine art and theory. The result is 832 pages covering the last 130 years in the history of the design of furniture, lighting, fabrics, ceramics, glassware, metalware, objects in a range of other materials, and mechanical, electrical and electronic appliances, as well as automobiles and some inventions. There are separate entries for designers and craftspeople, design studios, consortiums and partnerships, noteworthy manufacturers, significant historical periods and styles, and materials. Entries, 3,600 in all, are self-contained and organized alphabetically, and include cross-references. Information is an amalgamation of data gathered from a vast number of primary and secondary sources. With over 700 full-color illustrations, most of which are drawn from the MoMA collection, the remainder from Quittenbaum Kunstauktionen in Munich and Hamburg or directly from designers or manufacturers, this publication is an invaluable, definitive compendium of the world of design over the last century and a half.

The Design Encyclopedia

Byars, Mel

Encyclopedias & Subject Guides

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