MoMA, Floor 1, 1 South Any act of good design must also be an act of empathy, respect, and responsibility toward all living organisms and ecosystems––as well as future generations. By translating scientific, technological, and social revolutions into objects and behaviors, design can be an agent of positive change and play a crucial part in restoring the fragile ties between humans and the rest of nature. Life Cycles: The Materials of Contemporary Design explores the regenerative power of design as it shifts its focus towards a more collaborative rapport with the natural world. The objects in this exhibition highlight the entire life cycle of the materials they are made of. From extraction to reuse or disposal, designers are exploring new ways––sometimes drawn from old traditions––to enlist materials in their efforts to bring ecosystems into balance. Cow manure collected from the streets of Indonesia is transformed into casings for loudspeakers and lamps. Bricks made from crop waste and fungi mycelium are used as a carbon-neutral building material. Bees fabricate honeycomb vases over human-made forms. These objects demonstrate that design can be elegant, innovative, and compelling, while at the same time offering new strategies for repairing our planet. Organized by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, and Maya Ellerkmann, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design.
]]>In 1937, New York City was in preparation for the 1939's World's Fair, the first of two in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. To celebrate the immense and intricate inner-workings of the City, various agencies were invited to produce exhibitions for the New York City Pavilion (now the Queens Museum of Art). The Board of Water Supply (today's Department of Environmental Protection) commissioned the Cartographic Survey Force of the Works Progress Administration to create a magnificent scale model of the New York City watershed, a relief map measuring almost 700 square feet and weighing 10,000 pounds. Tracing the City's water supply system from the outermost, upstream tributaries of the Delaware River to sea level at the Nassau County line, the watershed model identified the various aqueducts, water shafts and drainage basins that feed the City's water supply. qmaDue to space limitations within the New York City Pavilion, the model was never exhibited in its entirety. After nearly 70 years in storage, the 27 completed panels were in desperate need of conservation. Through a collaboration between The Queens Museum of Art and the Department of Environmental Protection, the plaster and wood relief map was sent to McKay Lodge Fine Arts Conservation Lab in Oberlin, Ohio for one year of treatment. In time for its 70th anniversary, the model has been restored to its original brilliance and returns to its intended home in the New York City Building where it will remain on long-term loan. In celebration, the QMA and DEP will commemorate this momentous homecoming with an exhibition featuring the model, historic documentation, and contemporary photographs of the New York City watershed.
]]>The Museum's core exhibition, Behind the Screen, illuminates the many processes involved in producing, marketing, and exhibiting the moving image, with more than a thousand film and television artifacts, computer-based interactive experiences, commissioned installations, audio-visual materials, and demonstrations of professional equipment and techniques. Museum Closed for Renovation. Grand Re-Opening, January 15, 2011. From October 12 through December 23, 2010, the core exhibition Behind the Screen will be open to school and adult groups by appointment.
]]>At the heart of The Jewish Museum is its permanent exhibition, Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey, representing one of the world's great opportunities to explore Jewish culture and history through art. This vibrant two-floor exhibition features 800 works from the Museum's remarkably diverse collection of art, archaeology, ceremonial objects, video, photographs, interactive media and television excerpts. It examines the Jewish experience as it has evolved from antiquity to the present, over 4,000 years, and asks two vital questions: How has Judaism been able to thrive for thousands of years across the globe, often in difficult and even tragic circumstances? What constitutes the essence of Jewish identity? The exhibition traces the dynamic interaction among three catalysts that have shaped the Jewish experience: the constant questioning and reinterpretation of Jewish traditions, the interaction of Jews and Judaism with other cultures, and the impact of historical events that have transformed Jewish life. Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey proposes that Jews have been able to sustain their identity, despite wide dispersion and sometimes tragic circumstances, by evolving a culture that can adapt to life in many countries and under various conditions. Survival as a people has depended upon both the continuity of Jewish ideas and values and the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances.
]]>Louis Comfort Tiffany (American, 1848-1933) was one of the foremost decorative artists of his time. His father, Charles Lewis Tiffany, was the co-founder of Tiffany & Company, the luxury retailer best known for fine silver and jewelry. At an early age Tiffany was exposed to superbly-designed and expertly-crafted objets d’art, undoubtedly stimulating his love and appreciation for exceptional objects and setting him on a self-proclaimed “quest for beauty.” Tiffany began his career as a landscape painter but eventually branched out into interior design and the decorative arts. Over the years he formed a number of companies in both Manhattan and Queens that manufactured leaded-glass windows, lamps, mosaics, glassware, enamels, ceramics, metalwork, furniture, and textiles. These works were available at his Manhattan showroom and in fine retail and jewelry stores throughout the United States and Europe. Tiffany embarked on the production of lamps in the early 1890s. Although the light bulb was patented in 1879, electricity was not widely available until shortly after the turn of the century and even then only the wealthy could afford it. Tiffany’s earliest lamps, made of blown glass or leaded-glass and bronze, were fueled by kerosene. As electric light became affordable and gained popularity, Tiffany began offering his clients the choice of either oil or electric lamps. One of the earliest serious collectors of Tiffany lamps, Dr. Neustadt assembled an encyclopedic collection which included desk, reading, library, and floor lamps as well as hanging shades and chandeliers. He also added leaded-glass windows and bronze desk sets to his collection. In 1967, he acquired some 500 crates of sheet and pressed glass made and used by the Tiffany Studios which were left over after the company went bankrupt in the early 1930s.
]]>Spotlight on the Permanent Collection is the first exhibition featuring a sampling of objects and ephemera drawn from over nine thousand objects that comprise the permanent collection of the Museum of Sex. This ever-growing collection, begun five years ago, covers many aspects of human sexuality. The vast majority of items reflect America's changing attitudes about sex and sexuality over the last 250 years. Spotlight on the Permanent Collection explores eight themes: sex education; mapping sex in America; sex in art; law and public morality; sex in advertising; sex and technology; sex and entertainment; and the significance of the Museum of Sex in New York City. The exhibition includes erotic works by well known artists like Randy Wray, Gerald Gooch and Alex Rockman donated to the museum by the Peter Norton Family and the Lannan Family Foundation. Highlights of the technology collection include homemade contraptions and commercial devices registered with the U.S. Patent Office that prevent, improve or enhance sexual function. Dan Siechert's "Monkey Rocker" or Abyss Creations LLC's "Real Doll" are just a few of the exhibits featured. The gallery development team, lead by John Vollmer and Karen Eckhaus of the Museum of Sex, includes several leading authorities from a wide range of disciplines: Dr. Pepper Schwartz, Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington, St. Louis serves as a key advisor for "Sex Education America." Joshua Berger and Sarah Dougher, authors of the (award-winning) book, XXX: The Power of Sex in Contemporary Design, have curated "Stimulating Sales: Sex and Design." Andrea Tone, Canada Research Chair in the Social History of Medicine Social Studies of Medicine & Department of History at McGill University, and Rachel Maines, Researcher at Cornell University, offer commentary in "Sex and Technology." Dr. Joseph Slade, Professor at the School of Telecommunications, Ohio University and advisor on the exhibition, Stag, Smokers, and Blue Movies, helped to plan the exhibits in "American pornography" which are drawn from the Museum of Sex's Ralph Whittington collection.
]]>The Dinner Party, an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art, is presented as the centerpiece around which the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is organized. The Dinner Party comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs that are based on vulvar and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honored. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table. This permanent installation is enhanced by rotating biographical gallery shows relating to the 1,038 women honored at the table. Pharaohs, Queens, and Goddesses is the first such exhibition.
]]>This installation of more than 170 objects from the Brooklyn Museum’s world-famous holdings of ancient Egyptian material explores the complex rituals related to the practice of mummification and the Egyptian belief that the body must be preserved in order to ensure eternal life. On view are the mummy of the priest Thothirdes; the mummy of Hor, encased in an elaborately painted cartonnage; and a nearly twenty-five-foot-long Book of the Dead scroll. Also in the installation are canopic jars, used to store the vital organs of mummies, as well as several shabties, small figurines placed in tombs, each of which was assigned to work magically for the deceased in the afterlife. The installation includes related objects, among them stelae, reliefs, gold earrings, amulets, ritual statuettes, coffins, and mummy boards. [Image: "Coffin and Mummy Board of Pa-seba-khai-en-ipet." Egypt, from Thebes. Third Intermediate Period, circa 1070–945 B.C.E. Wood, painted, 76 3/8 x 21 5/8 x 12 5/8 in. (194 x 55 x 32 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 08.480.2a–c]
]]>Tiffany: The Glass, an installation of two windows, eleven lamp shades, and more than two hundred examples of sheet glass, explores some of the remarkable patterns, textures, and colors of opalescent glass used by the Tiffany Studios. This exhibition is the first of its kind and focuses on the beauty and diversity of the material used in the creation of spectacular leaded-glass windows, lamps, and mosaics produced under Louis Comfort Tiffany’s artistic direction. This display highlights some of the most commonly used types of sheet glass produced at the Tiffany Furnaces in Corona, Queens, as well as glass purchased from commercial glass manufactures. The lamps and windows included in the exhibition demonstrate the ways in which these distinctive materials were used to replicate the details of the natural world.
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