JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Of all the museums to criticize for its ties to imperialism, the Museum of Modern Art seems like a strange one. Why not the Metropolitan Museum, or the British Museum, institutions that exhibit older art, often pilfered by conquering Europeans? But the Strike MoMA movement is about a lot more than, well, striking MoMA. The…
Welcome to your daily distraction, our recommendations for ways to stay engaged and entertained while we socially distance ourselves to combat the novel coronavirus outbreak. You can find our past recommendations here; many of the opportunities we’ve highlighted are ongoing. It’s the start of a new week. Many of us have now been practicing social…
Well, it’s decided: When I grow up I want to be Louise Bourgeois. Oh, fine, I know, I am full grown, but then Bourgeois did live to be 98, so it’s somewhat relative. Not that the longevity is in and of itself impressive. It’s what she did with all that time, the use she put…
Watching a comedy from the silent film era is, as the Museum of Modern Art’s website suggests, to stare directly into the “vast subconscious that is American slapstick.” And, based on the title that the museum has chosen for its series of silent film screenings, “Cruel and Unusual Comedy: Astonishing Shorts from the Slapstick Era,”…
Singer and writer Patti Smith made a surprise appearance at MoMA on Sunday, December 18th, delighting visitors both tipped-off and caught unawares. As The New York Times’ Jonah Engel Bromwich reported, Smith’s performance, during which she read a selection of her poems and performed four songs, was her latest in a string of near-yearly tributes…
The first moment that really gets me comes when the strains of “I’ll Be Your Mirror” start, Nico’s voice scratching over the already scratched surfaces of the pictures. It’s a little cheesy, maybe, this song about reflecting another’s innermost self laid over a montage of photographed images of people glancing at themselves, but so what?…
Before World War II, Max Fischer, a German journalist and political thinker, inherited a vast assortment of paintings from his parents. He initially thought the Nazi occupation would pass, but it became increasingly harder for him to find work because he was a “non-Aryan,” and his income was dwindling. A month after the Nuremberg Laws…
The first piece you see upon entering the new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, “Soldier, Spectre, Shaman: The Figure and the Second World War,” is a bronze sculpture situated alone in a brightly lit recess. In Maria Martins’s 1946 “The Impossible, III,” two cartoonish, squat bronze figures struggle to embrace. Human from the…
