The Tim Burton Website: It’s Aliiiiiive!

Posted by David Hart, Associate Media Producer, Digital Media

Months before an exhibition opens we meet to plan out any related online features. Since we’re a small team we often get developers or designers to help for bigger sites. For the Tim Burton exhibition, we worked with the Brooklyn company Big Spaceship, who built the site for our Contemporary Voices exhibition in 2005.

Having nearly broken my VHS copy of Beetlejuice from overuse while growing up, I knew the project would be an exciting one for a design firm to sink their teeth into. In the words of Big Spaceship, “Having the opportunity to work with MoMA for an artist as admirable as Tim Burton was amazing. The quality and imagination inherent to his art speak for themselves—we’re particularly inspired by his breadth of work and desire to experiment.”

One of the most exciting parts of the process is the concept meeting with the designers. After an initial meeting to discuss the exhibition, the crew from Big Spaceship put together three different directions for the site, and we sat down together with the curators to pick a design to build out. We asked them to talk about the three directions they proposed. Read more

0 Comments  | Tags: Big Spaceship, Tim Burton, Web design

Musical MoMA: The TENORI-ON by Toshio Iwai and Yamaha

Posted by Paul Galloway, Cataloguer, Department of Architecture and Design

One of the greatest parts of my job is getting to geek out over the many brilliant examples of design that are considered for the Museum’s collection. Among the most exciting (and drop-dead gorgeous) works we acquired last year is the TENORI-ON, by the Japanese artist Toshio Iwai, manufactured by Yamaha. Promoted by Yamaha as “a digital musical instrument for the twenty-first century,” the TENORI-ON’s “visible music” interface is suitable for both serious musicians and beginners to electronic music.

“In days gone by, a musical instrument had to have a beauty, of shape as well as of sound, and had to fit the player almost organically…. Modern electronic instruments don’t have this inevitable relationship between the shape, the sound, and the player. What I have done is to try to bring back these…elements and build them in to a true musical instrument for the digital age.” —Toshio Iwai

Iwai is an established multimedia artist, musician, and inventor, who seeks “the feeling of childhood in the digital world.” He has worked in television and created a number of computer and video games, including the acclaimed (and addictive) Electroplankton (2005) for the Nintendo DS, in which players generate atmospheric music by manipulating sea creatures. Read more

1 Comments  | Tags: TENORI-ON, Toshio Iwai, Yamaha

Light Dawns on a Marble Head: How Tim Burton Came to MoMA

Posted by Ron Magliozzi, Assistant Curator, Department of Film

If I were to begin with a formal history of the Museum’s eighty or so gallery exhibitions on filmmakers, film studios, and international filmmaking since 1939, this might make for a dull start to our Burton blogs. Instead, here’s my personal story of how MoMA’s Tim Burton began.

In fact I can tell you the precise moment when the idea popped into my head. It happened on July 31, 2005 (my birthday by the way), at an 11:00 a.m. screening of Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Kaufman Astoria Stadium 14 Cinema in Queens, NY. Today, now that all of the single-screen neighborhood movie theaters I spent my childhood in are gone, my favorite place and time to go to a movie is a large multiplex at the earliest morning screening when the melancholy of the deserted, over-sized spaces somehow speaks to my feelings of nostalgia for past movie-going experiences. Read more

1 Comments  | Tags: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Danny Elfman, film, Johnny Depp, Kaufman Astoria Stadium 14 Cinema, Tim Burton

Walead Beshty in New Photography 2009

Posted by Eva Respini, Associate Curator, Department of Photography

I think it’s a really vital moment for photography right now. Over the past few years, a number of artists have re-opened the discussion on the nature of photography, investigating the materials and processes of the medium itself. Of course, this recent examination is part of a long lineage of experimentation in photography, seen in the work of artistic giants such as László Moholy-Nagy (included in MoMA’s current Bauhaus exhibition) as well as in more recent experimentation by artists such as James Welling. Walead Beshty is active in many of these discussions, as both a writer on the subject and an artist addressing the basic processes of photography. Read more

1 Comments  | Tags: Bauhaus, James Welling, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, New Photography 2009, Photograms, photography, Rayographs, Walead Beshty

Rising Currents: Meet the Project Teams

Posted by Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design

As of yesterday, the Rising Currents teams are now in residence at P.S.1. I’ve asked each of the team leaders to share some of their initial thoughts with you. Here are their reflections on their designated sites and the architects-in-residence program.

ZONE 1: David J. Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, Paul Lewis, LTL Architects

Team LTL hits the ground running or, to be precise, the ambiguous line between ground and water in a site mostly constructed by dredging and infill over the past hundred years. We are thrilled to be given the opportunity by MoMA to work collaboratively at P.S.1 through Rising Currents to investigate the challenges and opportunities that face the uncertain future of the harbor area. While the site given is local, primarily defined by Liberty State Park and the two historic islands, the challenge is global. We look forward to collaborating with our colleagues gathered at P.S.1.

Read more

1 Comments  | Tags: David J. Lewis, Eric Bunge, Gowanus Yacht Club, Kate Orff, Liberty State Park, LTL Architects, Marc Tsurumaki, Matthew Baird Architects, Mimi Hoang, nArchitects, Owls Head Park, Paul Lewis, SCAPE Studio, Staten Island Recreation Center, Sunset Park, Verrazano Bridge

D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation

Posted by Charles Silver, Curator, Department of Film

These notes accompany the screening of D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation on November 18 and 19 in Theater 3, and on November 20 in Theater 2.

I have been struggling with The Birth of a Nation for nearly a half-century, since I first saw it as a teenager. On the one hand, it reaches the highest artistic plateau film had attained in its time, and it is probably, on balance, the most influential movie, in terms of technique, ever. On the other hand, it reeks of the conjugal evils of slavery and lethal white supremacy. How does one reconcile D. W. Griffith’s Leonardo-like genius with his sleazy acceptance of a worldview that is so shameful and repulsive? Can the excuses of slightly tempering the racism of Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman in his adaptation or of a nostalgic Confederate-soaked childhood be fully acceptable? How tolerable was this “blind spot”—as Atticus Finch termed racism in To Kill a Mockingbird—when it condoned the nineteenth-century Ku Klux Klan and helped start a new one in the twentieth century? And, does the film still matter as a social document? I would like to try to approach answers to these questions by begging your indulgence and recounting my personal journey (or journeys) as it relates to the film. Much of this will lie outside the scope of standard film history and criticism, but this is no ordinary film. Read more

2 Comments  | Tags: Civil War, D. W. Griffith, Emmett Till, film, George Siegmann, Jefferson Davis, The Birth of a Nation, The Clansman, Thomas Dixon