MoMA curator Leah Dickerman and exhibition designer Mack Cole-Edelsack working on the model for our upcoming Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends exhibition (opening in May). With them is artist/filmmaker Charles Atlas, who is collaborating on the design of the show.

[Photo by Jessica Bell Brown]

Next Wednesday, January 18, at 6 p.m., writer Ben Rawlence and associate curator Sean Anderson will discuss how areas of displacement affect the making of and response to architecture today.

In conjunction with the exhibition Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter, this discussion is part of MoMA’s Citizens and Borders program series. Info and tickets.

[Tobias Hutzler. Nizip II, Container Camp. 2014. Courtesy of the artist]

Seven months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Museum held an exhibition of artworks donated by leading American artists, which were all to be sold to benefit the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization largely founded by King. It was the first time MoMA had held an exhibition for the benefit of another organization; the press release noted that “the Trustees felt that the Museum galleries should be made available to the American artists who wanted to honor Dr. King and the goals to which he had dedicated his life.” The nearly 60 participants included many of the most renowned artists of the day, including Romare Bearden, Alexander Calder, Jacob Lawrence, Isamu Noguchi, Robert Rauschenberg, and Mark Rothko.

See images of the installation and more at mo.ma/2iVWUht. 18 of #52exhibitions #MoMAhistory

Cool Hunting writes about how Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec started their hand-drawn data visualization postcard project, Dear Data, now part of MoMA’s collection.

[Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec. Dear Data. 2015]

Vermont photographer Wilson Bentley became the first person to photograph a single snowflake in 1885 by attaching a microscope to his bellows camera. He would go one to photograph over 5,000 different snowflakes. He captured this snowflake in 1905. 

[Wilson A. Bentley. Snowflake. c. 1905. Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print]

Currently, in our Sculpture Garden… 

Education has been central to MoMA from its beginning. For founding director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the Museum’s mission was “educational in the broadest, least academic sense.” MoMA’s first director of education, Victor D’Amico, established a wide range of series and programs to foster art education and creativity. One of these, the Committee on Art Education, was launched to create ongoing dialogue on issues relevant to teaching. From 1942 to 1957, the Committee held annual symposia on the philosophy and practice of art education. The 1947 conference brought together luminaries such as Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. New Teaching Techniques: Basic Design and Foundation Courses, which documented the efforts of members of the Committee to create experimental courses at the secondary, college, and art school levels, was installed to coincide with the conference.

See images of the installation and more at mo.ma/52exhibitions. 17 of #52exhibitions 

André Masson was best known for his works in Surrealism, using drugs or losing sleep to create works that tapped into his unconscious. Masson started experimenting with sand in the 1920’s. Battle of the Fishes was one of these works, where Masson applied gesso to the canvas and threw sand on it, resulting in contours that suggest forms, “although almost always irrational ones.” Masson was born on this day in 1896.

[André Masson. Battle of Fishes. 1926. Sand, gesso, oil, pencil, and charcoal on canvas, © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris]