MoMA in May
New exhibitions, extended hours and an interactive café hit the MoMA
There are a lot of new things going on at the New York Museum of Modern Art this May. A few new exhibitions, the 100th installation in the Projects series, an interactive studio café and even a new schedule all come into play. To keep you organized and share a little more insight into the MoMA happenings, we’ve gathered together a rundown of what to expect next month.
First off, opening 10 May 2013 is XL: 19 New Acquisitions in Photography. A five-gallery exhibition comprised of 19 works by 19 artists (many multipart), XL shows off some of the best pieces of contemporary photography acquired by MoMA over the past five years. Technique-heavy works from Swiss-born American artist Robert Frank give way to more theoretical works by Austrian feminists Birgit Jürgenssen and Valie Export, eventually culminating in Columbian Oscar Muñoz’s 21st-century hybrid portraits. It’s a compelling look at photography’s evolution, both technically and conceptually, since the 1960s.
Continuing the international, mixed-media theme is Projects 100: Akram Zaatari. The Beirut-based artist brings two of his complex video installations to the United States for the first time, both of which draw extensively on found audio, repurposed photographs and video drawn from YouTube to play with notions of memory, urgency and history. Zaatari hopes that by recontextualizing these documents he can offer a new way of looking at modern Lebanese society.
Later in the month to celebrate Ellsworth Kelly’s 90th birthday, MoMa will present Ellsworth Kelly: Chatham Series, a look at 14 of the first works Kelly produced after leaving New York City for upstate New York in 1970. His Chatham studio was an abandoned theater that afforded him the freedom to work on a different scale than previously possible. The 14 inverted ell-shaped works juxtapose panels of various sizes and colors to produce a striking effect. MoMa is displaying all 14 pairs of panels together for the first time since 1972, and the exhibition begins 25 May 2013.
If you need a break from all the new exhibitions, you can stop by the MoMa Studio: Exchange Café, which Sarah Kennedy (Associate Educator, Lab Programs) describes as a “social space where we are building upon the familiar form of the café to explore notions of exchange, reciprocity, value and property. Patrons who come to the cafe will be served tea, milk and honey, but instead of paying with legal tender, they will create resource-based currency related to their own needs and haves—with the goal of creating a network of exchange within the space. The idea is to prompt visitors to think about exchange in their lives.”
Starting on the first of May, MoMA will be open to the public seven days a week (doing away with the usual Tuesday closing). Also, beginning 3 May, MoMA will host UNIQLO Free Friday Nights, giving free admission into the museum from 4-8PM every Friday night.
Images courtesy of MoMA
