Cubism and Abstract Art
March 2–April 19, 1936
 
The Museum of Modern Art is one of the great museums of the world, it’s safe to say. Established in late 1929 on the eve of a global depression, MoMA has showcased and helped define the best in modern art for decades. In that 86-year span, MoMA has staged literally hundreds of exhibitions to delight New Yorkers and visitors alike, but the traces of those artistic and curatorial marvels have, for the modern student, been on the scarce side.

Until now, that is. MoMA has chosen 2016 to be the year that it made the vast majority of its exhibition catalogues available on the Internet free of charge. The vast digital archive has 33,000 images with a rich selection of catalogs, installation shots, exhibition checklists, and press releases.

The first MoMA exhibition was called “Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, Van Gogh.” There have been more than 3,500 exhibitions in the museum since, targeting a wide swath of subject matter including film, performance, design, new media, architecture, and photography.

Some of the most significant exhibitions of all time are here, including the 1936 show on cubism and abstract art, the 1936-37 dada and surrealism show, and the 1939-40 Picasso retrospective. More recently, exhibitions like the 1959-1960 show Sixteen Americans, which introduced artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Jasper Johns to a broader public, and the 1970 show Information, which controversially showcased recent polemical art, are also represented. 

Below we’ve put together a brief series of representative catalogs from the past decades.
 

Machine Art
March 5–April 29, 1934
 

Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism
December 7, 1936–January 17, 1937
 

Picasso: Forty Years of His Art
November 15, 1939–January 7, 1940
 
Many more after the jump…

 
Rain Room, an installation by London-based artist collective rAndom International, is an experiment in sensory disruption. A 300 ft² room is rigged to create a constant downpour, but motion-detecting cameras stop the rain anywhere a person is present. The effect is one of being cloaked in dryness, which follows you wherever you go. The rain is actually so loud that the voice of a person a few feet away is drowned out, thus the lacuna of rain occupied by a body actually forms its own “room.”

While the physical reality of responsive rain is jarringly exhilarating, the effect of insulation that eventually settles in is as soothing as it is surreal. 
 

 
Via MoMA

 
The Kraftwerk shows (April 10–17, 2012) at The Museum Of Modern Art are completely sold out and fans of the band are pissing and moaning about the shortsightedness of the shows organizers. The general consensus is that the performances should have taken place in a much larger venue than the museum…Madison Square Garden, for instance. In addition, a computer glitch made it impossible for people to get tickets online.

Over eight consecutive nights, MoMA presents a chronological exploration of the sonic and visual experiments of Kraftwerk with a live presentation of their complete repertoire in the Museum’s Marron Atrium. Each evening consists of a live performance and 3-D visualization of one of Kraftwerk’s studio albums—Autobahn (1974), Radio-Activity (1975), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), Computer World (1981), Techno Pop (1986), The Mix (1991), and Tour de France (2003)—in the order of their release. Kraftwerk will follow each evening’s album performance with additional compositions from their catalog, all adapted specifically for this exhibition.

People who tried to obtain tickets via the Internet were stuck in computer hell.

Fans hoping to score tickets to one of Kraftwerk’s eight performances at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in April have, by and large, found themselves flat out of luck. The site hosting the ticket sales, Showclix, seems to have experienced a massive technical fail – with users reporting the site failing to load, experiencing time outs and keeping them trapped in an unmoving queue.

Someone with a wicked sense of humor responded to the debacle with the following video.
 

 
ABKCO Films presents legendary director Alejandro Jodorowsky in a rare New York appearance with a Halloween screening of The Holy Mountain at MoMA:

Jodorowsky will introduce his visionary 1973 cult film The Holy Mountain, which famously played for sixteen straight months at New York’s Waverly Theater, at “An Evening with Alejandro Jodorowsky” on Monday, October 31, at 7 PM. The program serves as a coda to the exhibition of Jodorowsky’s work that was organized at MoMA PS1 earlier this year by Klaus Biesenbach.

Jodorowsky will take part in an onstage conversation with Klaus Biesenbach and Joshua Siegel.

The Holy Mountain is a surreal and picaresque satire depicting the journey of a Christ-like figure, the Thief, to a symbolic mountain that is said to unite Heaven and Earth. Playing the character of the Alchemist both on and off screen, Jodorowsky immersed his actors in months of preparatory spiritual and occult exercises, and was also responsible for the costume, set designs and for co-writing the musical score.

Tickets are $12 adults; $10 seniors, $8 full–time students. Admission is free for Museum members. Tickets and info. The Holy Mountain is out on Blu-ray DVD.
 

 

(via I Heart Pluto)