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
 

Ben Shahn
September 30, 1947–January 4, 1948
 

Léger
October 20, 1953–January 3, 1954
 

16 Americans
December 16, 1959–February 17, 1960
 

Information
July 2–September 20, 1970
 

Francesco Clemente: The Departure of the Argonaut
November 6, 1986–February 10, 1987
 

Anselm Kiefer
October 16, 1988–January 3, 1989
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
MoMA and Warhol Museum to digitize all of Warhol’s films and videos