Photo of Nelson A. Rockefeller (left) and Alfred H. Barr, Jr., at NBC telecast in 1939 MoMA’s new building. Photographic Archive. Museum of Modern Art Archives.
Esopus 15 (Fall 2010)
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Modern Artifacts 8: The Art of Broadcasting
Introduction by Michelle Elligott
This latest installment of a regular series copresented with the Museum of Modern Art Archives concerns MoMA’s relationship to television, which the museum’s archivist, Michelle Elliigott, describes in her introduction as “riddled with ambiguity, multiple agendas, and several false starts.” Reproduced here are fascinating documents related to a 1955 episode of Home, a popular NBC daytime show, which featured MoMA director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., explaining the meaning of modern art.
Michelle Elligott is the Rona Roob Senior Museum Archivist at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Elligott coedited Art in Our Time: A Chronicle of the Museum of Modern Art, cocurated MoMA’s “1969” exhibition, and has published and lectured widely.