Museum of Modern Art Film Library

Museum of Modern Art Film Library
Name	Museum of Modern Art Film Library
Established	1935
Location	11 West 53rd Street, New York City
Type	Film archive, museum department

Contents

Museum of Modern Art Film Library The Museum of Modern Art Film Library was founded in 1935 as a leading moving-image archive associated with Museum of Modern Art (New York City). It developed holdings and programs that intersected with institutions such as the Library of Congress, British Film Institute, Cinémathèque Française, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and collectors linked to Orson Welles, Sergei Eisenstein, D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and Louis Lumière. The Film Library played a formative role in collaborations with festivals and institutions like the Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and academic centers including Columbia University, New York University, Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University.

History

The Film Library originated amid efforts by Alfred H. Barr Jr. and allies such as Irene Lewisohn and Adolf Loos to integrate moving image into museum practice, shortly after exchanges with figures like Carl Dreyer, Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, Sergei Prokofiev, and Bertolt Brecht. Early administrators drew on models from the British Film Institute and the Cinémathèque Française while corresponding with John Grierson, Henri Langlois, and Marcel Duchamp. During World War II the Film Library coordinated with Office of War Information initiatives and postwar cultural diplomacy involving United States Information Agency, Library of Congress, and collectors including William S. Paley and Henry Luce. In the 1950s and 1960s expansions followed collaborations with curators linked to Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, and scholars from The New School and Smithsonian Institution. Later decades saw institutional partnerships with Museum of Modern Art (New York City) departments, exchanges with Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and engagement with directors such as Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, and Alfred Hitchcock.

The Film Library curated retrospectives and themed series on auteurs such as Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrei Tarkovsky, Orson Welles, and Charlie Chaplin, often in partnership with festivals like Telluride Film Festival and venues including Lincoln Center and Film at Lincoln Center programs. Public programs featured premieres, panel discussions with critics like Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael, lectures by historians from British Film Institute and Cinémathèque Française, and symposiums with awardees from the Academy Awards, Cannes Palme d'Or, Berlin Golden Bear, Venice Golden Lion, and Golden Globe Awards. Educational screening series collaborated with university film societies at Columbia University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Southern California, New York University, and preservation partners such as National Film Preservation Foundation.

Scholarly output included catalogues raisonnés, exhibition catalogues, annotated filmographies, and articles in journals such as Film Quarterly, Sight & Sound, Cahiers du cinéma, Cinema Journal, and contributions by historians like David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, Thomas Elsaesser, Andre Bazin, Richard Dyer, Laura Mulvey, Tom Gunning, Annette Michelson, Charles Musser, and P. Adams Sitney. The Film Library supported fellowship programs and archival research grants in association with Rockefeller Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Ford Foundation, and university presses including Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Columbia University Press.

Education initiatives partnered with schools and community organizations such as New York Public Library, Public Theater, Juilliard School, Cooper Union, MoMA PS1, and film clubs at Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, New York University, and Pratt Institute. Outreach programs included family screenings, teacher workshops, guest lectures by filmmakers like Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, Ava DuVernay, Ken Loach, Fernando Meirelles, and training sessions for conservators from Smithsonian Institution and National Gallery of Art. The Film Library also collaborated with streaming initiatives and broadcast partners modeled on archives at British Film Institute and Cinémathèque Française to increase public access.

Category:Film archives Category:Film preservation