1.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
2.
Bard College
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Bard College, founded in 1860, is a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, a hamlet in Dutchess County, New York, United States, in the town of Red Hook. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic District, the institution consists of a liberal arts college, a conservatory, as well as eight graduate programs offering over 20 graduate degrees in the arts and sciences. The undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 10,1, the college has a network of over thirty-five affiliated programs, institutes, and centers, spanning twelve cities, five states, seven countries, and four continents. Bards Annandale campus serves as an important regional cultural institution, both the CCS Hessel Museum of Contemporary Art and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts are located on campus. The college also hosts two acclaimed annual arts festivals, Bard SummerScape, and the Bard Music Festival, during much of the nineteenth century, the land now owned by Bard was mainly composed of several country estates. These estates were called Blithewood, Bartlett, Sands, Crugers Island, in 1853, John Bard and Margaret Bard purchased a part of the Blithewood estate and renamed it Annandale. John Bard was the grandson of Samuel Bard, a prominent doctor, a founder of Columbia Universitys medical school, John Bard was also the nephew of the Rev. John McVickar, a professor at Columbia University. The family had connections with the Episcopal Church and Columbia. The following year, in 1854, John and Margaret established a school on their estate in order to educate the areas children. A wood-frame cottage, known today as Bard Hall, served as a school on weekdays, in 1857, the Bards expanded the parish by building the Chapel of the Holy Innocents next to Bard Hall. During this time, John Bard remained in contact with the New York leaders of the Episcopal Church. The Church suggested that he found a theological college, with the promise of outside financial support, John Bard donated the unfinished Chapel, and the surrounding 18 acres, to the diocese in November 1858. In March 1860, St. Stephens College was founded, in 1861, construction began on the first St. Stephens College building, a stone collegiate gothic dormitory called Aspinwall. During its initial years, the college relied on wealthy benefactors, the college began taking shape within four decades. In 1866, Ludlow Hall, a building, was erected. Preston Hall was built in 1873 and used as a refectory, a set of four dormitories, collectively known as Stone Row, were completed in 1891. And in 1895, the Greek revival Hoffman Memorial Library was built, the school officially changed its name to Bard College in 1934 in honor of its founder. In the 20th century, social and cultural changes amongst New Yorks high society would bring about the demise of the great estates
3.
Log cabin
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A log cabin is a dwelling constructed of logs, especially a less finished or architecturally sophisticated structure. Log cabins have an ancient history in Europe, and in America are often associated with first generation home building by settlers, construction with logs was described by Roman architect Vitruvius Pollio in his architectural treatise De Architectura. He noted that in Pontus, dwellings were constructed by laying logs horizontally overtop of each other and filling in the gaps with chips, historically log cabin construction has its roots in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. Although their origin is uncertain, the first log structures were probably being built in Northern Europe by the Bronze Age. C. A. Weslager describes Europeans as having. accomplished in building several forms of log housing, having different methods of corner timbering, Log saunas or bathhouses of this type are still found in rural Finland. By stacking tree trunks one on top of another and overlapping the logs at the corners and they developed interlocking corners by notching the logs at the ends, resulting in strong structures that were easier to make weather-tight by inserting moss or other soft material into the joints. As the original coniferous forest extended over the coldest parts of the world, the insulating properties of the solid wood were a great advantage over a timber frame construction covered with animal skins, felt, boards or shingles. Over the decades, increasingly complex joints were developed to ensure more weather tight joints between the logs, but the profiles were still based on the round log. It was also common to replace individual logs damaged by dry rot as necessary, the Wood Museum in Trondheim, Norway, displays fourteen different traditional profiles, but a basic form of log construction was used all over North Europe and Asia and later imported to America. Log construction was especially suited to Scandinavia, where straight, tall tree trunks are readily available, with suitable tools, a log cabin can be erected from scratch in days by a family. As no chemical reaction is involved, such as hardening of mortar, many older towns in Northern Scandinavia have been built exclusively out of log houses, which have been decorated by board paneling and wood cuttings. Today, construction of log cabins as leisure homes is a fully developed industry in Finland. Modern log cabins often feature fiberglass insulation and are sold as prefabricated kits machined in a factory, Log cabins are mostly constructed without the use of nails and thus derive their stability from simple stacking, with only a few dowel joints for reinforcement. This is because a log cabin tends to compress slightly as it settles, nails would soon be out of alignment and torn out. In the present-day United States, settlers may have first constructed log cabins by 1638, historians believe that the first log cabins built in North America were in the Swedish colony of Nya Sverige in the Delaware River and Brandywine River valleys. Many of its colonists were actually Forest Finns, because Finland was a part of Sweden at that time. New Sweden only briefly existed before it became the Dutch colony of New Netherland, the Swedish-Finnish colonists quick and easy construction techniques not only remained, but spread. Later German and Ukrainian immigrants also used this technique, the Scots and Scots-Irish had no tradition of building with logs, but they quickly adopted the method
4.
Gingerbread
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Gingerbread refers to a broad category of baked goods, typically flavored with ginger, cloves, nutmeg or cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar or molasses. Gingerbread foods vary, ranging from a soft, moist loaf cake to something close to a ginger biscuit, originally, the term gingerbread referred to preserved ginger. It then referred to a made with honey and spices. Gingerbread is often used to translate the French term pain dépices or the German term Lebkuchen or Pfefferkuchen, Gingerbread is claimed to have been brought to Europe in 992 CE by the Armenian monk Gregory of Nicopolis. He left Nicopolis, Pompeii, to live in Bondaroy, near the town of Pithiviers and he stayed there seven years and taught gingerbread baking to French Christians. In the 13th century, gingerbread was brought to Sweden by German immigrants, in 15th-century Germany, a gingerbread guild controlled production. Early references from the Vadstena Abbey show that the Swedish nuns were baking gingerbread to ease indigestion in 1444 and it was the custom to bake white biscuits and paint them as window decorations. The first documented trade of gingerbread biscuits dates to the 17th century, where they were sold in monasteries, pharmacies, in Medieval England gingerbread was thought to have medicinal properties. One hundred years later, the town of Market Drayton in Shropshire, UK became known for its gingerbread, as is proudly displayed on their towns welcome sign. The first recorded mention of gingerbread being baked in the dates to 1793, although it was probably made earlier. Gingerbread became widely available in the 18th century, Gingerbread came to the Americas with settlers from Europe. Molasses, which was less expensive than sugar, soon became a common ingredient, the first American cookbook, American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, contained seven different recipes for gingerbread. In England, gingerbread may refer to a cake, or a type of cookie/biscuit made with ginger, in the biscuit form, it commonly takes the form of a gingerbread man. Gingerbread men were first attributed to the court of Queen Elizabeth I, today, however, they are generally served around Christmas. Parkin is a form of soft gingerbread cake made with oatmeal, in the United States, this form of gingerbread is sometimes called gingerbread cake or ginger cake to distinguish it from the harder forms. French pain dépices is somewhat similar, though generally slightly drier, originally French pain dépices did not contain ginger. The hard gingerbread is made in shapes, which are then further decorated with sweets. The tradition of cutting gingerbread into shapes takes many forms, and exists in many countries
5.
Tap dance
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Tap dance is a form of dance characterized by using the sounds of tap shoes striking the floor as a form of percussion. Two major variations on tap dance exist, rhythm tap and Broadway tap, Broadway tap focuses on dance, it is widely performed in musical theater. Rhythm tap focuses on musicality, and practitioners consider themselves to be a part of the jazz tradition, the sound is made by shoes that have a metal tap on the heel and toe. There are different brands of shoes which sometimes differ in the way they sound and it preceded what is currently considered to be modern tap, but has since declined in popularity. Tap dance is believed to have begun in the mid-1800s during the rise of minstrel shows, as the minstrel shows began to decline in popularity, tap dance moved to the increasingly popular Vaudeville stage. Due to the rule, which forbade blacks from performing solo. This gave rise to the famous pair Buck and Bubbles, which consisted of John Bubbles Sublett tap dancing, the duo perfected the Class Act, a routine in which the performers wore impeccable tuxedos, which has since become a common theme in tap dance. The move is seen by some as a rebuttal to the minstrel show idea of the tap dancer as a grinning-and-dancing clown. John Bubbles Sublett is also known famously for popularizing rhythm tap which incorporates more percussive heel drops, another notable figure to emerge during this period is Bill Bojangles Robinson who was a protégé of Alice Whitman of The Whitman Sisters around 1904. Well versed in both Buck and Wing dancing and Irish Step dancing, Bill Robinson joined the Vaudeville circuit in 1902, the act quickly became famous, headlining events across the country, and touring England as well. In 1908, however, the two had an altercation, and the partnership was ended, gambling on his popularity, Robinson decided to form a solo act, which was extremely rare for a black man at that time. Despite this, he had success and soon became a world-famous celebrity. He went on to have a role in many films. Shortly thereafter, the Nicholas Brothers came on the scene, during the 1930s tap dance mixed with Lindy Hop. Flying swing outs and flying circles are Lindy Hop moves with tap footwork, in the mid- to late 1950s, the style of entertainment changed. Jazz music and tap dance declined, while rock and roll, what is now called jazz dance evolved out of tap dance, so both dances have many moves in common. But jazz evolved separately from tap dance to become a new form in its own right, well-known dancers during the 1960s and 1970s included Arthur Duncan and Tommy Tune. No Maps on My Taps, the Emmy award winning PBS documentary of 1979, the outstanding success of the animated film, Happy Feet, has further reinforced the popular appeal
6.
Sadomasochism
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Sadomasochism is the giving or receiving pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual gratification from their acts, while the terms sadist and masochist refer respectively to one who enjoys giving or receiving pain, practitioners of sadomasochism may switch between activity and passivity. The abbreviation S&M is often used for sadomasochism, although practitioners themselves normally remove the ampersand, Sadomasochism is not considered a clinical paraphilia unless such practices lead to clinically significant distress or impairment for a diagnosis. Similarly, sexual sadism within the context of mutual consent, generally known under the heading BDSM, is distinguished from acts of sexual violence or aggression. The term sadomasochism is used in a variety of different ways and it can refer to cruel individuals or those who brought misfortunes onto themselves and psychiatrists define it as pathological. The two words incorporated into this compound, sadism and masochism, were derived from the names of two authors. The term Sadism has its origin in the name of the Marquis de Sade, who not only practiced sexual sadism, Masochism is named after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who wrote novels expressing his masochistic fantasies. These terms were first selected to identifying human behavioural phenomena and for the classification of psychological illnesses or deviant behaviour, the German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing introduced the terms Sadism and Masochism into medical terminology in his work Neue Forschungen auf dem Gebiet der Psychopathia sexualis in 1890. In 1905, Sigmund Freud described sadism and masochism in his Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie as stemming from aberrant psychological development from early childhood and he also laid the groundwork for the widely accepted medical perspective on the subject in the following decades. This led to the first compound usage of the terminology in Sado-Masochism by the Viennese Psychoanalyst Isidor Isaak Sadger in his work Über den sado-masochistischen Komplex in 1913, however, the term BDSM also includes, B&D, D/s, and S&M. The terms bondage and discipline usually refer to the use of physical or psychological restraint or punishment. Both terms were introduced to the field by German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing in his 1886 compilation of case studies Psychopathia Sexualis. Pain and physical violence are not essential in Krafft-Ebings conception, and this observation is commonly verified in both literature and practice, many sadists and masochists define themselves as switchable—capable of taking pleasure in either role. However it has also argued that the concurrence of sadism and masochism in Freuds model should not be taken for granted. Freud introduced the terms primary and secondary masochism and this complete rejection is related to the death drive in Freuds psychoanalysis. In a secondary masochism, by contrast, the masochist experiences a less serious, more feigned rejection, secondary masochism, in other words, is the relatively casual version, more akin to a charade, and most commentators are quick to point out its contrivedness. In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, René Girard attempts to resuscitate and reinterpret Freuds distinction of primary and secondary masochism, both Krafft-Ebing and Freud assumed that sadism in men resulted from the distortion of the aggressive component of the male sexual instinct. Masochism in men, however, was seen as a more significant aberration, Freud doubted that masochism in men was ever a primary tendency, and speculated that it may exist only as a transformation of sadism
7.
Black people
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As such, the meaning of the expression varies widely both between and within societies, and depends significantly on context. For many other individuals, communities and countries, black is also perceived as a derogatory, outdated, reductive or otherwise unrepresentative label, different societies apply differing criteria regarding who is classified as black, and these social constructs have also changed over time. In a number of countries, societal variables affect classification as much as skin color, in the United Kingdom, black was historically equivalent with person of color, a general term for non-European peoples. In South Africa and Latin America, mixed-race people are not classified as black. In other regions such as Australasia, settlers applied the term black or it was used by local populations with different histories and ancestral backgrounds. The Romans interacted with and later conquered parts of Mauretania, a state that covered modern Morocco, western Algeria. The people of the region were noted in Classical literature as Mauri, numerous communities of dark-skinned peoples are present in North Africa, some dating from prehistoric communities. In the 18th century, the Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty raised a corps of 150,000 black slaves, called his Black Guard and he claims that black-looking Arabs, much like black-looking Latin Americans, consider themselves white because they have some distant white ancestry. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had a mother who was a dark-skinned Nubian Sudanese woman, in response to an advertisement for an acting position, as a young man he said, I am not white but I am not exactly black either. My blackness is tending to reddish, due to the patriarchal nature of Arab society, Arab men, including during the slave trade in North Africa, enslaved more black women than men. They used more black female slaves in domestic service and agriculture than males, the men interpreted the Quran to permit sexual relations between a male master and his female slave outside of marriage, leading to many mixed-race children. When an enslaved woman became pregnant with her Arab masters child, she was considered as umm walad or mother of a child, the child was given rights of inheritance to the fathers property, so mixed-race children could share in any wealth of the father. Because the society was patrilineal, the children took their fathers social status at birth and were born free, some succeeded their fathers as rulers, such as Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, who ruled Morocco from 1578 to 1608. He was not technically considered as a child of a slave, his mother was Fulani. Such tolerance for black persons, even when technically free, was not so common in Morocco, the long association of sub-Saharan peoples as slaves is shown in the term abd, it is still frequently used in the Arabic-speaking world as a term for black people. In early 1991, non-Arabs of the Zaghawa tribe of Sudan attested that they were victims of an intensifying Arab apartheid campaign, Sudanese Arabs, who controlled the government, were widely referred to as practicing apartheid against Sudans non-Arab citizens. The government was accused of deftly manipulat Arab solidarity to carry out policies of apartheid, American University economist George Ayittey accused the Arab government of Sudan of practicing acts of racism against black citizens. The Arabs monopolized power and excluded blacks – Arab apartheid, many African commentators joined Ayittey in accusing Sudan of practising Arab apartheid
8.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
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The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, the museum’s current collection includes over 33,000 works of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts. They are displayed in 170,000 square feet of space, making the museum one of the largest in the United States overall. SFMOMA reopened on May 14,2016, following a major expansion project. SFMOMA was founded in 1935 under director Grace L. McCann Morley as the San Francisco Museum of Art, for its first sixty years, the museum occupied the fourth floor of the War Memorial Veterans Building on Van Ness Avenue in the Civic Center. A gift of 36 artworks from Albert M. Bender, including The Flower Carrier by Diego Rivera, Bender donated more than 1,100 objects to SFMOMA during his lifetime and endowed the museums first purchase fund. The museum began its second year with an exhibition of works by Henri Matisse, in this same year the museum established its photography collection, becoming one of the first museums to recognize photography as a fine art. SFMOMA held its first architecture exhibition, entitled Telesis, Space for Living, SFMOMA was obliged to move to a temporary facility on Post Street in March 1945 to make way for the United Nations Conference on International Organization. The museum returned to its original Van Ness location in July, later that year SFMOMA hosted Jackson Pollocks first solo museum exhibition. Founding director Grace Morley held film screenings at the beginning in 1937. In 1946 Morley brought in filmmaker Frank Stauffacher to found SFMOMA’s influential Art in Cinema film series, SFMOMA continued its expansion into new media with the 1951 launch of a biweekly television program entitled Art in Your Life. The series, later renamed Discovery, ran for three years, Morley ended her 23-year tenure as museum director in 1958 and was succeeded by George D. Culler and Gerald Nordland. The museum rose to prominence under director Henry T. Hopkins. Since 1967, SFMOMA has honored San Francisco Bay Area artists with its biennial SECA Art Award, the positions of director of education and director of photography were elevated to full curatorial roles. At this time SFMOMA took on a special exhibitions program. Including major presentations of the work of Jeff Koons, Sigmar Polke, in January 1995 the museum opened its current location at 151 Third Street, adjacent to Yerba Buena Gardens in the SOMA district. Mario Botta, a Swiss architect from Canton Ticino, designed the new US$60 million facility, Art patron Phyllis Wattis helped the museum acquire key works by Magritte, Mondrian, Andy Warhol, Eva Hesse and Wayne Thiebaud. SFMOMA made a number of important acquisitions under the direction of David A and those and acquisitions of works by Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon, Alexander Calder, Chuck Close and Frank Stella put the institution in the top ranks of American museums of modern art
9.
Whitney Museum of American Art
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The Whitney Museum of American Art – known informally as the Whitney – is an art museum located in Manhattan. It was founded in 1931 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a wealthy and prominent American socialite, the Whitney focuses on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Its permanent collection more than 21,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, films, videos. The museums Annual and Biennial exhibitions have long been a venue for younger, from 1966 to 2014, the Whitney was located at 945 Madison Avenue at East 75th Street in Manhattans Upper East Side. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the namesake and founder, was herself a well-regarded sculptor as well as a serious art collector. With the aid of her assistant, Juliana R. Force, in 1929, she offered to donate over 500 works of art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but the museum declined the gift. This, along with the apparent preference for European modernism at the recently opened Museum of Modern Art, led Whitney to start her own museum, exclusively for American art, in 1929. Force became the first director of the museum, and under her guidance, in 1954, the museum left its original location and moved to a small structure on 54th Street connected to and behind the Museum of Modern Art on 53rd Street. On April 15,1958, a fire on the floor of MOMA that killed one person forced the evacuation of paintings. Among the paintings moved in the evacuation was A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte which had been on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1961, the museum began seeking a site for a larger building. The Whitney settled in 1966 at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue at 75th Street in Manhattans Upper East Side, in 1967, Mauricio Lasansky showed The Nazi Drawings. The exhibition traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the institution grappled with space problems for decades. From 1973 to 1983 the Whitney operated its first branch at 55 Water Street, in 1983 Philip Morris installed a Whitney branch in the lobby of its Park Avenue headquarters. In 1981 the museum opened a space in Stamford, Connecticut. Each museum had its own director, and all plans were to be approved by a Whitney committee, but each time the effort was abandoned, either because of the cost or the design or both. In order to secure space for the museums collections, then-director Thomas N. Armstrong III developed plans for a 10-story. The proposed addition, designed by Michael Graves and announced in 1985, Graves had proposed demolishing the flanking brownstones down to the East 74th Street corner for a complementary addition. After the project gradually lost the support of many of the museum’s trustees, between 1995 and 1998, the building underwent a renovation and addition by Richard Gluckman
10.
Walker Art Center
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The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The museums permanent collection includes over 13,000 modern and contemporary art pieces including books, costumes, drawings, media works, paintings, photography, prints, the Walker Art Center began 1879 as a personal art gallery in the home of lumber baron Thomas Barlow Walker. Walker formally established his collection as the Walker Art Gallery in 1927, with the support of the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, the Walker Art Gallery became the Walker Art Center in January 1940. The Walker celebrated its 75th anniversary as an art center in 2015. The Walkers building, designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes and opened in May 1971, Swiss architects Herzog & de Meurons addition included an additional gallery space, a theater, restaurant, shop, and special events space. The Visual Arts program has been a part of the Walker Art Center since its founding, the program includes an ongoing cycle of exhibitions in the galleries as well as a permanent collection of acquired, donated, and commissioned works. The Walker’s collection represents works of modern and contemporary art, especially focused after 1960, the Walker’s holdings include more than 13,000 individual pieces including books, costumes, drawings, media works, paintings, photography, prints, and sculpture. In 2015, the Walker celebrated the 75th anniversary of its founding as an art center with a yearlong exhibition. In 1940, the Walker began presenting local dance, poetry, by 1963, this group had become Center Opera, the Walker’s performing arts program focused on exhibiting new works emphasizing visual design. In 1970, Center Opera disbanded from the Walker and became Minnesota Opera, the same year, Performing Arts was officially designated as a department of the Walker Art Center. Since the 1960s, Performing Arts at the Walker has commissioned 265 performance works, in addition, the department programs a 25-show season every year that includes performances ranging from performance art, theater, dance, spoken word and music. It is one of the largest performing arts programs of its kind found in a museum in the nation. As a longtime associate of the Merce Cunning ham Dance Company, the agreement included sculptures, sets, costumes and other works by artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. The Walker Art Centers film and video programs feature both contemporary and historical works, in the 1940s, the Walker identified moving images as integral to contemporary life. Artists of that time were experimenting with film’s formal properties, such as light, motion, in 1973, the Film/Video Department was officially formed and the Edmond R. Ruben Film and Video Study Collection was established, along with an endowment to fund the development of the archive. Ruben, a figure in film exhibition in the Upper Midwest. Today, with more than eight hundred fifty titles, the Ruben Collection brings together classic and contemporary cinema as well as documentaries, avant-garde films, the Walker Art Center maintains a professional, in-house design and editorial department to fulfill its various communication needs. Additionally, the department organizes design-related projects and programs, such as lectures, exhibitions, during the 1940s, the Walker built two idea houses exhibiting the latest in building materials, furnishings and architectural design trends
11.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
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The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, MOCAs original space, initially intended as a temporary exhibit space while the main facility was built, is now known as the Geffen Contemporary, in the Little Tokyo district of downtown Los Angeles. The Pacific Design Center facility is in West Hollywood, the museums exhibits consist primarily of American and European contemporary art created after 1940. Since the museums inception, MOCAs programming has been defined by its approach to contemporary art. Throughout the evening, Weisman passionately discussed the citys need for an art museum. In the following weeks, the Mayors Museum Advisory Committee was organized, the committee, led by William A. Norris, set about creating a museum from scratch, including locating funds, trustees, directors, curators, a gallery, and most importantly an art collection. The following year, the fledgling Museum of Contemporary Art was operating out of an office on Boyd Street, many of MOCAs initial donors were young and supporting the arts for the first time, a substantial number joined up at the $10,000 founder minimum. Making up well over 90% of the works, gifts from several major private collectors form the cornerstones of MOCAs permanent collection of nearly 6,000 works. Much of it has come from members who donated or bequeathed key works or entire collections. In 1985, the museum accepted Michael Heizers earthwork Double Negative in Nevada desert, in 1991, Hollywood screenwriter Scott Spiegel donated works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mark Innerst, Robert Longo, Susan Rothenberg, David Salle, among others. Over the years, major donations of art collections have come from the Lannan Foundation, in 2000, MOCA received gifts from artists themselves, including major pieces by sculptor and performance artist Paul McCarthy, video artist Doug Aitken and photographer Andreas Gursky. Los Angeles-based artist Ed Moses made a gift of his work to the museum in 1995. As the Los Angeles Times declared, There isn’t a city in America—not New York, not Chicago, not Houston, not San Francisco—where a more impressive museum collection of contemporary art can be seen. Art as Object, 1958-1968, Reconsidering the Object of Art, 1965-1975, Hall of Mirrors, Art and Film since 1945, Out of Actions, Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979, WACK. Art and the Feminist Revolution, Art in the Streets, Under the Big Black Sun, California Art 1974–1981, and Ends of the Earth, Land Art to 1974. The museum also organized the first major museum retrospectives of the work of Allen Ruppersberg, John Baldessari, Ad Reinhardt, Jeff Wall, Barbara Kruger, and Takashi Murakami. In addition there were also monographic shows like an ambitious installation by Robert Gober in 1997, of all solo shows on view over the period between January 2008 and December 2012, only about 28% were devoted to female artists. Besides artists retrospectives and art historical investigations, under chief curator Paul Schimmel, public Offerings, in 2001, explored the phenomenon of youthful creative energy in an overheated art world where stars are created before they leave art school
12.
Museum of Modern Art
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The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is identified as one of the largest and most influential museums of modern art in the world. The MoMA Library includes approximately 300,000 books and exhibition catalogs, over 1,000 periodical titles, the archives holds primary source material related to the history of modern and contemporary art. The idea for The Museum of Modern Art was developed in 1929 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and they became known variously as the Ladies, the daring ladies and the adamantine ladies. They rented modest quarters for the new museum in the Heckscher Building at 730 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and it opened to the public on November 7,1929, nine days after the Wall Street Crash. Abby had invited A. Conger Goodyear, the president of the board of trustees of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. At the time, it was Americas premier museum devoted exclusively to art. One of Abbys early recruits for the staff was the noted Japanese-American photographer Soichi Sunami. Goodyear enlisted Paul J. Sachs and Frank Crowninshield to join him as founding trustees, Sachs, the associate director and curator of prints and drawings at the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, was referred to in those days as a collector of curators. Goodyear asked him to recommend a director and Sachs suggested Alfred H. Barr, under Barrs guidance, the museums holdings quickly expanded from an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing. Its first successful exhibition was in November 1929, displaying paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne. Abbys husband was opposed to the museum and refused to release funds for the venture. Nevertheless, he donated the land for the current site of the museum, plus other gifts over time. During that time it initiated many more exhibitions of noted artists, the museum also gained international prominence with the hugely successful and now famous Picasso retrospective of 1939–40, held in conjunction with the Art Institute of Chicago. In its range of presented works, it represented a significant reinterpretation of Picasso for future art scholars, Boy Leading a Horse was briefly contested over ownership with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In 1941, MoMA hosted the exhibition, Indian Art of the United States. His brother, David Rockefeller, also joined the board of trustees in 1948. David subsequently employed the noted architect Philip Johnson to redesign the garden and name it in honor of his mother
