Books by Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.)

MoMA Highlights: 350 Works from The Museum of Modern Art, New York: Revised Edition 2013

by Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.)

An updated edition featuring a fresh look at the Museum’s superlative collection of modern and contemporary art Few institutions approach the richness of The Museum of Modern Art’s holdings in painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, illustrated books, architectural models and drawings, graphic and industrial design, photography, film, video and multimedia installations. This updated edition of MoMA Highlights: 350 Works from The Museum of Modern Art is a fresh consideration of the Museum’s superlative collection of modern and contemporary art, featuring 115 new works since the 2004 edition, many of them recent acquisitions ranging from typefaces to conceptual performances that reflect the Museum’s ongoing dedication to the art of our time. MoMA Highlights presents a rich chronological overview of the most significant artworks from each of the Museum’s curatorial departments--painting and sculpture, drawings, prints and illustrated books, photography, architecture and design,film, and media and performance art--with each work represented by a vibrant, high-resolution color image and accompanied by a short informative text. Trimmer and lighter in weight than previous versions, this new edition of MoMA Highlights is an indispensable resource for exploring one of the premier art collections in the world.

Diego Rivera Murals for the Museum of Modern Art

by Leah Dickerman, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), Anna Indych-López, Diego Rivera

The compelling story of how an art celebrity and icon of the Mexican left came to New York in 1931 to paint eight murals at The Museum of Modern Art

In 1931, Diego Rivera was the subject of The Museum of Modern Art's second monographic exhibition, which set new attendance records in its five-week run. The Museum brought Rivera to New York six weeks before the show's opening and gave him on-site studio space. There he produced five "portable murals" --large blocks of frescoed plaster, slaked lime and wood that feature bold images drawn from Mexican subject matter and address themes of revolution and class inequity. After the opening, to great publicity, Rivera added three more murals, now taking on New York subjects through monumental images of the urban working class and the city during the Great Depression. Published in conjunction with an exhibition that brings together key works made for Rivera's 1931 show, this catalogue casts the artist as a highly cosmopolitan figure who traveled between Russia, Mexico and the United States and examines the intersection of artmaking and radical politics in the 1930s. Illustrated with reproductions of each panel as well as related paintings, drawings, prints and documentary photographs, the book's essays investigate the international politics of muralism, Rivera's history with MoMA, the iconography of the portable murals and technical aspects of the artist's working process.

Diego Rivera (1886-1957) was a central figure in the development of Mexican muralism, an ambitious public art initiative intended to relay Mexico's ideals after the Revolution (1910-1920). A highly cosmopolitan artist, Rivera had spent many years in Europe before returning to Mexico in 1921, and in 1927 he traveled to the Soviet Union where he met Alfred Barr, the soon-to-be founding director of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Rivera's artistic celebrity benefitted from major commissions in the United States, including murals for the Pacific Stock Exchange, the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, MoMA and the Detroit Institute of Arts. By the 1930s, he enjoyed an unrivaled status at the center of international debates about public art and politics..