Museum of the Moving Image (Manhattan, NY)

Mission
Museum of the Moving Image advances the understanding, enjoyment, and appreciation of the art, history, technique, and technology of film, television, and digital media by presenting exhibitions, education programs, significant moving-image works, and interpretive programs, and collecting and preserving moving-image related artifacts.

Screenings
Each year the Museum screens more than 400 films in a stimulating mix of the classic and the contemporary. With live music for silent films, restored prints from the world’s leading archives, and outstanding new films from the international festival circuit, Museum programs are recognized for their quality as well as their scope. The Museum’s diverse screening program presents a panoramic view of the moving image, from the global discoveries presented in the annual showcase First Look to the popular ongoing series See It Big!, which celebrates the excitement and immersive power of big-screen moviegoing.

Public Discussions
The Pinewood Dialogues, an ongoing series of conversations with creative professionals in film, television, and digital media made possible by the Pinewood (now Pannonia) Foundation, has brought to the Museum’s stage such leading figures as Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, David Cronenberg, Charles Burnett, Tim Burton, Todd Haynes, Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Thomas Anderson, Glenn Close, Jim Jarmusch, Terry Gilliam, David Mamet, Bill Cosby, Joan Ganz Cooney, and Frank Oz. Many of these conversations are available online.

Core Exhibition
The Museum’s core exhibition, Behind the Screen, immerses visitors in the creative process of making moving images. It features over 1,400 artifacts, from nineteenth-century optical toys to video games, as well as an array of interactive experiences, audiovisual material, and artworks.

Changing Exhibitions
The Museum presents an ambitious slate of large- and small-scale changing exhibitions, video and art installations, and unique live events. In the third-floor Changing Exhibitions Gallery, the Museum has hosted a range of exhibitions from Jim Henson’s Fantastic World, which drew record-breaking crowds to the Museum, to Spacewar! Video Games Blast Off, an interactive exhibition which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first digital video game. It has also featured the work of artists like the Dutch-Belgian digital art duo JODI and the experimental filmmaker Phil Solomon. The Museum’s Amphitheater Gallery has been home to exhibitions and installations about the work of legendary Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, the making of the DreamWorks Animation film, Rise of the Guardians, and much more. In the Museum’s lobby, visitors have been greeted with video installations by artists like Chiho Aoshima and Ming Wong and digitally-curated projects such as We Tripped El Hadji Diouf on the panoramic 50-foot media wall.

Education Programs
The Museum’s curriculum-based education programs are an unparalleled resource for middle- and high-school students and their teachers. Many student visitors are from the New York City public schools and surrounding area, though the Museum regularly provides programs for students traveling from around the country and around the world. Through guided tours of its exhibitions, educational screening programs and hands-on workshops, the Museum serves approximately 50,000 students each year in the new Ann and Andrew Tisch Education Center. The Museum also offers professional development seminars and workshops for teachers, and after-school programs that develop academic and technical skills. The Museum serves thousands more children, teens, and families in weekend and summer studios, workshops, hack jams, courses, and camps.

The Collection
The Museum maintains the nation’s largest and most comprehensive collection of artifacts relating to the art, history, and technology of the moving image—one of the most important collections of its kind in the world. Begun at the Museum’s inception in 1981, today the collection comprises more than 130,000 artifacts from every stage of producing, promoting, and exhibiting motion pictures, television, and digital media, from pre-cinema optical toys to 21st-century digital technology. The collection also includes significant works of art by such artists as Red Grooms and Nam June Paik. More than 1,400 collection artifacts are currently on display in the Museum’s core exhibition, Behind the Screen, and thousands more can be seen on the Museum’s on-line collection database, collection.movingimage.us.

Online Projects
The Museum has been at the forefront in the use of its website for groundbreaking exhibitions. The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952–2012, an invaluable archive of ads from every presidential election since the first Eisenhower versus Stevenson campaign, is used by millions of people around the world. Sloan Science and Film, made possible by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is devoted to the public understanding of science through its depiction in film. And Reverse Shot, the acclaimed online film magazine, edited by Michael Koresky and Jeff Reichert, was recently added as a publication of the Museum. Articles and video essays published on Moving Image Source, the Museum’s predecessor to Reverse Shot, will continue to be available as an archive.

Read also about the Museum’s renovation and expansion and history.