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Archives related to: Gelman, Jacques

titleArtist file: Gelman, Jacques; miscellaneous uncataloged material.
repositoryThe Museum of Modern Art
descriptionPamphlet file
The folder may include announcements, clippings, press releases, brochures, reviews, invitations, small exhibition catalogs, and other ephemeral material.

Location
MoMA Queens Artist Files

Call Number
GELMAN, JACQUES
extent1 folder
formatsEphemera
accessContact repository for restrictions and policies.
record sourcehttps://library.nyarc.org/permalink/01NYA_INST/ai54l4/alma991009953399707141
updated02/14/2025 10:07:30
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titleWilliam S. Lieberman Papers, 1948-1984
repositoryThe Museum of Modern Art
descriptionThe Papers document his contacts with the art world and involvement with Museum activities and exhibitions; in particular, Max Ernst (MoMA Exh. #474), Joan Miro (MoMA Exh. #641), Modigliani (MoMA Exh. #474) and Stravinsky and the Dance (C/E 62-2, 1962-63). His involvement with the Junior Council include such exhibitions as Young American Printmakers (MoMA Exh. #547), Recent Drawings, U.S.A. (MoMA Exh. #601) and the preparation of The Museum of Modern Art Calendar and Junior Council Print Sales.

Correspondence relating to the Dance and Theatre Archives exhibitions is included in addition to correspondence with trustees, patrons, friends and such artists as Chryssa, Masuo Ikeda, Marc and Valentina Chagall, Robert Motherwell, Lee Krasner, Leonard Baskin, and Emilio Sanchez, many of whom were personal friends of Lieberman. Other subjects include Lieberman's trip to Japan (1964-65) for the purpose of organizing The New Japanese Painting and Sculpture (MoMA Exh. #809, ICE-D-13-64), Nelson A. Rockefeller's bequest to the Museum (1979), and the disposition of the Lyonel Feininger Estate.

Biographical/historical note
Curator, Department of Prints, 1949-60; Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, 1960-66; Director, Department of Drawings and Prints, 1966-71; Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, 1969-71; Director, Department of Drawings, 1971-79; Advisor to the Junior Council, 1954-64.

Since November 1979 he has been Chairman of the Twentieth Century Art Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.).

Location
MoMA Museum Archives

Call Number
mmym MA
extent31 linear feet
formatsBusiness Papers Personal Papers Correspondence Exhibition Files
accessThe records are open for research and contain no restricted materials.
record linkhttp://www.moma.org/research/archives/EAD/Liebermanf.html
record sourcehttps://library.nyarc.org/permalink/01NYA_INST/ai54l4/alma991009763659707141
finding aidThe finding aid is in the repository and on the repository's web site.
acquisition information7.5 linear feet of material (Series I.A and I.B) were transferred from three file drawers in the Department of Drawings in November 1990. 29 linear feet (Series II.A, II.B, III, IV, and V) were stored at an off-site location; these were transferred to the Museum Archives for processing in October 1991
updated02/14/2025 10:07:49
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titleDepartment of Circulating Exhibitions Records, 1931-1990
repositoryThe Museum of Modern Art
descriptionThe processed papers of the the Department of Circulating Exhibitions include 147 linear feet of correspondence, research notes, published materials, lists, large-format scrapbook albums, photograph albums, photographs, photographic panels, record album, display book, and ephemera pertaining to departmental administration and the organization and circulation of exhibitions. 73 linear feet of records are stored in 20 10.25x12.5x15.5" storage boxes; 102 5" document boxes; 17 2.5" document boxes; 1 3x5x12" and 2 4.5x6x8" index card boxes. The remaining 74 linear feet include 49 16x13x4" large-format albums containing press clippings, photographs, promotional and other materials pertaining to individual exhibitions circulated by the department; 1 10x12" photograph album; 57 8.5x11" photograph albums; 2 bundles (32x43.5"; 20x25") of photographic panels; 1 12" acetate record album; and 1 21x23.5x5" particle-board display book.

During processing, we discovered records of exhibitions that traveled but that were not listed in the Museum's files; working folders for exhibitions that had been proposed but were ultimately cancelled; exhibitions listed in Museum records for which no documentary material exists; records for international circulating exhibitions containing foreign artwork that were circulated nationally and to Canada, or that were transferred from the Department of Circulating Exhibitions for international circulation; and Educational Program projects that were transferred to the department for circulation. The inclusive dates for these records is 1931 through 1969. This predates the official establishment of the Department in 1933 and ends with the reorganization of the Department of Circulating Exhibitions into the Exhibition Program in 1969.

The Department of Circulating Exhibitions collaborated with all curatorial departments within the Museum in order to insure a diverse program of exhibitions covering a wide range of media - painting, sculpture, prints, photography, graphic and industrial design and architecture. As a result, the records include correspondence from staff important to the early history of The Museum of Modern Art, including Alfred H. Barr, Jr., René d'Harnoncourt, Dorothy C. Miller, James Johnson Sweeney, James Thrall Soby and Monroe S. Wheeler, among others. Also included are the administrative records of the first director of the department, Elodie Courter.

These papers reveal the Museum's role as a promulgator of modern art in this country, both through its innovative program of circulating exhibitions to other institutions, as well as its role in educating several generations of art students, as well as the general public, through its collaborations with the Museum's Educational Program. They also reflect the Museum's support of U.S. interests abroad during and immediately following World War II. For example, the Department of Circulating Exhibitions prepared numerous exhibitions for the United States Office of War Information for European tour during the 1940s, including the survey exhibitions America Builds and Modern American Architecture Additionally, during this period, more than two dozen exhibitions of photographs and government war posters were prepared for national tour that focused on such timely issues as wartime housing, internment of Japanese-Americans and the cultural impact of the war. Similarly, the department was instrumental in establishing a program of cultural exchange with Latin America through its collaboration with the Office of the Coordinator for Inter-American Affairs in Washington, D.C., for which it organized exhibitions of Latin American art for circulation in this country as well as exhibitions of American art and architecture for tour in Latin America. This later served as the model for the Museum's International Program which began in 1953.

These papers are also an important source of general art historical information. For instance, the pioneering Museum of Modern Art exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art, which was held at the Museum in Spring 1936, was circulated nationally in 1936-37; the files contain, for example, autographed letters to Alfred H. Barr, Jr. from Alexander Calder, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, Alberto Giacometti, Jacques Lipchitz and Piet Mondrian, as well as other artists whose work was included in the exhibition. Other original documentation includes lecture notes by the art critic Meyer Schapiro, which were prepared for the retrospective exhibition Picasso: Forty Years of His Art, circulated in the early 1940s; and László Moholy-Nagy's panel sketches for the 1942 exhibition How to Make a Photogram.

Historical Note
From the beginning, the Museum of Modern Art's trustees intended that the Museum should be more than a repository or an exhibition gallery for modern art and that it should promote an understanding of the most vital art being produced in the time to the widest possible range of individuals and institutions. In 1931, two years after it was founded, the Museum organized its first exhibition of modern architecture and what was to become its first traveling exhibition, The International Exhibition of Modern Architecture. The trustees assumed responsibility for half of the cost of the show, on the condition that the balance could be raised among other participating institutions. An illustrated pamphlet outlining the plan and the importance of the exhibition was sent to museums throughout the country and eleven institutions subscribed. During 1931 the Museum had assembled sixty color reproductions with commentary by Museum director Alfred H. Barr, Jr. for a group of New York secondary schools. This exhibition, A Brief Survey of Modern Painting, was so well received during the first year of the tour which began in October 1932 that a duplicate show was prepared, which traveled for nine years.

These two exhibitions prepared the way for the Department of Circulating Exhibitions, officially established in 1933, which supplied exhibitions of modern art to other institutions. Elodie Courter, a member of the Museum staff, became Secretary of Circulating Exhibitions in November 1935 and played an active role in the development of that department. She was named director in 1939, a position she held until 1947. During that period, the number and variety of the Museum's traveling exhibitions increased, until the roster of circulating exhibitions encompassed all the fields included in the Museum itself: industrial design, the graphic arts, theater arts, photography, and film, in addition to painting, sculpture, and architecture.

Among the most widely-seen exhibitions circulated by the department in its first five years were Machine Art, 1934-38; Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings by van Gogh, 1936; and Portrait of the Artist's Mother" by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1933-34. In addition, the department adapted and circulated during its first decade Museum exhibitions such as American Folk Art, 1932-33; Cubism and Abstract Art, 1936-37; Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism, 1937; Photography: 1839-1937, 1937-38; Six Modern Sculptors, 1936-38; and, in the 1940s, Ancestral Sources of Modern Painting, 1941-46; Latin American Contemporary Art, 1942-43; Modern Architecture for the Modern School, 1942-46; and Picasso: Forty Years of His Art, 1940-43.

In 1939 a grant was obtained from the Rockefeller Foundation to enable the Museum to expand its program of exhibitions specially prepared for smaller educational institutions. During the next four years, a large number of inexpensive exhibitions, including original works as well as color reproductions, was assembled and offered at nominal fees to the exhibitors. High-quality color reproductions enabled the Museum to introduce to the public works that would otherwise have been too costly to pack and ship or perhaps impossible to obtain on loan; exhibitions such as these proved ideal for educational institutions. Among the most widely-circulated of these exhibitions were A Brief Survey of Modern Painting, 1931-39; How Modern Artists Paint People, 1943-48; Paintings and Drawings by Vincent van Gogh, 1935-42; and What Is Modern Painting?, 1944-54.

When, in 1943, the Rockefeller Foundation grant was exhausted, the Department of Circulating Exhibitions and the Museum's Educational Program, under the direction of Victor d'Amico, combined facilities to provide further material for use in secondary and elementary schools. This program was later modified to include multiple exhibitions consisting of lightweight panels on which color reproductions, photographs or diagrams were mounted; teaching portfolios, which were designed for classroom use and offered to educational institutions at a special reduction; and slide talks, which included both color and black-and-white slides as well as an accompanying text. These materials also played an important part in the continuation of the Museum's exhibitions program during World War II, when the circulation of large-scale exhibitions was necessarily curtailed. Many of the exhibitions that were prepared for circulation during the war period focused on topics that were an adjunct to the war itself, for example, Camouflage for Civilian Defense, 1942-44; Road to Victory, prepared in multiple editions for circulation in 1943-44; The Arts in Therapy, 1943-46; War Posters Today, 1942-44; "Yank" Illustrates the War, 1943-44; and the large-scale exhibition Airways to Peace, which was circulated in 1943-44. Exhibitions were also prepared in cooperation with the Office of War Information (OWI) for purchase and circulation abroad.

In 1952, a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund made possible a five-year project, the International Circulating Exhibitions Program, expanding the scope of the Museum's traveling exhibitions to include Europe and Latin America. Porter A. McCray, then director of the Department of Circulating Exhibitions, was appointed director of the newly formed International Program. Twenty-two of the first twenty-five exhibitions prepared under this project were circulated outside the United States; the remaining three, devoted to arts of other countries, circulated in the United States. In 1969, the administration of exhibitions presented in New York and of those circulated by the Department of Circulating Exhibitions were consolidated into one department, the Exhibition Program. This new department was directed by Wilder Green. From 1972 to 1996 Richard Palmer was director of the Museum's Department of Exhibition Program.
extent147 linear feet
formatsCorrespondence Photographs Scrapbooks Printed Materials Research Files
accessThe records are open for research and contain no restricted materials.
record linkhttp://www.moma.org/research/archives/EAD/CEf.html
record sourcehttps://library.nyarc.org/permalink/01NYA_INST/ai54l4/alma991009769179707141
finding aidIn the repository and on the repository's web site
updated02/14/2025 10:07:49
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