Esther Adler, a Brandeis alumna and assistant curator of the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City came to campus on Friday to discuss how and when American art came to the Museum of Modern Art. Adler's talk ocurred on the heels of her co-curatorship of the MoMA's current exhibition, American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe.

Her talk focused on what she calls "institution history" and explored how museums tell stories and create narratives through the works they collect and the exhibitions they show. She elaborated on the disconnect present at the MoMA as, at the beginning of the museum's history, it had focused its attention on collecting American art-but currently, the museum's core collection is largely celebrated for its European works.

The first work to enter the museum's collection was Edward Hopper's oil on canvas painting "House by the Railroad." And though the museum's first exhibition actually displayed the works of four European artists-C?(c)zanne, Gauguin, Seurat and van Gogh, who were at the forefront of European art-the second exhibition displayed the American counterparts to the first.
The museum's second exhibition was entitled Paintings by 19 Living Americans, and this exhibition stemmed from issues in the art world that are no longer relevant. 

During the museum's inception there was a real need and desire for Americans to stake their place in the art world. American artists had to prove that they were creating work that was different but still a retrograde or derivative product of European works. Though this paradigm was a large part of the historical establishment of the museum's collection, these discussions are no longer relevant in the 21st century as we recognize the interconnected nature of the art world.
Thus, at the onset of the museum's history, there was a real need to establish and recognize an American presence and narrative- and as such, the museum collected works from American artists such as Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Burchfield and Georgia O'Keeffe. 

The Museum of Modern Art, established in 1929, was faced with a real conundrum because it was an institution founded on modern art, but the museum's management was concerned with what to do with the its collection once the works were no longer considered "modern." Adler said the MoMA, in addition to the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, entered into a formalized agreement in 1947 called the Tri-Museum Agreement. The agreement established the Met as the resting point for all the works in the MoMA's and Whitney's collection once the holdings were not considered modern any more. This agreement, which highlights how interconnected the museums were, was ultimately broken once the MoMA and Whitney realized that their collections would be heavily weakened by giving the Met all the outdated works. 

The Tri-Museum Agreement highlighted how New York's greatest museums began working together. But, as Adler added, it also highlighted why the MoMA would have turned its back to its holdings on American art as the Whitney Museum became the institution that gave its undivided attention to American art. At the MoMA, the great American masters have been relegated to transitional places at the museum. 

The American masters, though they are still being shown at the MoMA, have not been given the same attention that the European holdings of the museum are given. Adler explains this by saying that museums organize exhibitions based on their holdings and the MoMA is not able to tell the complete, chronological story of American art. They can, however, offer a nuanced narrative of other art movements like American abstract expressionism. 

Adler said that by curating the current exhibition, she hopes to bring to light once again some of the great modern American works of art at the museum. Not only does this exhibition reveal to the public the hidden treasures of the museum's holding but also to the curatorial staff at the museum. She adds, "hopefully this exhibition will remind the museum of what it has," so that future exhibitions will include more works from the American modern period. The exhibition will be on view until Jan. 26.
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