Still Moving The Film and Media Collections of The Museum of Modern Art

Founded in 1935, The Museum of Modern Art's Department of Film and Media is home to one of the most important film archives in the world. The collections include over twenty thousand works, from the earliest movies to the most contemporary moving picture art - from a twenty-seven-second film made by W.K.L. Dickson and William Heise in 1893 to video art and media works by artists such as Chris Marker, Pipilotti Rist, and Joan Jonas. Here, for the first time, is a volume that celebrates this remarkable archive, with over five hundred images from individual films, drawn largely from the Museum's collection of still photographs. Special sections detail significant collections, including those of works by Andy Warhol and Joseph Cornell, of films starring Douglas Fairbanks, and of films produced by the Edison and Biograph companies, two of the world's first commercial film producers. An introduction by Steven Higgins, Curator in the Department of Film and Media, outlines the history of the Museum's collections and gives some insight into how The Museum of Modern Art goes about fulfilling its mandate: acquiring, preserving, and exhibiting these extraordinary and singular works, which form such a large part of the history of the moving image.