{"id":868,"date":"2017-03-06T23:35:50","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T23:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/?p=868"},"modified":"2017-03-06T23:35:50","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T23:35:50","slug":"visit-to-moholy-nagy-future-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/2017\/03\/06\/visit-to-moholy-nagy-future-present\/","title":{"rendered":"Visit to “Moholy-Nagy: Future Present”"},"content":{"rendered":"

For this blog post I visited an exhibition entitled “Moholy-Nagy: Future Present” which is a retrospective of the work of the Hungarian artist L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). I chose to examine this exhibition because, as the introductory text explains, Moholy-Nagy was an artist “who believed that art could work hand-in-hand with technology for the betterment of humanity.” I thought it would be particularly interesting to see how technology is incorporated into an exhibition about an artist whose work is often directly engaged with the role of technology in art and society.<\/p>\n

I observed the projection of two films in the gallery space. In a large gallery that otherwise contained primarily paintings and photographs, there were two films projected on the walls. The gallery was not darkened, the films were projected on the wall so they were approximately the same size as the paintings and photographs in close proximity, and the films were not accompanied by any explanatory text other than a short caption. In this way, the films were not given any special treatment–a separate room, larger size, darkened space–within the gallery to differentiate the films from the other works. I found this approach to be unique and highly effective. I observed the two projected films and found that all visitors stopped and viewed the films at least briefly, but did not necessarily spend more time viewing the films than any of the other paintings, photographs or objects. On the other hand, I did notice several people take advantage of the nearby bench, sit, and view the short films in entirety. By showing the films in the main gallery, rather than off to the side in a darkened space, I believe more people stopped and spent time experiencing Moholy-Nagy’s work in film than they perhaps would have otherwise.\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Another highly interesting element of this exhibition was a large-scale instillation entitled “Room of the Present.” This room was designed by Moholy-Nagy in 1930 but was never constructed in his lifetime. The room contains a series of mirrors, projections, and screens that all change how objects are viewed (unfortunately, photos were not permitted inside of the instillation). The exhibition text explained that this room demonstrates the artist’s “belief in the power of images and the various means by which to disseminate them–a highly relevant paradigm in today’s constantly shifting and evolving technological world.” While we have spent a lot of time in this class learning about how scholars and curators conceive of the museum space, I think it is also important to consider how artists themselves think about their work in the museum and produce works of art that engage with this space. I highly recommend this exhibition if you are interested in learning more about how Bauhaus artists imagined the role of technology in art and daily life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For this blog post I visited an exhibition entitled “Moholy-Nagy: Future Present” which is a retrospective of the work of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}