Museum Movies

Haidee Wasson provides a rich cultural history of cinema's transformation from a passing amusement to an enduring art form by mapping the creation of the Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, established in 1935. The first North American film archive and museum, the film library pioneered an expansive moving image network, comprising popular, abstract, animated, American, Canadian, and European films. More than a repository, MoMA circulated these films nationally and internationally, connecting the modern art museum to universities, libraries, women's clubs, unions, archives, and department stores. Under the aegis of the museum, cinema also changed. Like books, paintings, and photographs, films became discrete objects, integral to thinking about art, history, and the politics of modern life.

Haidee Wasson is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at Concordia University, Montreal.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Making Cinema a Modern Art
Chapter 2: Mannered Cinema/Mobile Theaters: Film Exhibition, 16mm, and the New Audience Ideal
Chapter 3: The Mass Museology of the Modern
Chapter 4: An Awkward and Dangerous Task: The Film Library Takes Shape
Chapter 5: Rearguard Exhibition: The Film Library’s Circulating Programs
Chapter 6: Enduring Legacies
Appendix: Film Programs of the Museum of Modern Art, 1934–1949

Notes
Bibliography
Index