From Battlefield to Exhibitions: MoMA Exhibition Unveiling War Stories 1929-2024
1. Project Overview
This project utilizes MoMA’s open Exhibition Index Dataset to catalog twenty exhibition items related to "War" throughout history. In an era inundated with news of conflict and war, examining how contemporary art has addressed these issues offers an opportunity for reflection and learning. Through the lens of art, we aim to understand what is crucial and consider actions we can take moving forward.
2. Why Choose to Catalog Exhibitions?
Exhibitions serve as more than just platforms for displaying art; they act as lenses through which to gain critical insight into history itself. By unveiling diverse historical contexts, they facilitate the tracing of ideas throughout time. Moreover, their broad scope illuminates the intersections between art and other domains, while also shedding light on the institutional politics and policies that shape them. Emphasizing these aspects enables the creation of narratives that aid in comprehending the present and envisioning the future.
3. Why Focus on War Exhibitions?
Out of 5,437 online exhibitions, I discovered that "war" has consistently been a prevalent theme throughout the 90+ years of MoMA's contemporary art exhibition history. Despite efforts to move past it, the sad reality is that war has continued to persist in various forms up to the present day. Art has often served as a medium for both propaganda and healing reflections on these conflicts. Intrigued by this finding, I decided to select twenty exhibitions from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) spanning each decade and meticulously catalog their unique features.
4. MoMA Exhibition History Open Data
The dataset utilized for this project is the MoMA Exhibition History Data, which allows users to delve into exhibitions from the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1, spanning from MoMA's inception in 1929 to the present day. Currently, there are a total of 5,437 exhibitions available online. Open access to the data in CSV format can be found on MoMA's GitHub page.