Legitimizing Cinema as Art
Founded in 1935, the Film Department at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City represents a pivotal moment in cultural history: the institutional recognition of cinema as a major 20th-century art form, equivalent in importance to painting and sculpture. At a time when movies were widely regarded as disposable popular entertainment, MoMA’s radical decision to establish a curatorial department for film was a revolutionary act. Its mission was to collect, preserve, and exhibit motion pictures, applying the principles of art history and museum curation to a medium that was barely four decades old. This single act did more to legitimize the academic study and artistic appreciation of film than almost any other event.
The department’s philosophy was to create a permanent collection that would trace the history of film as an art form, from its origins to the present day. This meant acquiring not just acknowledged masterpieces but also influential genre films, documentaries, and avant-garde works, treating them all as objects worthy of preservation and serious study.
The Iris Barry Era and the Collection’s Foundation
The department’s first curator, Iris Barry, was a formidable and visionary figure who almost single-handedly built its foundational collection. A former film critic from London, Barry traveled extensively, persuading studios, producers, and filmmakers—including the likes of Mary Pickford and Harold Lloyd—to donate prints of their films to the museum for preservation. Many of the silent films that survive today do so only because Barry had the foresight to acquire them for MoMA’s archive at a time when the original nitrate prints were being routinely destroyed or left to decay. She established the core principles of MoMA’s collection: to be international in scope and to represent all forms of cinematic production.
Preservation and Public Screenings
MoMA’s Film Department is a major preservation center, housing a collection of over 30,000 films and a vast library of related materials like posters and screenplays. The department’s preservation facilities are dedicated to the long-term survival of these works. Beyond preservation, the department’s primary public function is exhibition. Its two state-of-the-art cinemas, the Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters, present a constantly rotating program of screenings. These programs include retrospectives of major directors, series on national cinemas, restorations of lost classics, and premieres of new and experimental work. One of its most celebrated series is New Directors/New Films, a collaboration with Film at Lincoln Center that has been a vital launching pad for emerging international filmmakers for half a century.