Museum Movies: The Museum of Modern Art and the Birth of Art Cinema (review)

Haidee Wasson's superbly researched and convincingly argued account of how the Museum of Modern Art (moma) established its film library does much more than chronicle an important moment in the history of a pre-eminent cultural institution. As the subtitle indicates, Wasson is after bigger game, as she seeks to tie the emergence of the film library to the growing acceptance of the idea of film as art in North America in the 1930s. As such, the story of moma's efforts to have film taken seriously within the artworld of Manhattan intersects with a number of developing trends at this time, all of which facilitated the elevation of artifacts previously dismissed as the basest kind of popular culture detritus. Wasson carefully establishes the context for moma's film library initiative, by examining the varied exhibition contexts of the era (including little cinemas and film societies), and the expansion of so-called 'alternative' formats (principally 16mm), as well as the changing role of museums, especially as it related to educational aims. In doing so, she makes clear the material conditions necessary for moma to achieve its objectives, which included having its collection of circulating prints projected across the nation, and convincing recalcitrant critics (and reluctant Hollywood executives) that films deserved to be saved for posterity.

Despite the book's title, Wasson pays relatively little attention to the films moma sought to preserve or the relative merits of the titles it selected. Instead, her interest in the film library derives primarily from her sense that moma was engaged in a radical attempt to redefine cinema. That redefinition involved arguing for the sustained value of movies beyond the moment of their initial exhibition within a commercial context, as the museum transformed the ephemeral experience of filmgoing into the carefully considered contemplation of the discrete object. To privilege film as an (art) object, Wasson argues, necessitated changing the terms of its existence, converting a medium defined by interchangeability and transience to one whose cultural legitimacy found confirmation in archival storage and cataloguing. Equally important for Wasson's purposes were moma's attempts to effect a concomitant shift in how audiences would watch and respond to the films from its collection. Her attention to this dimension of moma's project springs from her belief that 'conditions of exhibition and reception have been changing what cinema is and how it functions from the earliest days of the medium.'

Asserting that moma's vision of altered viewing practices undergirded its campaign to make cinema a medium worthy of respect leads Wasson to unearth the material traces of that vision. Accordingly, she lends her estimable researching skills to revealing the different ways moma promoted its entry into film distribution and programming: she devotes one chapter to detailing how the film library represented itself to its key supporters and another to its circulating programs. In her zeal to prove the centrality of exhibition to the museum's foray into film, Wasson necessarily underplays the role played by other facets of the film library, particularly in aiding research. Moreover, she never completely reconciles the stated ambitions of the museum (to create a new type of viewer equipped to appreciate film as art) to the startling image she presents of unruly and resistant audiences in the library's early years. This doubtless accurate image complicates Wasson's claim that MoMA successfully contributed to a changed culture of film viewing.

In her approach to an era of cultural history populated by oversized personalities as diverse as Mary Pickford and Nelson Rockefeller, Wasson remains the committed academic – she routinely chooses cultural analysis over biographical anecdote. Though typically delivered with verve, this approach still entails some sacrifices – those expecting extended insight into the motivations and travails of head curator Iris Barry, a fascinating figure in film history, or detailed accounts of battles between Barry and her blue-chip board of directors, will need to...