MoMA Announces New Exhibitions, Programs, and Events for Summer 2023

The Museum of Modern Art Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden © 2023 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Carly Gaebe / Steadfast Studio

Extended Hours on the First Friday of Every Month and Every Saturday Will Allow Visitors the Opportunity to Experience the Museum’s Full Slate of Programming

The Museum of Modern Art announces new exhibitions, programs, and events for summer 2023, including YOU ARE HERE* Contemporary Art in the Garden, a new installation of contemporary artworks in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden; a monthlong Pride celebration highlights art made by LGBTQIA+ artists and invites visitors to enjoy a family day with drop-in art making; special film programs, including a Silent Film Week; and the continuation of UNIQLO NYC Nights, which gives New Yorkers free access to new collection exhibitions from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. on the first Friday of every month. The Museum will stay open until 7:00 p.m. every Saturday, giving visitors the opportunity to explore new exhibitions, including Projects: Dineo Shesee Bopape, and to get a final view of exhibitions closing by the end of the summer, including Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time.

YOU ARE HERE* Contemporary Art in the Garden, the latest presentation in the Museum’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, opens to the public on July 1. The Sculpture Garden opened in 1939 as an outdoor gallery for changing installations that would bring nature, architecture, and art together by displaying sculpture alongside fountain pools, trees, and seasonal plants. Nearly all of the sculptures that will be featured in YOU ARE HERE* Contemporary Art in the Garden were made in the past 20 years. Not bound to any one style or attitude, the works on view showcase the varying interests unique to their makers, who include Nairy Baghramian, Lynda Benglis, Carol Bove, Jimmie Durham, Katharina Fritsch, Pierre Huyghe, Wangechi Mutu, and Franz West.

Outdoor film screenings will return to the Sculpture Garden this Summer, with three films from MoMA’s collection, including:

July 19: Quick Millions (1931, Directed by Rowland Brown)

August 2: The North American premiere of MoMA’s new restoration of Stella Dallas (1925, Directed by Henry King)

August 16: Which Way Is East: Notebooks from Vietnam (1994, Directed by Lynne Sachs in collaboration with Dana Sachs) and Celaje (Cloudscape) (2020, Directed by Sofía Gallisá Muriente)

In addition to these outdoor screenings, MoMA will host Silent Movie Week from August 2 through 8. It’s estimated that only 20 percent of the films made between 1895 and 1930 survive, and yet the work of preserving and restoring the remaining films continues. MoMA is one of several archives around the world with significant silent film holdings, and this program honors these films that led the way, all presented here as East Coast—and in some cases United States—premieres. More details, including the full screening schedule, can be found on the Museum’s press site and tickets for all screenings are available for purchase on moma.org.

UNIQLO NYC Nights provides free admission for residents of New York City’s five boroughs on the first Friday of every month, from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. On these first Fridays, all visitors will have extended-hours access to enjoy MoMA’s must-see collection and temporary exhibitions. Collection exhibitions opening on these dates will invite audiences to explore MoMA’s dynamic collection and connect with art and ideas from more geographies and perspectives than ever before:

Architecture and Design in the Age of Industry

Opening July 7

Gallery 511
This exhibition will feature objects engineered for mass production, rarely shown photos of 20th century American factories, and work by architects influenced by the factory buildings—making connections, never before explored at MoMA, that are critical to the story of the birth of modern architecture. Reflecting the industrial boom in the United States in the early 1900s—embodied most notably by Henry Ford’s development of the assembly line, and evidenced by the Midwest’s new and sprawling factory complexes this exhibition will draw from the Museum’s expansive collection of the work of Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and other major architects of the period.

Visual Vernaculars

Opening August 4

Gallery 521
The introduction of the Kodak camera in 1888 facilitated a radical flourishing of photographic production. United under the capacious term of “vernacular photography,” such pictures resist traditional forms of categorization, populating the intimate and public exchanges of everyday life. Drawing from MoMA’s expansive holdings of vernacular photography, Visual Vernaculars will explore the place of personal pictures in the construction of a self-image, demonstrating how visual forms can enunciate one’s social identities and relationships, environments and communities.

Ja’Tovia Gary’s THE GIVERNY SUITE

Opening September 1

Gallery 212
This exhibition will invite visitors to experience a multimedia work, newly acquired and on view for the first time, that uniquely cements a Black feminist perspective within the history of modern art and cinema. Including footage filmed on location in Harlem and in Claude Monet’s historic gardens at Giverny, THE GIVERNY SUITE (2019) is a cinematic poem that meditates on the safety and bodily autonomy of Black women. This three-channel, large- scale installation uses an arsenal of cinematic techniques—including direct animation, archival material, and “woman-on-the-street” interviews—to explore sexuality, power, and the creativity of Black femme performance figures.

Free tickets for New Yorkers must be reserved in advance and are released on MoMA’s website one week in advance of each UNIQLO NYC Night. Same-day film tickets for screenings after 4:00 p.m. on first Fridays are also free for New Yorkers and will be available on-site.

The Museum will remain open until 7:00 p.m. every Saturday, giving visitors the opportunity to explore collection exhibitions, as well as temporary exhibitions that are both opening and closing throughout the summer, including:

Projects: Dineo Seshee Bopape will be on view in the Museum’s street-level gallery from July 1 through October 9, 2023. Known for bringing together video, sound, and organic materials in her often site-specific installations, Bopape imagines how social, political, and spiritual histories of the African diaspora inhabit the physical land and waters. These themes are embodied with the collection’s central work, the multichannel sound and video installation Lerato laka le a phela le a phela le a phela/My love is alive, is alive, is alive (2022). Her distinct voice will come alive here, in the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in New York.

Continuing through the end of the summer, museum guests can enjoy an unexpected, yet compelling, side of Georgia O’Keefe with Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time (through August 12). Highlighting a period of experimentation for the artist (1915–18), the exhibition sees O’Keeffe make use of mediums such as pencil, watercolor, and pastel while forging into subject matter such as organic landscapes and frank nudes, as well as the radically abstract charcoals she called “specials.”