Application: MoMA Film Stills Archive

The Museum of Modern Art has the largest collection of film stills in the world at over 4 million. These stills include not only publicity and promotional shots that we see on DVD covers or posters, but also production stills. In the 1920’s, there were often a still photographer next to the motion picture cameraman, documenting each shot. These particular stills can be used to reconstruct films thought to be lost because of damage or poor preservation. This film stills collection resides in the Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center in Hamlin, Pennsylvania (in the northwestern part of the state, bordering Canada), inaccessible.

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Art Wehrhahn, the Preservation Center’s manager, and the nitrate building, in 2009.

The museum began a renovation project in 2002, planning to move their collections to a location in Queens. Originally, the film stills were going to Queens too. But in January 2002, the museum shipped the stills to Pennsylvania and laid off the two employees of the archive, Mary Corliss and Terry Geesken. Corliss had worked for MoMA for 34 years, mounting more than 40 exhibitions. In 2005, when renovations to the museum in Manhattan were complete, the stills were not brought back. The renovation included a significant Film Study Center, but the stills remained in “cold storage” in Hamlin (Franck). There “is not much to ‘see’” at the Film Study Center in Manhattan, except “empty screening rooms and offices” today (Swinnerton). The “cold storage” in Hamlin is an environmentally-correct facility with 48 vaults; the films stills are stored in the hallway.

study center

Image of the Study Center in Manhattan, from MoMA’s website. Bit different than “empty rooms” of apparent reality.

Why were these materials shipped off and the employees fired? Why has the public continually been denied access to them when, in the same year as the shutdown, MoMA mounted its first International Festival of Film Preservation?

In 2000, Mary Corliss and more than 250 others participated in a museum workers strike. The issues centered on “job security, wages, health benefits and an agency shop,” including severance for workers laid off during the renovation and move to the smaller Queens space (Whyte). The strike lasted for six months before being resolved. Glenn Lowry, the director of MoMA, was allegedly bitter over the strike, and Mary Lea Bandy, the chief curator of the film department, was the one who ordered the firing. The film department, in itself, was a “vipers’ nest” according to staffers, and Bandy’s firing of the two archivists was political (Franck).

In a New York Observer article, a journalist cited the “public outcry” over the shutdown. On January 12, 2002, two days after Corliss and Geesken received notice, the New York Times printed an article about the shutdown and layoffs. The Village Voice picked it up on January 22. The New Yorker Observer followed on February 2. The Los Angeles Times published an article about these two articles on February 15. Corliss wrote a letter to the editor of the NYT which was published on May 5. She also spoke to Leonard Lopate on WNYC (archival material not found). Roger Ebert also wrote in his Chicago Sun-Times column, condemning the shutdown. He was a personal, as well as professional, friend of Mary and her husband, Richard, a film critic. I wouldn’t say it was either “public” or an “outcry,” with three original articles and one editorial dealing with the subject printed within a month of the shutdown. Ten years later, in 2012, Mary Corliss’ husband, who also wrote an article at the time, published another article in Time, on the continued exile of the film stills. These articles quoted film studies professors and film curators, specialists in a particular field of knowledge. Martin Scorsese also commented, a well-known advocate for film preservation. But, you say “film archiving” or “film preservation” and people generally give you blank looks.

The shutdown raises questions not only of access and politics of power surrounding the archive – Should the public have access to the collection, even if they don’t use it? Should a museum director be able to deny this access based (allegedly) on personal prejudices? And it also raises questions on public perceptions of archives – Why was the public apathetic about the shutdown? Why was the press coverage so minimal? I would argue that this collection is extremely important to not only the United States’ film heritage, but to world cinema’s film heritage. I’m pretty sure they don’t let you out of film school until you’ve seen Metropolis, so thanks, film stills for saving the day on that one. Martin Scorsese said of the shutdown “I can only hope…this is not permanent” (R. Corliss). This collection is important to modern filmmakers, but because it is in a vault in Pennsylvania, and before that a basement in midtown Manhattan, in an “archive,” a place loaded with associations of “dusty” and hard-to-use, it is physically and mentally inaccessible.

lost horizon

A film still, used in the restoration of Lost Horizon (1937).

For my final project, I plan to explore more the politics of power surrounding archives – taking the control exerted by the MoMA’s director and chief film curator over this collection as a case study – and access restrictions, both physical and in the public perception. Derrida posited that the less people who have access to an archive, the more consolidated their power. The archive is not just a storehouse for records, but a “site of knowledge production” (Stoler). Through advocating access to archives, I’d like to show that while it may seem that inaccessibility only affects the “niche” – in the MoMA film stills case, film historians – this is not true, and without access to the history in archives, we wouldn’t be where we are today – modern cinema as we know it wouldn’t exist.

metropolis

Metropolis (1927), another film that benefited extensively in its restoration from film stills.

I’ve also contacted the journalists who originally wrote about the shutdown in 2002, and at the time of this post, have heard back from one (Elisabeth Franck, who wrote for the New York Observer). I also plan to contact Mary Corliss (who still lives in New York, but no longer works in her field; she occasionally reviews movies for Time, like her husband). I also have been in sporadic touch with MoMA; I submitted a request to visit the Film Study Center (in New York) in mid-September and was asked what I wanted to study. I replied that I wanted to study the film department itself and had to email MoMA twice to elicit a response. They apologized for the delay, but the staff had been in Pennsylvania. They tentatively agreed to a phone conversation but asked to see my questions in advance. They have not (yet) responded to my questions. They are harder to contact than the Norwegian government.

 

Works Cited

“After 10 Years, MoMA’s Film Stills Archive Remains Closed.” Gallerist 13 January 2012. Web. <http://galleristny.com/2012/01/after-ten-years-momas-film-stills-archive-remains-closed/>.

Bohlen, Celestine. “The Modern Relocates its Film Stills Amid Protests.” The New York Times 12 January 2002. Web.<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/12/movies/the-modern-relocates-its-film-stills-amid-protests.html>.

Clark, John. “Critics Pan Shutdown of MOMA’s Movie-Stills Collection.” Los Angeles Times, sec. Entertainment: 15 February 2002. Web. <http://articles.latimes.com/2002/feb/15/entertainment/et-clark15>.

Corliss, Mary. “Movie Stills; Shut Down, Laid Off.” The New York Times 5 May 2002. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/05/movies/l-movie-stills-shut-down-laid-off-847771.html>.

Corliss, Richard. “Mary and MoMa: The Case of the (Still) Missing Film Stills.” Time, sec. Entertainment: 11 January 2012. Web. <http://entertainment.time.com/2012/01/11/mary-and-moma-the-case-of-the-still-missing-film-stills/>.

Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1996.

Franck, Elizabeth. “Why did MoMA Send Norman Bates to Cold Storage in Hamlin, Pa.?” The New York Observer 4 February 2002. Web. <http://observer.com/2002/02/why-did-moma-send-norman-bates-to-cold-storage-in-hamlin-pa/>.

Kaufman, Anthony. “Freeze Frame: MOMA Shuts Down Film Stills Archive.” The Village Voice 29 January 2002. Web. <http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-01-22/film/freeze-frame/>.

“Museum of Modern Art Film Preservation Center.” PCN Tours. Host Art Wehrhahn. Pennsylvania Cable Network, 2001. DVD.

Stoler, Ann Laura. “Colonial Archives and the Acts of Governance.” Archival Science 2:1-2 (2002): 87-109.

Swinnerton, Ashley. “MoMA Film Study Center Request notification.” Email to Marlee Walters. 10 October 2013.

Whyte, Alan. “Museum of Modern Art strike in New York enters second month.” World Socialist Website 27 May 2000. Web. <http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/05/moma-m27.html>.