When: Saturday, May 5
Where: The Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St., New York City
What time: 5–6:30 p.m.
With Doon Arbus, Michael Cunningham, and Francine Prose
Film ticket only: $12/$10 seniors/$8 students, tickets can be purchased through MOMA’s box office only, one week prior to the event.
Co-sponsored by The Museum of Modern Art
How might a photographer’s precise use of language illuminate and expand the perception of her pictures and the singular nature of the mind behind them? Join PEN and MoMA for a presentation of A Slide Show and Talk by Diane Arbus, an original recording of a 1970 slide presentation, in which the artist speaks about photography, using her own work and other photographs, snapshots, and clippings from her collection. The film, a recreation using the original soundtrack, first screened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2005, has been shown publically fewer than a dozen times.
Following the screening, Francine Prose, Michael Cunningham, and Doon Arbus will read from the recently released book, Diane Arbus: A Chronology, a biography of the photographer primarily composed of excerpts from her letters, notebooks, writings, and journals. They will converse about the nature of observation, metaphor, and imagery as it appears in all aspects of her work. Come celebrate the life of Diane Arbus, one of the 20th century’s most influential artists.