Xu Bing’s Cropland (1987)
In Xu Bing’s Cropland, part of the Series of Five Repetitions (1987-88), Chinese characters double as landscape depiction, creating a liminal work that resonates between word and image, representation and abstraction.
Jennifer Tobias
Former Librarian, Reader Services, The Museum of Modern Art
Jennifer Tobias is the former Reader Services Librarian at the Museum of Modern Art. She is a graduate of the City University of New York’s Art History program. Her 2012 doctoral dissertation was The Museum of Modern Art’s What is Modern? Series, 1938–1969.
Mechanical Reproduction from Premise to Press
MoMA librarian Jennifer Tobias takes a recent trip to the Paper Conservation Lab as a jumping off point to explore the ins and outs of mechanical reproduction in the 1920s. Specifically, she takes a close look at a series of images in a set of avant-garde Czech magazines, to explore questions around how photographs were shared for publication across the country, and abroad.
Art-Driven Adaptive Reuse in Several Indian Cities
Preservation and reuse drive the art-driven adaptation of nineteenth- and twentieth-century architecture in cities across India, including Kochi, Goa, Mumbai. This essay explores how such sites can be spaces not just of preservation but of alternative making and institutional critique. From the 1960s revival of SoHo in downtown Manhattan to the 2009 opening of the Sharjah…
Messing with MoMA: Critical Interventions at the Museum of Modern Art, 1939–Now
In this essay, Jennifer Tobias, Reader Services Librarian, MoMA Library looks at the history of MoMA through the direct engagement of the artist. This research was presented in her exhibition Messing With MoMA: Critical Interventions at the Museum of Modern Art, 1939–Now (July 1–November 29, 2015), which documented seven decades of interventions by artists, the general public,…