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
Librarian, Reader Services, The Museum of Modern Art
Jennifer Tobias is the 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.