Making Waves: A Conversation with Laura Anderson Barbata
In this interview, Mexican-born, Brooklyn-based artist Laura Anderson Barbata highlights the importance of reciprocity and shared knowledge in her community-based, trans-disciplinary practice.
Transnational Histories and Non-aligned Networks
Soviet Architectural Presence in Southeast Asia
Da Hyung Jeong proposes a reading of Soviet-built structures in the region. He attempts to reveal the intentions behind their construction through an analysis of Soviet-era cultural criticism, socioeconomic studies, and encyclopedia entries.
True Jesters
In an effort to consider the variegated impacts of COVID-19, post has interviewed curators and directors from vital institutions around the world about how the pandemic has affected their conceptions and practices of programming, civic engagement, and care.
The Ever Young Photographer James Barnor
James Barnor (b.1929) is a pioneering figure in Ghanaian photography. He documented the decolonizing processes and realities of the postcolonial context in Ghana, as well as the diasporic, metropolitan life in London.
Global Resonance, Belonging, and the Artist Abroad: Okamoto Tarō in Paris
Okamoto Tarō recollects his experiences in Paris between 1929 and 1940, discusses the Abstraction-Création movement and reflects on his time at the Sorbonne and Musée de l’Homme.
Poema Colectivo 2020
In the spirit of collectivity despite geographical distance, post invited contributions to create a “collective poem” based on the 1981 project Poema Colectivo Revolución by the artists’ group Colectivo 3.
A Look at the Czech and Slovak Avant-Garde within the Frame of the Bauhaus Network
Bauhaus’ active members constituted an international network that included architects and artists from several countries in Central Europe, among them the former Czechoslovakia. The Czech and Slovak connections to the Bauhaus can be studied from various perspectives, and this essay focuses on the role of print periodicals in this history.
Vkhutemas + Bauhaus: On Common Origins, Different Futures, and Creation with Fire
In 2018, on the eve of the Bauhaus centenary, the exhibition BAUHAUS ↔ VKhUTEMAS: Intersecting Parallels in The Museum of Modern Art Library explored the intersecting parallels of these two sites of radical experimentation. Its selection of ephemera, publications, and correspondence highlights the extensive circulation of ideas and people between the two institutions. The video here features Anna Bokov’s presentation at a “post presents” event organized in relation to the exhibition on October 17, 2018.
Rubem Valentim and Ibrahim El-Salahi: Strategies of Hybridization and Abstraction in the Global South
The essay analyzes the resonances between the Brazilian artist Rubem Valentim and the Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi by focusing on two paintings belonging to MoMA’s collection. Deploying hybridized semiotics and different strands of painterly abstraction, the artists critically express their stance towards race, nationhood, and universal human values.
Unpacking Barr’s Library: The Paper Trail from the Bauhaus to VKhUTEMAS
Alfred H. Barr, Jr. made a trip to Russia in 1927-28 to investigate the avant-garde, meeting with several Vkhutemas faculty while he was there.
Magazines As Sites of Intersection: A New Look at the Bauhaus and VKhUTEMAS
This essay argues that the Bauhaus and VKhUTEMAS operated independently of each other, with choice moments of mutual exchange, focusing on the site of the avant-garde magazine as evidence of this.
Closing the Gap: Picasso and Narrating More Specific African Identities in Modernism
The names, cultures, and nationalities of African artists who influenced Picasso have historically been omitted from scholarship. Yet Picasso’s interest in African masks is well-known. In this essay, MoMA staff member Kunbi Oni charts the implications— and possibilities—that closer attention to the makers of such masks could shed on modern art.