New York City’s Museum of Modern Art has partnered with National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne by flying over 200 modern and contemporary masterpieces to be presented at the Australian museum. Titled MoMA at NGV: 130 years of Modern and Contemporary Art, this exhibition will provide a unique collection of MoMA’s iconic stock for NGV’s Winter Masterpieces series. Arranged chronologically, the showing will trace art and design development from the late-19th-century industrial era, through the current digital and globalized present. The works will separated by eight thematic sections, such as “new art” presented by Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne and an architectural piece from Le Corbusier. Cubist and Futurists artists including pioneers Pablo Picasso and Umberto Boccioni will be showcased alongside it's compressed forms present in Bauhaus’ graphic designs, furnitures and textiles. Other major pieces by Salvador Dalí, Frida Kahlo, Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, and Keith Haring will also be shown. 

The exhibition will show the development in contemporary art from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, ending in Shigetaka Kurita’s original set of 176 emojis and Tomohiro Nishikado’s pioneering computer game Space Invaders. Works from other 20th and 21st century artists including Kara Walker, Rineke Dijkstra, Mona Hatoum, El Anatsui and Camille Henro will further the discussion on the wider technological, social and political emergences that have altered society during this 130-year span. The show will open June 9th and will go on until October 7th. 

Words: Paola de Oliveira
Photography: National Gallery of Victoria