Photo: Wendy Moger-Bross

Mission
Museum of the Moving Image advances the public understanding and appreciation of the art, history, technique, and technology of film, television, and digital media. It does so by collecting, preserving, and providing access to moving-image related artifacts, screening significant films and other moving-image works, presenting exhibitions of artifacts, artworks, and interactive experiences, and offering educational and interpretive programs to students, teachers, and the general public.

Carl Goodman, Executive Director
Herbert S. Schlosser, Chairman of the Board of Trustees

Each year the Museum screens more than 400 films in a stimulating mix of the classic and the contemporary. With live music for silent films, restored prints from the world's leading archives, and outstanding new films from the international festival circuit, Museum programs are recognized for their quality as well as their scope.

The Pinewood Dialogues, an ongoing series of conversations with creative professionals in film, television, and digital media made possible by the Pinewood (now Pannonia) Foundation, has brought to the Museum’s stage such leading figures as Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, David Cronenberg, Charles Burnett, Tim Burton, Todd Haynes, Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Thomas Anderson, Forest Whitaker, Glenn Close, Jane Campion, Jim Jarmusch, Terry Gilliam, and David Mamet. Many of these conversations are available online.

Engaging and immersive, Behind the Screen is the only exhibition in America that comprehensively explores how films and television shows are created, marketed, and exhibited. Behind the Screen has been thoroughly refurbished as part of the Museum’s renovation and expansion, with all new monitors, computers, interactive software, and lighting, as well as new exhibits of artifacts, artworks, and audiovisual material.

Changing exhibitions at the Museum have ranged from Hot Circuits: A Video Arcade (1989), the first exhibition of video games ever presented in a museum, to Interactions/Arts and Technology (2004), presented in conjunction with Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria). As part of its expansion and renovation, the Museum has a new 4,100-square-foot gallery dedicated specifically to temporary exhibitions, as well as a new amphitheater for changing video presentations, and a 50-foot-long wall in the lobby on which panoramic video works can be projected. After opening with Real Virtuality—an exhibition featuring six experiments in art and technology by artists including Bill Viola, Pablo Valbuena, and Marco Brambilla—the Museum is currently presenting Jim Henson's Fantastic World, on view through March 4, 2012.

The Museum’s curriculum-based education programs are a major resource for of middle- and high-school students and their teachers. Most are from the New York City public schools and surrounding area, although the Museum regularly provides programs for international students as well. Through guided tours of its exhibitions, educational screening programs and hands-on workshops, the Museum will serve approximately 60,000 students each year in the new Ann and Andrew Tisch Education Center. The Museum also offers professional development seminars and workshops for teachers, and after-school programs that develop academic and technical skills.

The Museum maintains one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive collections of the material culture of the moving image. It provides public access to the collection through the core exhibition, Behind the Screen, and through its online Collection Catalog. Scholars may also conduct research in the collection by appointment.

Online projects, such as Moving Image Source, The Living Room Candidate, and Sloan Science and Film, made available on the Museum’s website, reach a global audience.

Read also about the Museum’s recent renovation and expansion and history.