Museum of Modern Art at Mid-Century and its Significance from Aethetic Point of view

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My research aims at clarifying the role in the artworld taken by Museum of Modem Art in New York at mid-century. I picked up two curators in MOMA, Dorothy C. Miller (1904-) and Frank O'Hara(1926-66). I analysed their activities at MOMA,especially exhibitions they organaised in order to examine their shows as a means of better understanding the Museum's evolving relationship to American contemporary art, and to the New York School in particular. As for Miller, I focused on her six shows of contemporary painting and sculpture from the United States, "Americans 1942", "14 Americans(1946), " 15 Americans(1952)", " 12 Americans(1956)", "16 Americans(1959-60)" and "Americans 1963". In the early 1940s, when the "Americans" exhibition began, New York was culturally rural, but by their conclusion two decades later, the city had become capital of the international art world. The "Americans" paralleled the development of Abstract Expressionism in America and I think Miller took an important role in forwarding the movement. The series' innovative importance lie in giving each participant his or her own gallery so that they can speak to the the public "in clear and individual terms", through a strong presentation of their work They were an alternative to the annual salons mounted by other national institutions. During the 1950s, Frank O'Hara was on the staff of the Museum's International Program, and worked on the exhibition "The New American Painting" (1958-59) with Miller. It was an international touring exhibition first devoted to Abstract Expressionism in the United States, and which was seen in eight Europian cities. The consequence of this circulating exhibition was that American contemporary painting acquired not only citizenship in the international art world but also the initiative over Europian painting. In treating these two curators, I wrote two articles, "Frank O'Hara and Takiguchi Shuzo" and "Dorothy C.Miler and 1950s' American Art".