My MOMI Visit

This past Friday after work I took the R train out to Steinway, it was my first trip to Astoria. After making a few wrong turns I made it to the nearly unmarked building that is the Museum of the Moving Image. The bright entry led me to the first small exhibit that covered the history of the Astoria studio. I'd never really heard of the Astoria studio before, so seeing all the photographs of shows that were taped there, and seeing how important the studio was to New York film making was really eye opening.

I was then led to the Behind the Screen exhibition, which was really interesting. They had tons of facial molds and and memorabilia from old TV shows and movies. There were two pieces from this part of the exhibit that really stuck out to me: Eddie Murphy's Gumby costume for Saturday Night Live (I love SNL so it was really cool seeing such an old piece from the show) and Cher's curly wig (because Cher). Another part of the exhibit showed all these old pop magazines that profiled popular actors, was really interesting to read about as a journalism student. It talked about how readers became so transfixed reading about these actors luxurious lives, and how this really pioneered modern day pop culture magazines.

After that I went to an exhibit that pretty much covered the history of film making. It was a kind of chronological display of these ancient cameras that shot the first movies ever. The exhibit also showed different models of televisions throughout the years. To think that my parents used to watch TV on those things! So bizarre. Lastly I visited the Chuck Jones exhibit, which was really cool. When I was little I was obsessed with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, so to see his sketches and inspirations was awesome. I thought it was amazing that he drew inspiration for Wile E. Coyote's tail from The Great Wave of Kanagawa print.

All in all the visit was really informative and upped my knowledge on the history of film. Definitely worth the trip to Queens.