The Museum of the Moving Image

edited by Sheri Leigh
photos and content courtesy The Museum of the Moving Image

Museum History

The Museum of the Moving Image is the nation's only museum devoted to the past, present, and future of movies, television, and digital media. The Museum is located on the site of the Astoria Studio, one of the largest motion picture and television production facilities in the United States.

Originally built as Paramount's East Coast production facility in 1920, the studio was taken over in 1942 by the U.S. Army and renamed the Signal Corps Photographic Center. After the Army left in 1971, the site fell into disrepair. In 1977, the Astoria Motion Picture and Television Center Foundation was created as a not-for-profit organization to restore the studio buildings to productivity. In 1978, the Foundation obtained listing of the site on the National Register of Historic Places, and returned the studio to feature film production.  The entire Astoria Studios site, including the Museum building, is owned by the City of New York.

The City of New York, which took over the site from the federal government in 1982, set aside one of the thirteen studio buildings for the Museum.  The commercial motion picture studio was leased to the real estate developer, George Kaufman, and renamed Kaufman Astoria Studios. 

Designed by award-winning architects Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, the current 50,000-square-foot facility houses exhibition galleries, a 200-seat film theater, a Museum shop, and a café. 

The Museum's core exhibition, Behind the Screen, spans two floors and 14,000 square feet. Behind the Screen is an innovative blend of historical artifacts, commissioned art works, video clips, interviews, and interactive exhibits that shows how moving images are made, marketed, and exhibited.

Its interactive exhibits invite visitors to make animation, select sound effects, and create flipbooks of themselves, among other activities. The exhibition is regularly revised and updated, and a traveling version toured six museums in the United States and abroad.

The current exhibition From Penny Arcade to Multiplex: A Special Exhibition in Honor of the 100th Anniversary of Loews provides an engaging look at the history of moviegoing culture in America, with a special emphasis on the great Loews movie theaters of New York City.

The Collection

Since its inception in 1981, Moving Image has assembled the nation's largest and most comprehensive holdings of moving image artifacts from every stage of producing, promoting, and exhibiting motion pictures, television, and digital media. The Museum houses exceptional collections of television sets; licensed merchandise; rare photographs; video and computer games; film projectors; props; costumes; editing; sound; and lighting equipment; theater furnishings; fan magazines; posters; and commissioned works of art.

Moving Image is currently in the early stages of a ten-year initiative that will involve cataloguing and digitizing all of the Museum's intellectual assets. The project will make almost every aspect of the Museum accessible to audiences around the world helping fulfill its mission to expand public understanding and appreciation of moving images through screenings and dialogues, exhibitions, education programs, and our extensive collection of artifacts.   

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE
35 Avenue at 36 Street, Astoria, NY  11106