Critics Pan Shutdown of MOMA’s Movie-Stills Collection

This city is known for a lot of things, but not as a movie town. Yes, corporate heads and independent studios are based here, but the business is not a staple of conversation, nor is it a large part of the local economy. If anything, movies are regarded as a cultural artifact--Hollywood viewed from afar by critics, journalists, scholars, programmers and other enthusiasts.Not much nasty in a film-related way happens here--until now. Recently, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which is moving its Manhattan operations to a former factory in Queens while the museum undergoes a three-year, $650-million renovation, announced that it is moving its renowned film stills archive, which includes more than 4 million stills, many of them found nowhere else, to Hamlin, Pa.

As if that’s not inaccessible enough, the museum laid off the two women who helped build the collection and know it best, assistant curator Mary Corliss and Terry Geesken, and then closed it altogether. Suddenly everybody is up in arms. And this includes more than a few big names.

Critic Roger Ebert, whose new book, “The Great Movies,” used the archive and includes an essay by Corliss, wrote a letter to the New York Times that said, “Film scholars and journalists need this archive.... If the archive is not available to most of its users, of what use is it?” Director Martin Scorsese, whose documentary “My Voyage to Italy” included archive stills, said, “I can only hope, for the cineastes here in New York who need access to the files, that this is not permanent.”

“I think if you look at all the film books, it would be astounding to see how many people thanked the archive,” says Village Voice critic J. Hoberman, who adds that he wouldn’t have been able to illustrate his books on film without it. Corliss’ husband, Time magazine film critic Richard Corliss, who admittedly has a personal interest in the matter, wrote a wistful essay about the loss of the collection. A protest was lodged by New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts’ cinema studies department. A major stills donor has said he’s withholding further donations until Corliss returns.

Responding to some of these protesters, museum President Agnes Gund sent a form letter saying that the Hamlin facility “allows us to store, preserve and research our collections in ways that are simply not possible to do on West 53rd Street in Manhattan.” It goes on to say, “It is in the best interests of the institution to relocate the archive until the building project is complete.”

The letter neglects to mention that the archive is actually closed, not just relocated, and that even if the archive were open, the stills need to be physically accessible in ways that film, which is also stored there, does not. The museum recently released a statement saying, “The ongoing building project will require a temporary contraction of services museum-wide, as well as a retrenchment in staff, in order to realize the permanent expansion of resources when the museum reopens in 2005. The two employees who were laid off are eligible to receive severance pay, with an option for recall rights, in accordance with their union contracts.”

The two employees are, of course, Corliss, who worked at the museum for 34 years, and Geesken, who was there for more than 17 years. The principals allegedly responsible for these layoffs are museum director Glenn Lowry and Mary Lea Bandy, chief curator of film and media and deputy director of curatorial affairs. Corliss and others suggest that she and Geesken were laid off and the collection shut down because Lowry and Bandy were unhappy with their participation in a strike that lasted more than four months during the spring and summer of 2000. The museum denies this.

According to Corliss, the stills archive originally was intended to join the rest of the museum’s collections in Queens. In fact, she was supposed to sit down with the architect of the Queens facility to discuss the archives’ space when the strike intervened. Four months later, in September 2000, when she returned to work, Corliss was told that these plans had been put on hold. There the matter remained until July 2001, when she was told that the collection would be moved to Hamlin, about two hours from Manhattan. The facility has state-of-the-art temperature and humidity controls, but there is no space designated for the stills archive, so they are going to be stored in filing cabinets in corridors.

Curatorial Aides Targeted in Layoffs, One Charges

Corliss says she and Geesken were willing to work with this arrangement but that the museum wasn’t willing to work with them. In essence, she and others are suggesting that the museum wanted to get rid of them so badly that it shut down the archives after the inconveniences of the relocation failed to drive them out. They were given their walking papers Jan. 9. Since by contract they were allowed three weeks’ notice and the museum wasn’t scheduled to close until May, Corliss assumed that she would have three weeks to clear her desk and help pack up the archives. Instead, two days later she and Geesken were handed three weeks’ pay and told to clear out.”The museum has followed the usual procedures that any company, any organization, follows in a layoff situation,” Bandy said in an interview this week, adding that it was known since last fall that the archive would be temporarily shut down for relocation purposes.

Bandy added, “It’s my job to make sure everything is cared for, and if there are different perceptions of that, I’m very regretful. I think I’ve proven my record to people in my tenure at the museum, and I’m very proud of it. When people have worked a long time in institutions, everybody has different perceptions.

“I’ve supported my staff. I’m very proud of the support of my staff. That’s really all I have to say.”

Few people in New York, except the museum staff itself, believe that MOMA couldn’t have found an acceptable alternative. After all, unlike some museum departments, the archive seems to be a moneymaker. It was also singled out in a press release issued in November 2000 from New York Gov. George Pataki announcing that the state was contributing $5 million to the Queens facility. The governor’s office won’t comment on whether the museum betrayed the spirit, if not the letter, of the state’s financial commitment by relocating the archive--especially in light of the fact that businesses have been encouraged to stay in New York after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The thinking is that MOMA, which is one of the most powerful institutions in New York, can simply ride out the storm, though it may very well face legal challenges. According to Maida Rosenstein, president of Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers, of which the Professional and Administrative Staff Assn. is a part, the union is pursuing charges with the National Labor Relations Board that the layoffs are in retaliation for strike activity.

The museum entices subscribers and nonsubscribers alike with its program of classic films--which doesn’t quite square with its less than reverential attitude toward the medium, at least according to some observers.

“Film has always been a stepchild of the museum,” Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel says. “And the stills archive has been a stepchild of the film programming there.”

But Bandy takes issue with that sentiment.

“Any feelings that one department is orphaned more than any other is simply not valid,” she says. “The museum has vastly supported the film department.”

Bandy won’t say when the archive will be open again, but one thing is certain: In accordance with the union contract negotiated with renovation-related layoffs in mind, Corliss has opted to take a smaller severance package in exchange for recall rights. In other words, if and when MOMA reopens its stills archive, it will have to give Corliss her old job back.