| August 27, 2026
MoMA traces a century of animation in “It’s Alive!”The Museum of Modern Art in New York has opened It’s Alive! A Century of Animation from the Collection, a long-term exhibition examining animation as an artistic language rather than simply a branch of entertainment. The presentation began on August 1, 2026 and is scheduled to continue through summer 2027.
Animation sits at the intersection of drawing, design, photography, cinema, sound, and technology. A collection-based survey makes it possible to follow how artists and filmmakers have repeatedly transformed still images into experiences of movement, duration, and rhythm. It also places familiar popular forms beside experimental practices, emphasizing the medium’s unusually broad visual vocabulary.
The exhibition arrives at a moment when animated images circulate constantly across screens, interfaces, advertising, games, and social media. Looking back across a century can reveal how many supposedly new visual effects depend on older experiments with sequencing, repetition, collage, and frame-by-frame transformation.
For museum visitors, the project offers a different route through modern art history. Animation is not treated as a marginal technical specialty, but as a field in which ideas about abstraction, narrative, mass culture, and the moving body have been tested with exceptional freedom.
MoMA lists the exhibition among its current presentations. Visitors should consult the museum’s official exhibition calendar for gallery information, admission, and any schedule updates. |
