Step Into Studio City
The Museum of The Moving Image
By Josh Parish
Getting Started
The broad appeal of MOMI’S exhibits makes it a good place to bring film fans young and old. |
One of Queens’ most popular cultural getaways, the Museum of the Moving Image really is a cinemaphile’s paradise. Not only does the Astoria archive hold the country’s largest permanent collection of silver screen memorabilia—it holds the country’s largest collection of really good silver screen memorabilia.
By really good, feel free to read really cool. The people-pleasing content of the collection means MOMI is that rare kind of museum that entertains serious art fans, visitors from out of town, and the kids and grandparents alike. Be aware this means on a weekday visit you may find yourself wading waist deep in 8-year-olds field tripping from a local elementary school—but it also means on a weekend out with the family you’ll probably find your kids’ attention spans suddenly injected with a longer shelf life.
The admission fee (no suggested donations here—you pay at the door or you stay at the door) is a steep $10 for adults, with reduced rates for seniors, college students with ID, and children. If you’re on a budget, the museum offers free admission to everyone Friday evenings after 4 p.m.
Digging In
The first floor of the museum houses MOMI’s video arcade (moving images, right?), shop, café and full-size theater. Screenings of old and recently released films are held on a nearly daily basis, and some, like John Malkovich’s 2002 The Dancer Upstairs, are premiered here. Check out MOMI’s website to find a current schedule of events.
All galleries are on floors 2 and 3. The collection begins, appropriately, with hair and make-up. Props spanning decades of film production line the softly lit hallways here; there are scores of wigs, prosthetics and “lifemasks”—the plaster casts of actors’ faces used in making costume masks.
Don’t miss Orson Welles’ correspondence via telegram with prosthetic-nose designer Maurice Seiderman for the 1959 film Compulsion. (Is it surprising or not that Welles closed each message with “Love, Orson?”)
Point the kids in the direction of The Magic Mirror, a phone booth-shaped exhibit that uses mirror and lighting tricks to superimpose images of famous costumes—the cowardly lion from The Wizard of Oz, Indiana Jones from Raiders of the Lost Ark—on visitors’ bodies.
Septuagenarians and the historically inclined will appreciate a special exhibit honoring the 100th Anniversary of Loew’s Theaters. On hand are a collection of original newsreels promoting the flashy premiere of Ben Hur, including one with a shyly uncomfortable Charlton Heston drinking coffee with young female fans in line for the movie’s first showing. (“Coffee with the star while waiting to purchase their tickets?” The narrator croons in news voice. “What a break! The girls will hear about this.”)
This MOMI gallery is from here on filled with genuine gadgets and costumes from movies of all eras and genres. The original head-spinning mannequin of Linda Blair from The Exorcist stares out from its glass cage at Cliff Huxtable’s sweater collection from The Cosby Show, Mork’s red and silver spacesuit stands next to Renèe Zellweger’s Chicago production outfits.
The Museum of the Moving Image, which recently shortened its name, houses the country’s largest permanent collection of movie memorabilia. |
Seeing the silver screen come to life with these props is cool, but maybe even cooler (especially to us true geeks who’ve actually peddled fake butter for minimum wage just to see free films), is the museum’s collection of movie-themed stuff we never really paid much attention to first time around: the merchandise. There are Rudolph Valentino brand cigars, Martin & Lewis finger puppets, “Welcome Back Kotter’s Up Your Nose with a Rubber Hose” Board Game. And MOMI has enough Star Trek action figures to fill a comic-shop owner’s fridge.
Kids may not favor artier entries like “Tut’s Fever,” a heady homage to ornate movie theaters of the 1920s and Egyptian mythology. (On our visit, two 10-year-old girls walked rigidly from the exhibit, commenting sleepily: “That was wack—let’s go see Freddy Krueger again.”)
Finishing Up
The third floor is loaded with behind-the-scenes gear from the early years of motion picture-making to the present. By early years, think the 19th Century—there are relics with grandiose names like The Zoetrope, a Victorian optical toy, and the Phenakitoscope, a rotating wheel that tricks the eye into perceiving motion of the still images inside.
Nearly every aspect of movie making is represented in the final corridors of the Museum of the Moving Image: interactive sound editing and score production booths, movie cameras from the 20s and boom mikes from 30s. There’s even a video area to create your own flipbook.
Currently, the museum is also hosting the Gumby! exhibition here, featuring television shows from five decades along with a collection of props, prototypes and toys. And if you can get into the technology of it (this exhibit was Time Out New York’s first pick in its recent issue cataloguing NYC’s best places to be stoned), a working animation station lets you create Gumby miniatures and shoot your own stop-motion movies.
The Museum of The Moving Image
35 Ave. at 36 St., Astoria
(718) 784-0077
www.movingimage.us
11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Thu., 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Fri., 11 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Sat.-Sun. $10 adults, $7.50 seniors and college students with ID, $5 children 5-12, free to kids under 5. (Galleries FREE to all Friday after 4 p.m.)
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