Kirk Mudle, Museum of Modern Art, Summer 2021
My Summer internship was with the David Booth Conservation Department at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. At MoMA, I assisted with a holistic review of the digital interactive design material in the Museum’s collection. The collection spanned the history of digital games from the 1970s to the present day and included video games, interactive software works, iOS and other mobile software and hardware. The assessment took into consideration the history, provenance, technical dependencies, risks, and the rights and exhibition restrictions of each work in order to support the creation of preservation plans, high-level exhibition mock-ups, and short-term and long-term recommendations for the care of each individual work. Under the guidance of MoMA’s Media Conservation team, I was able to gain hands on experience with a variety of digital preservation tools and learned about how media conservation operates in a fine arts collecting institution. The preservation plans, risk assessments, and research portfolios I left behind will be used to help prepare several of the works for inclusion in the Museum’s upcoming Interactive and Digital Design exhibition in Fall 2022.
Kirk Mudle interned at MoMA during summer 2021.
