Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

William Kentridge Drawing for the film WEIGHING . . . and WANTING [Soho with Head on Rock], 1997 Charcoal, pastel, and gouache on paper 47 1/4 x 63 in. (120 x 160 cm) Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego © 2008 William Kentridge photo: courtesy the William Kentridge Studio and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego	William Kentridge Drawing for the film Stereoscope, 1998–99 Charcoal, pastel, and colored pencil on paper 47 1/4 x 63 in. (120 x 160 cm) The Museum of Modern Art, New York ® 2008 William Kentridge photo: courtesy the William Kentridge Studio and The Museum of Modern Art, New York

William Kentridge: Five Themes

July 12-September 27, 2009

Curator: Mark Rosenthal, Adjunct Curator of Contemporary Art, the Norton Museum of Art

Major Survey Marks Debut of Artist's Most Recent Work

William Kentridge: Five Themes, a comprehensive survey of the contemporary South African artist's work, features more than 75 works in a range of media-including animated films, drawings, prints, theater models, sculptures, and books. The exhibition is co-organized by SFMOMA and the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, and curated by Mark Rosenthal, adjunct curator of contemporary art at the Norton Museum of Art, in close collaboration with the artist.

The exhibition explores five primary themes that have engaged Kentridge over the past three decades. Although the exhibition highlights projects completed since 2000 (many of which have not been seen in the United States), it will also present, for the first time, Kentridge's most recent work alongside his earlier projects from the 1980s and 1990s, revealing as never before the full arc of his distinguished career.

Michael Auping, Chief Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and contributor to the exhibition catalogue comments, "Kentridge is without a doubt one of the most interesting and inventive artists working today. A descendant of European immigrants to South Africa and the son of two distinguished anti-apartheid lawyers, his art takes the form of narratives that come out of his experience of growing surrounded by the complex politics of that country. What makes Kentridge's art so poignant is that his stories encompass many viewpoints that stretch beyond the complex politics of South Africa. He is always finding new ways to look at historical or contemporary situations from a different angle. His process usually begins with charcoal drawings, which he painstakingly films to create dramatic and complex animations. These films, accompanied by musical scores, are then incorporated into more elaborate installations. This retrospective is a very special event encompassing all of the artist's major installations. It's like a five-stage, animated opera."

Born in 1955 in Johannesburg, where he continues to live and work, Kentridge has earned international acclaim for his interdisciplinary practice, which often fuses drawing, film, and theater. Known for engaging with the social landscape and political background of his native South Africa, he has produced a searing body of work that explores themes of colonial oppression and social conflict, loss and reconciliation, and the ephemeral nature of both personal and cultural memory.

first gained recognition in 1997, when his work was included in Documenta X in Kassel, Germany, and in the Johannesburg and Havana Biennials, which were followed by prominent international solo exhibitions. His art was widely introduced to American audiences in 2001 through a traveling retrospective which primarily included works made before 2000. William Kentridge: Five Themes brings viewers up to date on the artist's work over the past decade, exploring how his subject matter has evolved from the specific context of South Africa to more universal stories. In recent years, Kentridge has dramatically expanded both the scope of his projects (such as recent full-scale opera productions) and their thematic concerns, which now include his own studio practice, colonialism in Namibia and Ethiopia, and the cultural history of postrevolutionary Russia. His newer work is based on an intensive exploration of themes connected to his own life experience, as well as the political and social issues that most concern him.

Although his hand-drawn animations are often described as films, Kentridge himself prefers to call them "drawings for projection." He makes them using a distinctive technique in which he painstakingly creates, erases, and reworks charcoal drawings that are photographed and projected as moving image. Movement is generated within the image by the artist's hand; the camera serves merely to record its progression. As such, the animations explore a tension between material object and time-based performance, uniquely capturing the artist's working process while telling poignant and politically urgent stories.

The Five Themes

"Parcours d'Atelier: Artist in the Studio"
The first section of the exhibition examines a crucial turning point in Kentridge's work, one in which his own art practice became a subject. According to the artist, many of these projects are meant to reflect the "invisible work that must be done" before beginning a drawing, film, or sculpture. This theme is epitomized by the large-scale multiscreen projection 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès (2003), an homage to the early French film director, who, like Kentridge, often combined performance with drawing. The suite of seven films-each depicting Kentridge at work in his studio or interacting with his creations-has only been shown once before in the United States and will be accompanied by a rarely seen group of related drawings, forming an intimate portrayal of the artist's process.

"Thick Time: Soho and Felix"
A second section of the exhibition is dedicated to Kentridge's best-known fictional characters, Soho Eckstein, a domineering industrialist and real estate developer whose troubled conscience reflects certain miens of contemporary South Africa, and his sensitive alter ego, Felix Teitlebaum, who pines for Soho's wife and often functions as a surrogate for the artist himself. The centerpiece of this section, an ongoing work entitled 9 Drawings for Projection, comprises nine short animated films: Johannesburg, 2nd Greatest City after Paris (1989), Monument (1990), Sobriety, Obesity & Growing Old (1991), Mine (1991), Felix in Exile (1994), History of the Main Complaint (1996), WEIGHING . . . and WANTING (1998), Stereoscope (1999), and Tide Table (2003). These projections, along with a key selection of related drawings, follow the lives of Soho and Felix as they struggle to navigate the political and social climate of Johannesburg during the final decade of apartheid. According to Kentridge, the Soho and Felix films were made without a script or storyboards and are largely about his own process of discovery.

"Occasional and Residual Hope: Ubu and the Procession"
In 1975 Kentridge acted in Ubu Rex (an adaptation of Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry's satire about a corrupt and cowardly despot), and he subsequently devoted a large body of work to the play. He began with a series of eight etchings, collectively entitled Ubu Tells the Truth (1996), and in 1997 made an animated film of the same name, as well as a number of related drawings. These works also deal with the South African experience, specifically addressing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings set up by the nation's government in 1995 to investigate human rights abuses during apartheid. Other highlights in this grouping include the film Shadow Procession (1999), in which Kentridge first utilizes techniques of shadow theater and jointed-paper figures; the multipanel collage Portage (2000); a large charcoal-and-pastel-on-paper work entitled Arc Procession (Smoke, Ashes, Fable) (1990); and some of the artist's rough-hewn bronze sculptures.

"Sarastro and the Master's Voice: The Magic Flute"
A selection of Kentridge's drawings, films, and theater models inspired by his 2005 production of the Mozart opera The Magic Flute for La Monnaie, the leading opera house in Belgium, will be a highlight of the exhibition. The artist's video projection Learning the Flute (2003), which started the Flute project, shifts between images of black charcoal drawings on white paper and white chalk drawings projected onto a blackboard, forming a meditation on darkness and light. Preparing the Flute (2005) was created as a large-scale maquette within which to test projections central to the production of the opera. Another theater model, Black Box/Chambre Noire (2006), which has never been seen in the United States, addresses the opera's themes, specifically through an examination of the colonial war of 1904 in German South-West Africa, and of the genocide of the Herero people. What Will Come (has already come) (2007), a consideration of colonialism in Ethiopia, presents an anamorphic film installation in which intentionally distorted images projected onto a tabletop right themselves only when reflected in a cylindrical mirror.

"Learning from the Absurd: The Nose"
The fifth section comprises a multichannel projection made in preparation for Kentridge's forthcoming staging of The Nose, a Metropolitan Opera production that will premiere in New York in March 2010. The Nose-a 1930 Dmitri Shostakovich opera based on Nikolai Gogol's absurdist short story of 1836-concerns a Russian official whose nose disappears from his face, only to turn up, in uniform, as a higher-ranking official moving in more respected circles. Kentridge's related work, I am not me, the horse is not mine (2008), is a room-size installation of projected films that use Gogol's story as the basis for examining Russian modernism and the suppression of the Russian avant-garde in the 1920s and 1930s.

Definitive Publication with Companion DVD
To coincide with the exhibition, the richly illustrated catalogue (hardcover, $50) features a principal essay by exhibition curator Mark Rosenthal which introduces the five themes and presents a portrait of the artist, showing the interrelationship between aspects of Kentridge's character and the protagonists that populate his work. Also, included is a conversation between the artist and Michael Auping, chief curator at the Modern, focusing on the artist's drawing practice. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, chief curator at the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, examines the artist's themes and iconography in closer detail, addressing Kentridge's working methods as he moves freely between disciplines. Rudolf Frieling demonstrates that although Kentridge is not typically discussed as an installation artist, there are compelling reasons to consider him as such. Klaus Biesenbach, Cornelia H. Butler, and Judith B. Hecker, curators at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, explore the subject of performance in Kentridge's work. In addition, the artist has written texts to introduce each of the book's five plate sections. The catalogue is published by SFMOMA and the Norton Museum of Art, in association with Yale University Press

For the first time, Kentridge will produce a DVD for distribution with the publication, making the catalogue unique among existing literature on the artist. Combining intimate studio footage of the artist at work with fragments from significant film projects, the DVD offers a fascinating look at how Kentridge's ideas evolve from raw concept to finished work.

For more information, contact:
Kendal Smith Lake
Manager of Communications
(817) 840-2167
kendal@themodern.org
or:
Dustin Van Orne
Media Relations Coordinator
(817) 840-2151
dustin@themodern.org

Susan Rothenberg Cabin Fever, 1976 Acrylic and tempera on canvas 67 x 84 1/8 inches (170.2 x 213.7 cm) Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase, Sid W. Richardson Foundation Endowment Fund and an anonymous donor © 2009 Susan Rothenberg/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York	Susan Rothenberg Orange Break, 1989-90 Oil on canvas 79 5/8 x 95 1/8 inches (202.2 x 241.6 cm) Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase © 2009 Susan Rothenberg/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Susan Rothenberg: Moving In Place

October 18, 2009 - January 3, 2010

Curator: Michael Auping

Special exhibitions are included in general museum admission: $10 for adults; $4 for seniors (60+) and students with identification; free for children 12 and under; free for Modern members.

In the fall of 2009, and in conjunction with the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth will present a special exhibition of some 25 paintings by Susan Rothenberg. The exhibition is organized by the Museum's Chief Curator, Michael Auping, who has known the artist for over three decades. He and Rothenberg have identified a select group of paintings-from the early horse paintings of the mid-1970s, to her most recent body of work, which explores a number of central motifs that have occurred throughout her 35-year career. Auping comments, "Rather than focusing on Rothenberg's famous early horse paintings as the beginning of a symbolic, figurative evolution, we are looking at the artist's work from a more holistic, formal standpoint, identifying her unusual way of organizing pictorial space, regardless of the figurative content." Each painting in the exhibition will highlight key compositional strategies in a formal narrative where perceived movement, fragmentation, and painterly gesture establish a dynamic interaction with the edges and frames of her canvases.

Even as Rothenberg's images have changed radically over the course of her career, certain tendencies critical to the compositional dynamics of her paintings have remained constant, reflecting how the artist sees and reconstructs the world through a series of shifting pictorial structures that create a spinning or torquing spatial scenario. The exhibition will explore the evolution of this "frozen motion," as the artist has referred to it, from the early horse paintings such as Cabin Fever (1976), which depicts the simple outline of a horse jumping into action; to her spinning and turning figures of the 1980s and early 1990s, such as Folded Buddha (1987-88) and Pin Wheel (1988); to the action scenes that emerged shortly after she moved to a ranch in Galisteo, New Mexico, such as Dogs Killing Rabbit (1991-92) and Accident #2 (1993-94); to her most recent series of disembodied hands and arms swinging around the space of the paintings like dismembered puppets. "The newest paintings," Auping comments, "continue Rothenberg's necessity to fragment the figure and move it around the canvas as though it were being controlled by an invisible force. This may be the perfect time to look back at Rothenberg's career and see something more fundamentally strange than images of horses, which certainly seemed strange at the time of their making."

Rothenberg's first solo exhibition in New York in 1975, consisting of three large-scale paintings of horses, was heralded for introducing imagery into minimalist abstraction and bringing a new sensitivity to figuration. Peter Schjeldahl, of The New Yorker, called the show "a eureka," stating that "the large format of the pictures was a gesture of ambition," and that "the mere reference to something really existing was astonishing." Since then, Rothenberg's work has been collected extensively and is represented in major museums throughout the United States and abroad. Susan Rothenberg: Moving in Place will be the artist's first solo museum exhibition in more than a decade. It will open at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (October 18, 2009 to January 3, 2010), and travel to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (January 22 to May 16, 2010); and the Miami Art Museum (October 15, 2010 to January 9, 2011).

The Modern, in association with the publisher Prestel, will produce a major book in conjunction with the exhibition. Full-color illustrations and foldouts of some of Rothenberg's best-known early works as well as exciting new paintings afford readers the chance to observe the evolution of the artist's themes. From her earliest horse paintings to her spinning figures of the 1980s and early 1990s, to her most recent series of paintings of dismembered puppets, this book highlights key compositional strategies in Rothenberg's work. The catalogue includes an introduction by Barbara Buhler Lynes, the Emily Fisher Landau Director of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center and curator of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum; an essay by Michael Auping addressing Rothenberg's painting process and the eclectic influences that have helped shape her figurative and spatial distortions; and rare, unpublished commentaries by the artist on works in the exhibition.

For more information, contact:
Kendal Smith Lake
Manager of Communications
(817) 840-2167
kendal@themodern.org
or:
Dustin Van Orne
Media Relations Coordinator
(817) 840-2151
dustin@themodern.org

Tuesday Evenings At The Modern

These lectures in the Modern's auditorium begin at 7 pm. The Tuesday Evenings series brings artists, scholars, and critics to discuss their work each week at the Modern. The spring series begins February 10 and ends March 31. Admission is free and open to the public. Free admission tickets can be picked up at the Modern's admission desk beginning at 5 pm on the day of the lecture. Seating begins at 6:30 pm and is limited to the first 250 ticketholders. A live broadcast of the lecture will be shown in Café Modern for any additional guests. The Museum galleries and Café Modern will remain open until 7 pm on Tuesdays during the series, (regular gallery admission charge applies).

March 17
Fahamu Pecou is an artist working in Atlanta, where he began a branding campaign for his own career as a painter. Fahamu Pecou is the Shit (which began in 2002 with paintings of the artist on the cover of art and culture magazines, t-shirts, posters, a mockumentary, and guerilla street art) is fashioned after similar celebrity campaigns Pecou created for various rap and hip-hop artists through his design business, Diamond Lounge. This Tuesday Evenings presentation, Behind the Canvas, takes an intimate look at the personal life of an artist.

March 24
Donald Sultan is one of the leading American contemporary still life artists, known for his large-scale, "catastrophic-event" paintings that incorporate nontraditional materials such as Dead Plant, November 1, 1988, as well as his sensuous charcoal drawings of iconic presentations and abstract depictions of fruit such as Black Lemons, May 20, 1985,both in the Modern's collection. For this Tuesday Evenings presentation, Sultan shares details of his 30-year career as found in the recently published monograph, Donald Sultan: The Theater of the Object.

There will be a book signing by the artist in the Museum lobby at 6 pm prior to this lecture. Donald Sultan: The Theater of the Object ($75) is available in The Modern Shop and online at http://shop.themodern.org.

March 31
Rosson Crow is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. Crow's large-scale, raucous paintings have been described as "inspired by diverse references-Baroque and Rococo interior design, cowboy culture, Las Vegas architecture, theatre, and music-their dominant scale pulling the viewer into the psychological space of the spectacle. These paintings oscillate between celebration and desolation." This Tuesday Evenings presentation serves to set up the Modern's FOCUS: Rosson Crow, which opens the following weekend.

Tuesday Evening Cocktails and Light Bites
Guests can enjoy refreshments from 5 to 7 pm in Café Modern before the Tuesday Evenings lecture series. Choose from Café Modern's unique Modern cocktail menu or distinctive wine list. Coffee, tea, and light snacks are also available.

For more information, contact:
Kendal Smith Lake
Manager of Communications
(817) 840-2167
kendal@themodern.org
or:
Dustin Van Orne
Media Relations Coordinator
(817) 840-2151
dustin@themodern.org

Where Art and Film Collide: Selections from Arthouse Films

A Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and The Lone Star Film Society Presentation
Tuesdays, April 7-28, 2009, 7 pm

Screenings begin Tuesday, April 7, and run every Tuesday through April 28. Films begin at 7 pm in the Modern's auditorium. Admission to the film is free and open to the public. Seating is limited and on a first come, first serve basis. For assured seating, free admission tickets are available at the Modern's admission desk beginning at 5 pm.The Museum galleries and Café Modern will remain open until 7 pm on Tuesdays during the series, (regular gallery admission charge applies).

April 7
Beautiful Losers
Featuring artists such as Shepard Fairey, Stephen Powers, and Barry McGee, Beautiful Losers celebrates the spirit behind one of the most influential cultural moments of a generation. In the early 1990s, a loose-knit group of like-minded outsiders found common ground at a little storefront gallery in New York. Rooted in the DIY (do-it-yourself) subcultures of skateboarding, surf, punk, hip hop, and graffiti, they made art that reflected the lifestyles they led. Developing their craft with almost no influence from the "establishment" art world, this group and the subcultures they sprang from have now become a movement that continues to transform pop culture.

April 14
The Cats of Mirikitani
Eighty-year-old Jimmy Mirikitani survived the trauma of World War II internment camps, living in Hiroshima, and homelessness by creating art. But when 9/11 threatens his life on the New York City streets and a local filmmaker brings him to her home, the two embark on a journey to confront Jimmy's painful past. An intimate exploration of the lingering wounds of war and the healing powers of friendship and art, this documentary won the Audience Award at its premiere in the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.

"The Cats of Mirikitaniis, quite simply, breathtaking-one of the most surprising and unshakable documentaries I can recall." New York Sun

April 21
Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Rosset and Grove Press
Obscene is the definitive film biography of Barney Rosset, the influential publisher of Grove Press and The Evergreen Review. He acquired the then fledgling Grove Press in 1951 and soon embarked on a tumultuous career of publishing and political engagement that continues to inspire today's defenders of free expression. Not only was he the first American publisher of acclaimed authors Samuel Beckett, Kenzaburo Oe, Tom Stoppard, Che Guevara, and Malcolm X, but he also battled the government in the highest courts to overrule the obscenity ban on groundbreaking works of fiction such as Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and Naked Lunch. Ultimately he won and altered the course of history, but not without first enduring lawsuits, death threats, grenade attacks, government surveillance, and the occupation of his premises by enraged feminists.

But the same unyielding and reckless energy Rosset used to publish and distribute controversial works such as Allen Ginsberg's Howl, the Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow), and the provocative Evergreen Review, also brought him perilously close to destruction. Featuring music by Bob Dylan, The Doors, Warren Zevon, and Patti Smith, and never-before-seen footage, Obscene is directed by first-time filmmakers Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O'Connor.

April 28
Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe
Yale-educated and born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Sam Wagstaff transformed himself from innovative museum curator to Robert Mapplethorpe's lover and patron. During the heady years of the 1970s and 1980s, the New York City art scene was abuzz with a new spirit, and Mapplethorpe was at the center of it.

For more information, contact:
Kendal Smith Lake
Manager of Communications
(817) 840-2167
kendal@themodern.org
or:
Dustin Van Orne
Media Relations Coordinator
(817) 840-2151
dustin@themodern.org

First Fridays At The Modern

Cocktails. Music. Art. Dining.

The first Friday of each month, the Star-Telegram, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and Café Modern team up to bring you live music and cocktails from 5 to 8 pm. Bring your friends to enjoy diverse live performances, cocktail selections, and the opportunity to dine in Café Modern by night. A docent-led, twenty-minute tour of the galleries is available at 6:30 pm. The tour is free for Modern members and Star-Telegram Press Pass Holders. Make your reservations now for dinner, served from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. Enjoy Café Modern favorites and featured specials created by Executive Chef Dena Peterson. For dinner reservations, call 817.840.2157.

August 7
Saint Frinatra
Veteran jazz man Brian Sharp and pals run the gamut of the greats-Miles, Monk, and Duke-but always harken back to the Sinatra-style lounge scene that is their true inspiration.
Special cocktail: Cool Fool

For more information, contact:
Kendal Smith Lake
Manager of Communications
(817) 840-2167
kendal@themodern.org
or:
Dustin Van Orne
Media Relations Coordinator
(817) 840-2151
dustin@themodern.org

Magnolia at the Modern Film Schedule

The Magnolia at the Modern is an ongoing series featuring critically acclaimed films. Regular show times are Friday at 6 & 8 pm, Saturday at 5 pm, and Sunday at 2 & 4 pm (exceptions are noted). Tickets are $8.50; $6.50 for Modern members. Advance sales begin two hours prior to each show.

Good
May 22-24
Set in 1930's Germany, Vigo Mortensen stars as a 'good' and decent individual, a literary professor, who explores his personal circumstances in a novel advocating compassionate euthanasia.
96 minutes

Whatever Works (update)
July 3 and 5; No Saturday show
Latest from Woody Allen!
PG-13; 92 minutes

Moon
July 10-12
Premiering at Sundance 2009, this sci-fi feature form Duncan Jones (son of rocker David Bowie ) focuses on an astronaut who has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that has helped diminish our planet's power problems.

O'Horton
July 17-19
A 67-year-old train engineer experiences life changing moments as he is forced into retirement.
PG 13; 90 minutes; Norwegian/French with English subtitles

Lemon Tree
July 24-26
A Palestinian widow must defend her lemon tree field when the new Israeli Defense Minister moves next to her and threatens to have her lemon grove torn down.
106 minutes; German/Israeli with English subtitles

Summer Hours July 31-August 2 In the latest offering from French director, Oliver Assayas, two brothers and a sister witness the disappearance of their childhood memories when they must relinquish the family belongings to ensure their deceased mother's succession.
103 minutes; French with English subtitles

For more information, contact:
Kendal Smith Lake
Manager of Communications
(817) 840-2167
kendal@themodern.org
or:
Dustin Van Orne
Media Relations Coordinator
(817) 840-2151
dustin@themodern.org

Modern Art Museum Information

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
3200 Darnell Street, Fort Worth, TX 76107
Telephone 817.738.9215 Toll-free 1.866.824.5566 Fax 817.735.1161
Website: www.themodern.org
Email: info@themodern.org

Admission Prices
$4: Students with ID and Seniors (60+)
*$10: General (13 to Adult)
Free: Children under 13
Free: Modern Members
*Changes effective June 24, 2007

Admission includes
Permanent Collection exhibitions
All special and traveling exhibitions
Scheduled tours and gallery programs

• Free Wednesdays
• Free first Sunday of every month
• Free school group programs with advance reservations
• Free access to the Grand Lobby, Café Modern, and The Modern Shop

Museum Gallery Hours
Closed Monday
Tuesday 10 am-5 pm (10 am-7 pm September-November and February-April)
Wednesday 10 am-5 pm
Thursday 10 am-5 pm
Friday 10 am-5 pm
Saturday 10 am-5 pm
Sunday 11 am-5 pm

Café Modern Hours
Tues–Sun 11 am–2:30 pm, 2–4:30 pm for coffee, snacks, and dessert;
Reservations 817.840.2157; Menus are available online at
www.themodern.org/cafemodern.html

Closed Mondays and holidays including New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day.

Hours may vary throughout the inaugural year to accommodate demand. Please call ahead to check for up-to-date scheduling.

The Modern focuses on post–World War II international art in all media. Additionally, the Museum offers a variety of educational programs, including lectures, guided tours, adult and children's classes and workshops, summer art camp and occasional family activity days. The Modern also features a state-of-the-art auditorium that showcases films, musical performances, and lectures, and a restaurant, Café Modern, housed in an elliptical dining room.