To tell the story of what was being bought by and gifted to the Museum of Modern Art during the second World War, we focused as a team on the entire decade of the 40s instead of just the five-year-long conflict itself. A quick environmental scan of the MoMA during times of war leaves us with questions to be asked, and they follow: 1. What role did the MoMA play during the war effort? 2. What did support of the war look like in terms of exhibitions and art acquisition? and 3. Were there different donors during this time? If so, who were they?

Our final visualizations within this project answer these questions. In order to do so, we broke down the available data in terms of gender, nationality, department, and credit line. We see a power in curation during this time of social upheaval, thus we wanted to represent that power through the data of what exactly was represented by this institution, or what was acquired and by whom.

Ultimately, the 40s were significant in regards to the MoMA’s acquisitions. The decade marked a shift in their acquisitions from focusing on European art to focusing more on American art. Therefore, what better place (computationally-speaking) to look than World War II? Our research led us to determine that while during this time the MoMA broadened its horizons with gender, nationality, department, and credit line, the common denominators for that list remained the same. The institution valued American male drawings and prints provided by foundations before/during the war.