Film Forum

Andrew Moore produced and photographed HOW TO DRAW A BUNNY, a documentary feature film on Ray Johnson, who when he died in 1996 was called “New York’s most famous unknown artist.” Moore is widely acclaimed for his photographic series, usually taken over many years, which record the effect of time on the natural and built landscape. Moore’s photographs are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, amongst many other institutions. He has received fellowships from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation as well been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the J M Kaplan Fund. Moore also began making experimental short films in the late 1980s, several of which were broadcast on MTV and PBS's New Television series. He has also collaborated on film projects with David Byrne and Lee Breuer, and shot documentaries for The American Experience, The Discovery Channel, and WNET's City Arts program. Moore was a lecturer on photography in the Visual Arts Program at Princeton University from 2001 to 2010. Presently he teaches a graduate seminar in the MFA Photography Video and Related Media program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Since 1995, Frances Beatty has directed The Ray Johnson Estate and was co-executive producer of the award-winning Ray Johnson documentary, HOW TO DRAW A BUNNY (2002). After receiving her Ph.D. from Columbia University, Frances taught, wrote, and worked for Surrealist scholar and collector Julien Levy, as well as William Rubin and Carolyn Lanchner at MoMA. She joined Richard L. Feigen & Co. in 1980 as Vice-President and later President, curating exhibitions and dealing in works of art from the 13th century to the 20th century. In 2017, Frances founded Adler Beatty, an art consultancy and exhibition space, with her son, Alexander Adler.

Ellen Levy's writings include A Book About Ray (MIT Press, 2024), Criminal Ingenuity: Moore, Cornell, Ashbery, and the Struggle Between the Arts (Oxford UP, 2011) and essays and reviews in such publication as Dissent, Genre, Modernism/Modernity, The Nation, Parkett, and Twentieth-Century Literature. Currently an independent scholar, she has taught at Pratt Institute, the School of Visual Arts, and Vanderbilt University.

 

Supported by a Humanities New York Action Grant

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