Louise Brooks, The American Venus, on exhibit in Astoria exhibit

Portrait of Louise Brooks, American Venus (1926).
Collection of Museum of the Moving Image. Gift of Frederika Tuttle Hastings
and Helen Tuttle Votichenko.
Credit: Museum of the Moving Image

This portrait of Louise Brooks, taken while she was making The American Venus (1926), is currently on display at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York. The portrait is part of "Lights, Camera, Astoria!," an exhibit which traces the history of the Astoria Studios, where Brooks made a numbe rof her early Paramount films.

Studio site photograph, Astoria Studio, c. 1930 (Collection of Museum of the Moving Image. Gift of Dorothy Kandel)

EXHIBITION
Lights, Camera, Astoria!

October 26, 2013–February 9, 2014
In the Amphitheater Gallery

Organized by Barbara Miller, Curator of the Collection and Exhibitions, and Richard Koszarski, author of Hollywood on the Hudson

This exhibition traces the fascinating history of the Astoria Studio complex, which has been at the heart of filmmaking in New York City since 1920. The studio site was the East-Coast home of Paramount Pictures in the silent and early talking-picture eras, a center for independent filmmaking in the 1930s, and the U.S. Army Pictorial Center from World War II into the Cold War. After falling into disrepair in the early 1970s, the site has become a thriving cultural hub that includes Kaufman Astoria Studios and Museum of the Moving Image.

Using film stills, behind-the-scenes photographs, oral histories, film clips, and posters, the exhibition explores the rich legacy and renaissance of the studio complex. With material from silent-era films featuring Rudolph Valentino, early talking films starring the Marx Brothers, World War II training and propaganda films, such modern classics as The Age of Innocence, and television shows like Sesame Street, The Cosby Show, and Nurse Jackie, the exhibition reveals the significant role that the Astoria Studio continues to play in energizing its surrounding community and making moving-image history.

Lights, Camera, Astoria! is presented with generous support from Kaufman Astoria Studios. (A tiny portrait of Louise brooks can be seen in on the far wall.)