MoMA to Host Universal Westerns Retrospective June‑July
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- MoMA announced a month‑long Universal Westerns screening series running June 5 – July 3 in New York City.
- Universal built the first permanent Western street set on its lot, which the retrospective uses to trace the genre’s studio origins.
- John Ford’s Straight Shooting (1917) is highlighted as one of the earliest surviving feature Westerns that established enduring genre conventions.
- Anthony Mann’s Winchester ’73 (1950) and The Far Country (1954) are presented as turning points that introduced darker psychological complexity to the Western.
- Destry Rides Again (1939) is cited as a defining Golden‑Age Western, while High Plains Drifter (1973) and The Hired Hand (1971) illustrate the genre’s revisionist decline.
- MoMA argues that, despite Westerns no longer being commercially dominant, their preservation offers insight into Hollywood history, visual style, and American mythmaking.
Why it matters: Film scholars and audiences gain a curated window into the evolution of a foundational genre, while the lack of commercial releases underscores the need for institutional preservation of Westerns as cultural artifacts. The series also highlights how the genre’s visual language continues to shape contemporary cinema, reinforcing its relevance for filmmakers and historians.
