author
Iris Barry
1895–1969
A pioneering film critic and curator, she helped turn movies into something museums and scholars took seriously. Her work in London and at New York's Museum of Modern Art shaped how film would be preserved, studied, and celebrated.
1 Audiobook
Splashing Into Society
by Iris Barry
About the author
Born in Birmingham, England, in 1895, Iris Barry became one of the most influential early voices writing seriously about cinema. In the 1920s she worked as a film critic and helped found the London Film Society, an important home for ambitious and international film culture.
After moving to New York, she played a defining role at the Museum of Modern Art, where she became the first curator of its film collection in 1935. At a time when many people still saw movies as disposable entertainment, she argued that film deserved preservation and careful study, helping build one of the world's most important film libraries.
Barry also wrote fiction and criticism, but her lasting legacy is the way she changed the status of cinema itself. By championing film as an art form and saving prints that might otherwise have disappeared, she helped create the foundations of modern film culture.