New York, March 24, 2009 – The Museum of Modern Art announces Mike Nichols, a two-week retrospective of 17 films that surveys the wide range of Mike Nichols’ directing career. Spanning more than four decades, the series comprises a collection of Nichols’ most significant works in film, from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Graduate (1967) to Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) and the HBO dramas Wit (2001) and Angels in America, Parts 1 and 2 (2003). The influential but rarely screened films Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Catch 22 (1970) open and close the two-week exhibition. Mike Nichols will run April 14 through May 1, in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters, and is organized by Rajendra Roy, The Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film, The Museum of Modern Art.

“While remaining one of the most productive forces in the creative industries—film and theater—Mike Nichols’ body of work is clearly one of the most referenced and revered in contemporary cinema,” said Mr. Roy. “His ability to form lasting and consistently fruitful partnerships with writers and actors places him among the standard bearers for the great collaborative traditions of Hollywood. Emerging filmmakers have much to learn from the intellect and timeless humanity of Nichols’ work.”

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and The Graduate, for which Nichols received an Academy Award for Best Direction, propelled him to the top of the field. Silkwood (1983) marked Nichols’s reemergence into film in the early 1980s, and was followed by Heartburn (1986) and Working Girl (1988), which garnered Academy Award nominations for Nichols, and actors Melanie Griffith, Sigourney Weaver, and Joan Cusack. Popular and critically acclaimed films from the 1990s such as The Birdcage (1996) and Primary Colors (1998) are joined in the series by Closer (2004) and his most recent Hollywood release Charlie Wilson’s War (2007).

An accomplished performer (most notably alongside Elaine May) and renowned stage director, Mike Nichols is among an elite few who have been awarded all of the major American entertainment awards: a Grammy, Emmy, Tony, and Oscar. In 2003 he was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, and in 2004 the Directors Guild of America honored him with its annual Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his contributions to the film medium over the past four decades.

Mike Nichols in Conversation, an intimate and informal conversation with Nichols and a select group of his closest writing and acting collaborators, including Nora Ephron, Elaine May, and Buck Henry, will take place at MoMA on Saturday April 18, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $10 adults; $8 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D.; $6 full-time students with current I.D.

*All times are subject to change. Call ahead!

Tags: MOMA