MoMA: "Tim Burton" Curator Will Spotlight the Art, Design, and Film of the Brothers Quay

Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets

August 12, 2012–January 7, 2013

Stephen and Timothy Quay (June 17, 1947 are identical twin brothers who are often referred to as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They work primarily in animation films that feature puppets partially put together from doll parts. Their works are often dark and moody and Gothic in nature with virtually no dialogue or dialogue with no meaning. Their work of avant-garde of stop-motion puppet animation and live-action movie-making has been compared to Eastern European tradition of filmmakers like Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Svankmajer and the Russian Yuri Norstein. Quay Brothers films are highly reliant on their music scores, many of which have been written especially for them by the Polish composer Leszek Jankowski. Although best known for their work in film, they have collaborated with the theatre creating set design for ballet and opera.

The Museum of Modern Art announced that this August they will present a Quay retrospective, their first comprehensive exhibit, presenting the Brothers’ work in all their creative endeavors. The show will be curated by Ron Magliozzi, who also helped put together MoMA’s Tim Burton show. The exhibit will bring toether their films, their never-before-seen moving image works, drawings and objects.

The show, which is titled "Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets," seems to develop a relationship between the Brothers and the Institution: Last year, the institution was the venue for of the Brothers’ “Through the Weeping Glass: On the Consolations of Life Everlasting.” 


Read more about the Quay Brothers:


ArtInfo: MoMA Goes Goth, Again: "Tim Burton" Curator Will Spotlight the Art,Design, and Film of the Brothers Quay

NPR:  Quays Focus 'Weeping Glass' On The Mutter Museum

Zeigeist Films: The Short films of the Quay Brothers

European Graduate School: Stephen and Timothy Quay

Mutter Museum: The Quay Brothers Make a Film at the Mutter


Note: The Quay Brothers do not have an official site