On December 4th, the Museum of Moving Image will honor Todd Hayes with a Moving Image Award for Career Achievement. This event will be accompanied by a film retrospective, gallery exhibit and publication of a new book about his process. The museum has acquired Hayne’s film production archives that includes notes, scripts, and sketches. Short films and work for television will also be in the exhibit.

Presented as a temporary addition to the Museum's core exhibition Behind the Screen, the exhibit will be on view starting November 18 and will center on Haynes's elaborate "image books," albums that gather visual inspirations for each of his productions, with a focus on his new film May December, which stars Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. The exhibit will also feature video interviews with Haynes and additional production material drawn from the archive recently donated to the Museum.

"We are thrilled to honor Todd Haynes's extraordinary career with this expansive initiative," said Barbara Miller, MoMI's Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs. "From his electrifying emergence in the 1980s to the brilliant May December, Haynes has remained a singular filmmaker, crafting artistically fearless films that subvert genre expectations and explore transgressive identities. We're excited to present a retrospective of his works, and to be able to offer, through the exhibit and the publication of Todd Haynes: Rapturous Process, a glimpse into his compelling creative process."

From December 1–30, the Museum will present a complete retrospective including all of Todd Haynes’s feature films from Poison (1991) through May December (2023) as well as early short films, and television work.

The book, Todd Haynes: Rapturous Process, published by the Museum, is an adaptation of Centre Pompidou's book published on the occasion of its own Haynes retrospective earlier in 2023, but with new material for English-language readers. It includes an in-depth 2023 career interview with Haynes by the Pompidou's Judith Revault d'Allonnes, a new essay by Michael Koresky, a conversation about May December between Haynes and filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, and a foreword by Julianne Moore. The book features more than 200 pages of materials from Haynes's archives, including drawings, paintings, storyboards, notes, on-set photographs, costume and set designs, and more—much of which is drawn from Haynes’s production archive, which is part of the Museum’s permanent collection. Copies will be available for purchase in the MoMI Shop onsite and online starting in late November.

May December opened the 61st New York Film Festival and will be released by Netflix in theaters November 17 and on Netflix December 1. View the trailer here.

The Museum of Moving Image is located at 36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria, NY 11106.