[1] According to scholar Yolanda Morato, the avant-garde had a very strong impact on her during this period; the essence of her first book on the cinema as art is to be found in these years.

In 1923 she met the American poet Alan Porter (1899–1942), assistant literary editor of The Spectator, and published a poem in the magazine in July 1923.

[5] Wasson further details MoMA's director's Alfred Barr and Iris Barry's continuous struggle to affirm the cultural status and value of cinema to powerful museum benefactors and to win over Hollywood film studios' support in order to elevate cinema's status to that of a unique American art form.

[6] Wasson elaborates on MoMA's Film Library's effort to create modern audience for art cinema by employing overt disciplinary strategies.

The staff of the Film Library, and sometimes Barry herself, carefully monitored the spectator's behavior in the cinematic salon, sanctioning improper conduct (e.g. rowdiness, excessive chatter or laughter during screening etc.)

These strategies, Wasson argues, sought to mold a new form of cinematic audience by instilling the values of "educated film viewing and studious attention".

[8] On October 10, 2014, MoMA presented an illustrated talk by Robert Sitton, author of Lady in the Dark: Iris Barry and the Art of Film.