Curator Kynaston McShine believes that all artists think about museums. “Some think about them positively, some negatively,” he says. “Some think of them as a pal, others as simply a repository for their art. Some want nothing to do with museums.” These attitudes are reflected in the 188 museum-oriented works of art in the exhibit, created by 62 different artists from 10 countries. The offerings range from Herbert Distel’s miniature museum with pint-size works by artists like Jasper Johns, to Marcel Duchamp’s image of the Mona Lisa with a graffiti mustache. Some pieces were created for the show; others are from the 19th century, proving that museums have been a focal point of artistic inspiration for some time.
Photography is an obvious way of documenting museums. The 19th-century photos in the exhibition focus mostly on individual objects in the museum and their preciousness–the artists themselves seemed mesmerized by the power of an institution that served as the collective memory of an entire nation. But later works look more abstractly at the interplay between art and viewer, examining how museum visitors themselves can add life, beauty and humor to a still space. In a Thomas Struth photo, viewers whiz past works of art like travelers in a train station. A print by Eve Arnold shows a bored, stout, babushka-like guard in Leningrad sitting with pursed lips in front of Matisse’s frolicking dancers. Another of her photos seductively mingles art and life–a beautiful woman is shadowed by a Constantin Brancusi sculpture, her face and breasts mirroring the outlines of the work.
Elsewhere, Christo’s bubble-wrapped models of MoMA attempt to turn the museum itself into a work of art. And artists make their own miniature museums, take-offs on the Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities, put together by wealthy men of the 18th and 19th centuries. Instead of natural specimens collected on safari, they use personal memorabilia, reflecting the fact that art is intensely subjective–we all see and create things through our own personal filter. The filter can be strange–Susan Hiller’s “Freud Museum” is dedicated to the “unexplained and overlooked,” which includes things like Indian arrowheads and dead bugs in tiny coffins. Her “Freud Museum” lives up to its name, forcing us to explore the associations between seemingly unrelated things. In one display box, a record of Johnny Ray singing “Look Homeward, Angel” is juxtaposed with a picture of the Angel of Death. Claes Oldenburg’s “Mouse Museum” is a bit more literal. It’s shaped like Mickey’s head and holds an odd assortment of knickknacks, like fake ice-cream sundaes and hot dogs, which evoke American pop culture. Other personal museums border on the obsessive. Perhaps Joseph Cornell was being romantic by creating templelike dioramas for women he admired (in one, he preserves a feather from Tamara Toumanova’s “Swan Lake” costume). But his work has the care–and a bit of the creepiness–of Victorian mourning jewelry made of the hair of the dead.
Ultimately, real museums can’t be personal shrines, though American installation artist Barbara Bloom makes a valiant attempt to create one with “The Reign of Narcissism,” a roomful of her own image, in sculpture, plaster relief, and even on chocolates. Artists must accept that museums do more than collect their work. They also market it, and sell it, via reproductions. MoMA’s McShine is willing to admit that “maybe it’s the shopping” that’s got people more interested in museums these days. He includes Jac Leirner’s collection of bags from museum shops around the world, as well as Hans Haacke’s “Cowboy With Cigarette,” a take-off on Picasso’s “Man With a Hat.” Haacke’s collage man smokes a cigarette and is made of newspaper clippings about Philip Morris, which sponsored a MoMA show on Picasso and Braque.
Despite the obvious power of corporate funders, “Museum as Muse” proves that the museum–or, at least, this museum–has enough independence to question its own practices. In 1969, artist Yayoi Kusama called MoMA a “mausoleum,” and protested its lack of modernity by orchestrating a nude frolic in the MoMA sculpture garden (nearly thirty years later, the museum did a show of her work). By 1970, MoMA was endorsing its own performance art, allowing artist Vito Acconci to use a space allotted to his work as a mailbox. “Museum as Muse,” which runs until June, goes a step further, allowing the public a glimpse into the museum’s own decision-making process. Conceptual artist Michael Asher has prepared a list of all the works that MoMA has sold or otherwise removed from its collection. It may be the first time an exhibit has explored the very touchy notion that the art a museum let go could turn out to be as important as what it kept.
