ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE TO ACCOMPANY THE MUSEUM AS MUSE: ARTISTS REFLECT AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect, a lively and engaging exhibition that surveys the many ways in which artists have responded to the complicated institution of the museum. The exhibition will be on view from March 14 to June 1, 1999.
The catalogue includes an introductory essay by the exhibition organizer, Kynaston McShine, Senior Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art; short entries by several authors on each work or series of works in the exhibition; an anthology of artists' writings and statements on the topic of the museum; a general bibliography; and biographies and bibliographies of each of the participating artists. The catalogue contains 250 illustrations, 76 in color.
Since public museums came into being in the late eighteenth century, artists have looked upon them with a mixture of reverence, complicity, suspicion, and disdain. In this catalogue, artists of many persuasions speak their minds about museums, their functions and spaces, their practices and politics, and their relationship to the art they collect and display.
The works of more than 60 artists are represented in the catalogue: photographs of museum visitors by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliott Erwitt; "personal museums" by Charles Willson Peale, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, and Claes Oldenberg; fantasies of the destruction or transformation of museums by Hubert Robert, Edward Ruscha, and Christo; and several exhibits created especially for this project by contemporary artists, among other things.
This publication is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the
Visual Arts.
The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect. Kynaston McShine. Selected bibliography. 250 illustrations, including 76 full color, 296 pages, 9 x 10". Clothbound $50, distributed in the United States and Canada by Harry N. Abrams, and paperbound $24.95; both available in the MoMA Book Store.
The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect is made possible by the Contemporary Exhibition Fund of The Museum of Modern Art, established with gifts from Lily Auchincloss, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, and Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder. The artists' commissions are made possible by The Bohen Foundation. Additional support is provided by The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art. The accompanying Web site and online artists' projects are made possible by The Contemporary Arts Council and The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art.
