Christian Marclay

The Clock

Through Feb 17, 2025

MoMA

Christian Marclay. The Clock. 2010. Video (black and white and color, sound), 24 hrs. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Promised gift from the Collection of Jill and Peter Kraus. © 2024 Christian Marclay. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery and White Cube. Installation view, Christian Marclay—The Clock, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 21, 2012–January 21, 2013. Photo: Thomas Griesel
  • MoMA, Floor 2, 212

Encapsulating 100 years of moving-image history, Christian Marclay’s The Clock (2010) is a 24-hour montage composed from thousands of film and television clips depicting clocks and other references to time. James Bond checks his watch at 12:20 a.m.; Meryl Streep turns off an alarm clock at 6:30 a.m.; a pocket watch ticks at 11:53 a.m. as the Titanic departs. With each clip synchronized to the local time, The Clock collapses the fictional time presented on screen with the actual time of each passing minute. The work is both a cinematic tour-de-force and a functioning timepiece.

Building on his background as a musician in Boston and New York’s underground scenes of the late 1970s and 1980s, Marclay has for five decades combined visual and sonic fragments to explore the complex relationships between image and sound. His resulting works have taken form across a wide range of mediums: sculpture, painting, photography, print, performance, and video. With the help of assistants searching for footage, Marclay spent three years meticulously editing The Clock—the culmination of his innovative approach to looking at the world anew through found material.

The Clock speaks to cinema’s rich history as both a mirror of and escape from reality, a paradox that is ever more central to daily life in today’s era of instant broadcast, streaming services, and artificial intelligence. Marclay’s assemblage of carefully selected clips takes us on a journey through the past in order to heighten our awareness of an ever-elusive and unfolding present. By editing together fragments from cinema’s vast archive to tell the current time, Marclay reframes our collective memory of movies as an uncanny confrontation with ourselves.

Visitor guidelines
Due to limited seating capacity, entry to The Clock is not guaranteed. MoMA members receive priority access. Visitors may stay inside the exhibition as long as they like during open hours, but must rejoin the queue if they exit for any reason. Food and drink are not allowed, and we ask that visitors refrain from talking or using cell phones. The use of recording devices, including mobile phones, is strictly prohibited.

Organized by Stuart Comer, The Lonti Ebers Chief Curator of Media and Performance, and Erica Papernik-Shimizu, Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance, with Abby Hermosilla, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Curatorial Affairs.

This exhibition is made possible by MoMA's partner Richard Mille.

Support for the exhibition is provided by the Annual Exhibition Fund. Leadership contributions to the Annual Exhibition Fund, in support of the Museum’s collection and collection exhibitions, are generously provided by Jerry I. Speyer and Katherine G. Farley, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, the Sandra and Tony Tamer Exhibition Fund, the Kate W. Cassidy Foundation, Alice and Tom Tisch, the Marella and Giovanni Agnelli Fund for Exhibitions, The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Eva and Glenn Dubin, Mimi Haas, The David Rockefeller Council, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz, Kenneth C. Griffin, The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis, and Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder. Major funding is provided by The Sundheim Family Foundation.

Artist

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