CATEGORY: CONTEMPORARY ART FROM THE COLLECTION

Stepping off the streets of an ever-changing New York into the (also ever-changing) galleries of MoMA, a neatly compact silver trailer sits waiting for you on the second floor, as if ready to whisk you away from the city to embark on an adventure on the open road. Read more

George Maciunas. One Year. 1973–74. Various empty containers and packaging. Above: Alison Knowles. Selections from The Identical Lunch. 1969. Screenprints on canvas. Installation view of both works at MoMA. The Museum of Modern Art. The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection. Photo: Jason Mandella

This week MoMA launches Instruction Lab in the mezzanine of the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building, inspired by the Fluxus works included in the current Contemporary Art from the Collection exhibition. Read more

Yoko Ono. Selections from Whisper Piece (four shown of sixteen total; installation view at The Museum of Modern Art). 2010. Pen on wall, dimensions variable. Collection of the artist. Photo: Jason Persse

I first heard about Yoko Ono’s so-called “instruction pieces” as a high school student, when a friend told me the (possibly apocryphal, certainly embellished) story of Ono’s first meeting with John Lennon. History according to the poorly fact-checked lunchtime ramblings of rock ‘n’ roll–obsessed seventeen-year-olds: During a visit to London’s Indica Gallery in 1966, Lennon encountered Ono’s Ceiling Painting. Climbing to the top of a tall, white ladder, he used a magnifying glass dangling from a thread to read a message printed in tiny letters on the ceiling: “YES.” Profoundly moved by the work’s unalloyed positivity, he demanded to meet the artist right away. Read more