Theatrical and staged elements have been a key feature of visual art throughout the 20th century. Movements like Futurism, Dada, and Bauhaus employed theater, dance, music, and poetry with live or broadcast performances to engage with audiences. In the 1960s and 1970s, performance gained renewed momentum when artists conceived of Happenings, Fluxus, "actions," experimental dance, and site-specific interventions.
Throughout its history MoMA has been host to many artworks involving live and performative elements, from Jean Tinguely’s Homage to New York (1960) to Francis Alÿs’s The Modern Procession (2002). Others were unsolicited and sometimes subversive artist actions, like Yayoi Kusama’s Grand Orgy to Awaken the Dead at MoMA (1969) or Guerrilla Art Action Group’s Blood Bath (1969). While most of these activities previously took place at the periphery of MoMA's exhibition program, the 2008 addition of "and Performance Art" to what was then called the Department of Media introduced performance art as a central component in the Museum's programming. Read more
In recent years performance art (in an expansive sense) has been embraced by many major museums and become a new focus of their programs. During this current resurgence of performance art, one could argue that the medium faces a dilemma, particularly as it re-emerges within new contexts and under very different conditions. Once conceived as a critique of the traditional static art object, created by one artist and eventually turned into a commodity, this genre has entered into the arena of event culture, confronted with a much larger and more diverse audience.
How do institutions and audiences engage with these formerly emancipatory and transgressive movements as they seek new methods and channels for art? How do younger generations of artists respond to this legacy? How can MoMA help direct performance art’s transition from the margins to the center of contemporary art discourse—and the space of the museum—in such a way that surpasses spectacle and preserves the critical character of these works? And how do artists negotiate the tension between the original live performance and its representation in films, photographs, videos, or other media? What kinds of transformations are necessary to create meaningful programs for performance art—a medium that is experimental by nature, often multi-authored, collectively realized, interdisciplinary, and interactive?
In light of these many open questions, MoMA's Performance Program has great potential. As an institution with international reach, MoMA can bring this process-oriented art to a broad audience and open the Museum up to new art at a time when this art is still in the making.
MoMA’s Department of Media and Performance Art seeks to emphasize its engagement with both the theory and practice of performance and to reflect its shifting parameters and modes of production and presentation. Landmark performances from the past will be revisited, and in doing so will be reactivated and redefined. Moreover, to establish what we refer to as “a dialogue between the present and the past,” MoMA will commission new artworks and actively generate new projects for this context.
Performances will take place in and around the Museum, utilizing public space for its diverse manifestations. In accordance with the interdisciplinary nature of the art forms in question, projects will be also organized across other departments of the Museum, as well as in collaboration with outside individuals and institutions. In addition to performances, the program will include a range of lectures and debates.
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Past performances
Performing Histories: Live Artworks Examining the Past
Some sweet day
Meta-Monumental Garage Sale
Words in the World
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Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954–003064: A Public Reading
Grand Openings Return of the Blogs
Performance 15: On Line/Xavier Le Roy
Performance 14: On Line/Ralph Lemon
Performance 13: On Line/Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Performance 12: On Line/Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci
Performance 11: On Line/Trisha Brown Dance Company
Performance 10: Alison Knowles
Performance 9: Allora & Calzadilla
Performance 8: William Kentridge: I am not me, the horse is not mine
Performance 7: Mirage by Joan Jonas
Performance 6: Fischerspooner
Performance 5: Mark Leckey
Performance 4: Roman Ondák
Performance 3: Trio A by Yvonne Rainer
Performance 2: Simone Forti
Performance 1: Tehching Hsieh
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The performance program is organized by Sabine Breitwieser, Chief Curator, and Ana Janevski, Associate Curator, with Leora Morinis, Curatorial Assistant, and Jill A. Samuels, Performance Producer, Department of Media and Performance Art.
The Performance Program is made possible by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation.
