
An Archive as Impetus (Not on View) performance in MoMA’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. Photograph by Martin Seck
Plenty of people think of museums, libraries, and archives as stagnant and apolitical places; sites where histories are not created, but simply preserved. In her performance Archive as Impetus (Not on View)—presented several times per week during the month of June as part of MoMA’s Artists Experiment initiative—artist Xaviera Simmons asked viewers to reconsider the role of the museum.