Bob’s New York: Bob’s New York

Bob’s New York

Homage to New York in The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden at The Museum of Modern Art

Jean Tinguely’s performance Homage to New York took place in MoMA’s Sculpture Garden on March 17, 1960. For the event, Tinguely and Bell Laboratories engineer Billy Klüver designed a monumental kinetic sculpture—a "suicide machine"—designed to implode with the push of a button. Drawn to the collaborative process of building the machine, Rauschenberg helped Tinguely and Klüver gather the materials and put them together. Rauschenberg contributed his own kinetic sculpture, Money Thrower, a small electric heater that was ignited by gunpowder in the seventh minute of the performance, producing a flash of light and releasing a dozen silver dollars that spewed out into the audience.

Jean Tinguely’s Homage to New York in the Sculpture Garden at The Museum of Modern Art, March 17, 1960. "Self-constructing and self-destroying work of art" made of bicycle wheels, motors, a piano, an addressograph, a go-cart, a bathtub, and other cast-off objects, painted white, 27' (823 cm) high x 23' (701 cm) wide. Rauschenberg’s Money Thrower for Tinguely’s H.T.N.Y. can be seen at bottom center. Photo: David Gahr