Soundings: A Contemporary Score.
Aug. 10–Nov. 3, 2013

MoMA’s first major exhibition of sound art presented work by sixteen of the most innovative contemporary artists working with sound. While these artists approach sound from a variety of disciplinary angles—the visual arts, architecture, performance, computer programming, and music—they share an interest in working with, rather than against or independent of, material realities and environments. These artistic responses ranged from architectural interventions, to visualizations of otherwise inaudible sound, to an exploration of how sound ricochets within a gallery, to field recordings—including echolocating bats, abandoned buildings in Chernobyl, fifty-nine bells in New York City, and a sugar factory in Taiwan.

The exhibition posited something specific: that how we listen determines what we hear. The featured artists included Luke Fowler, Toshiya Tsunoda, Marco Fusinato, Richard Garet, Florian Hecker, Christine Sun Kim, Jacob Kirkegaard, Haroon Mirza, Carsten Nicolai, Camille Norment, Tristan Perich, Susan Philipsz, Sergei Tcherepnin, Hong-Kai Wang, Jana Winderen, and Stephen Vitiello.
Press Release | Catalog

 

Looking at Music 3.0.
Feb. 16–May 30, 2011

Looking at Music 3.0, the third in a series of exhibitions exploring the influence of music on contemporary art practices, focused on New York in the 1980s and 1990s. In this dynamic period, imaginative forms of street art spread across the five boroughs, articulating the counterculture tenor of the times. As the city transitioned from bankruptcy to solvency, graffiti, media, and performance artists took advantage of low rents and collaborated on ad hoc works shown in alternative spaces and underground clubs. Appropriation, also known as remixing, thrived. Approximately seventy works from a wide range of artists and musicians were on view, including works by the Beastie Boys, Kathleen Hanna and Le Tigre, Keith Haring, Christian Marclay, Steven Parrino, Run-DMC, and Joanie 4 Jackie, a video chain letter founded by Miranda July.
Press Release

 

 

Joan Jonas: Mirage. 
Dec. 18, 2009–May 31, 2010

The installation Mirage reimagines Joan Jonas’s groundbreaking performance originally created in 1976 for the screening room of New York’s Anthology Film Archives. For the original performance version of Mirage, Jonas carried out a series of movements—including percussive running and drawing—while interacting with a variety of sculptural components, films, and videos. In the recently acquired MoMA installation, original objects and photographs from the 1976 performance are combined with six moving image works (May Windows, Good Night Good Morning, Car Tape, Volcano Film, Mirage 1, and Mirage 2), which were shown both on monitors in the gallery and projected onto the gallery walls.
Script | Press Release