NEW YORK-
A new exhibit was unveiled Tuesday at the Museum of Modern Art–or rather on the Museum of Modern Art.
The new public art installation by artist Doug Aitken turned the museum’s facades into a drive-in movie theater of sorts, with the images large enough to be seen from the street.
Aitken created a series of five films centering around life in an urban environment. The films, each about 15 to 20 minutes long, are played on seven of the large walls that make up MoMA’s midtown Manhattan building.
They focus on a businessman, played by Donald Sutherland, an office worker, played by Tilda Swinton, and a bike messenger, depicted by drummer Ryan Donowho. Brazilian musician and actor Seu Jorge plays an electrician who makes the advertising signs at Times Square glow, and Chan Marshall stars as a postal worker.
The films were shot around New York’s five boroughs and are shown simultaneously, so that there are moments of parallel within the films to signify both solitude and membership in an urban community.
“It’s fun, fascinating and best of all free of charge,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said of the installation.
The work will be up through Feb. 12 and will be shown from dusk until 10 p.m. each day. The movies are projected onto four walls surrounding the museum’s sculpture garden, which can be seen from 54th Street, on a screen at MoMA’s entrance on 53rd Street and on two panels on the side of the building closest to Sixth Avenue. On Tuesday, the crowds formed as the installation began.
The sculpture garden, normally closed this time of year, will remain open for the project, which is called “Sleepwalkers,” museum officials said.
“Doug Aikten’s use of the volumes, surfaces and translucencies of architecture and specifically the dynamic urban fabric of midtown Manhattan is brought to a new level of complexity, scale and visibility in ‘Sleepwalkers,'” said Klaus Biesenbach, chief curator of media at MoMA.
MoMA director Glenn Lowry was hopeful that the million-dollar project would garner interest, despite the fact that it is set outside in winter.
“A project like this creates a very different dialogue with the public, who we hope will be inspired to think about art in relation to the city itself and to the larger urban experience,” Lowry said.
Bloomberg praised the project as a way to bring tourist dollars to the city during the traditionally slow post-holiday months.
This isn’t the first time the city has had an outdoor public project in the cold-weather months. In February 2005, artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude brought more than 7,500 metal gates draped with orange fabric to Central Park. The project, “The Gates,” was credited with bringing in about 4 million visitors and generating $254 million for the local economy.
——
On the Net:
Museum of Modern Art:
