Björk at the Museum: Large retrospective at the MoMA in New York – SPIEGEL ONLINE

The New York Museum of Modern Art has scratched in recent years to persistently terms: What is a modern art museum? And what can make it? They turned the lobby into a stage for power plant retrospective concert cycle, you sat Marina Abramovic into the foyer, where she stared into the eyes of visitors. Martha Rosler was allowed a flea market in the Museum organize -. And collecting for some time diligently Video Games and Apps

And so now Björk. From the weekend, MoMA presents a retrospective of Icelandic pop icon and multimedia artist. It shall be the blockbuster of the spring, the show, all of the talk. You will attract more people into the already dauerverstopften halls at 53rd Street in Manhattan.

The exhibition is a long-cherished dream of the curator Klaus Biesenbach, who in Queens for a long time promoting performance art at MoMA PS1 offshoot and it passionately committed to further break down the once strict boundaries between high culture and pop Museum. Who would be more suitable as Björk, an artist who has defied her eclectic audiovisual work nor any category boundary.

However, it has taken a long time, until the former founder of the Berlin “Art Works” Björk could lure the MoMA. Since 2000, the German reports at the opening of the show, he had tried it herumzukriegen, long time without success. Björk had not ripe felt for a retrospective, the artist said current in an interview, they also had the show can not imagine. “I mean, you can a song not even hang on the wall”

but with the Björk-avatar on a voyage

Finally, she agreed but one, “for the women. And for the sound,” she says. And together with Biesenbach she had thoroughly thought about how to make it interesting when issuing Music in the Museum. The core of the exhibition is a retrospective, even if Björk and Biesenbach made the effort to make the showcase a new plant, an adventure and experience space.

Using an interactive app on an iPhone-like handset is the visitors through a dreamscape (to “Biophilia” “Debut”) entlanghangelt the on Björk’s first seven solo albums. About the headphone audio guide, which responds to the user’s position in space, the Icelandic writer Sjön speaks the lyrical story of an imaginary figure, a kind of Björk avatar.

It wanders through different sets: a barren, Icelandic landscape, the famous video clip of “Big Time Sensuality” in which Björk goes on a truck through New York, or the 3D video, scanned in the Björk head floats through space. “She was one with the matter and the moment,” said the voice, “and then came back to earth to reproduce all, using art and poetry and her notepad.”

So, instead of using to be performed Facts and Figures, costumes and other artifacts through the biography of the artist, the visitor is this literarisierte emotional retelling of their intellectual, spiritual and creative development. That’s interesting. But “change” that museum, as director Glen Lowry says? That seems a little excessive. It’s not the first time that a museum provides a multimedia experience room, just think of the show for Alexander McQueen at the Metropolitan Museum, whose famous bells dress is to see Bjork also at MoMA.

Too much control to the artist?

Biesenbachs approach is not groundbreaking new, but it is not “infantile” as the power couple of the New York art critic Roberta Smith (” New York Times “) and Jerry Saltz (” New York Magazine “), allege. Both disturbs that the retrospective part of the exhibition too little context and explanation and deliver it to easily make the visitor: “. Apparently relinquished control to the artist” Biesenbach have

Smith and Saltz demand more classic Museumsedidaktik, less experiments. This fits Saltzs duration suit, MoMA honest inhibitions to the masses and lose its identity. But if you are already a pop icon Björk as the gateway to the global main means of modern art in the hand, it is also logical to play with new ways of communicating.

Aptly however, is the accusation that the MoMa was not brave enough with the Björk-show. It would have been able to give her more room thoroughly, as the two-storey pavilion offers, which was built for the exhibition at the MoMA foyer. As Smith writes, MoMA has “spent much less significantly more space.” To another occasion,

In addition to the retrospective performance is only a presentation of Björk’s remarkable video – ?? oeuvre to see. In a separate room, the visitor can sink into large cushions and deepen your heart’s content in the ornate clips – including collaborations with filmmakers like Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham, Paul White and Thomas Huang. Next door is the culmination and end point of the exhibition, finally see the produced specifically for the MoMA 3D video installation “Black Lake”, a very personal work of mourning over the failed marriage with Matthew Barney, based on the song by Björk’s latest Album “Vulnicura” (Read our review).

Finally, in the foyer still shown Björk’s well-known instruments, such as the “Gravity Harp”, she has built a robot with experts from MIT or the “Sharpsicord” by Henry Dagg. Both have been exhibited at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.

In the end, everything works perfectly appropriate. There is no doubt that an innovative artist like Björk, who works on media and genres, has earned a place in the museum. The acceptance of what belongs in an institution such as the MoMA and what is not, is beyond reactionary criticism may already much further than Biesenbach and Lowry guess. So it could have been sure no one took the curators bad if they had just given Björk much space as last year, Sigmar Polke and William Kentridge.