'Meta-Monumental Garage Sale' fills MoMA's Marron Atrium with strange and everyday objects - clothes, books, toys, costume jewelry, artworks and other miscellaneous items - donated by the artist, Museum staff and the general public, creating a lively space for exchange, not only for consumer goods, but also for real and fictive narratives, ideas, and interactions with the artist.
For her first solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, from
November 17 through 30, 2012, multimedia performance artist Martha Rosler (American) will
present her work Meta-Monumental Garage Sale, a large-scale version of the classic American
garage sale, in the Museum’s Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium. MoMA visitors will be
able to browse and purchase second-hand goods that are organized, displayed, and sold by the
artist and her floor assistants. The exhibition is organized by Sabine Breitwieser, Chief
Curator, and Ana Janevski, Associate Curator, with Jill A. Samuels, Performance
Producer, Department of Media and Performance Art.
Meta-Monumental Garage Sale will fill MoMA’s Marron Atrium with strange and everyday
objects—clothes, books, records, toys, bric-a-brac, costume jewelry, artworks, mementos, and
other miscellaneous items—donated by the artist, her family and friends, Museum staff, and the
general public, creating a lively space for exchange, not only for consumer goods, but also for real
and fictive narratives, ideas, and interactions with the artist. Rosler will be running the sale on a
daily basis, engaging with Museum visitors, who will be encouraged to browse merchandise,
choose items to buy, haggle over prices, and make purchases. Customers will also be invited to
have their photographs taken with their purchases. All transactions will be cash-only.
Martha Rosler is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of her generation,
one whose artistic practice, teaching, and writing continue to influence succeeding generations.
For more than 40 years, Rosler has made art about the commonplace, art that illuminates social
life, examining the everyday through photography, performance, video, and installation.
The Meta-Monumental Garage Sale at MoMA is a successor to a work originally held
(as Monumental Garage Sale) in the art gallery of the University of California at San Diego in
1973. The work was advertised simultaneously as a garage sale in local newspapers and as an art
event within the local art scene. A chalkboard on site bore the legend, “Maybe the Garage Sale is
a metaphor for the mind,” and a slide show of a seemingly typical suburban white family, bought
at a local estate sale, played continuously while an audiotape loop offered a meditation on the role
of commodities in contemporary life. The Garage Sale, which has also been held at the Generali
Foundation, Vienna (1999); the Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona (1999); the New Museum,
New York (2000); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2004); and The Institute of Contemporary Arts,
London (2005), among other venues, engages visitors in face-to-face transactions within a
secondary, informal cash economy—just like garage sales held outside a museum setting. As a
traveling project, the Garage Sale accumulates elements from each succeeding event, ranging
from components of the first project, such as the slide show and audio track, to “merchandise”
from previous iterations and photographs of people holding up objects that form part of the
installation.
Sponsorship:
The exhibition is supported in part by The Modern Women’s Fund.
Press Contacts: Brien McDaniel, 212-708-9747 or brien_mcdaniel@moma.org
Margaret Doyle, 212-408-6400 or margaret_doyle@moma.org
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