Kynaston McShine: The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect (1999)

“The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect surveys the ways in which artists, mostly of the 20th century, have addressed the museum, commented on its nature, confronted its concepts and functions, drawn from its methods, and examined its relationship to the art it contains. This lively, involving, and intellectually provocative presentation encompasses a tremendous variety of artworks, large and small, intimate and expansive, in mediums both familiar and surprising: paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, prints, videos, and installations. Fully illustrated with the works of an international cross section of more than 60 artists.

Published on the occasion of the MoMA exhibition, this book features an introductory essay by Kynaston McShine, curator of the exhibition. In the ensuing plate secton, short entries by several authors on the art and artists accompany 233 illustrations representing works of artists such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, Eve Arnold, Garry Winogrand, and Thomas Struth. Personal museums and cabinets of curiosities, large and in miniature, have been created by Carles Wilson Peale, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, Claes Oldenburg, Fluxus, and Mark Dion; others have focused on images of the destruction or transformation of museums, such as the painter Hubert Robert (the first curator of the Louvre), Edward Ruscha, Komar and Melamid, and Christo.

This wealth of material is followed by an anthology of manifestos, statements, and meditations written by artists; biographies and exhibition stories of the artists; and a bibliography of general and monographic publications.” (book jacket, modified)

Publisher Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1999
ISBN 0870700928, 9780870700927
296 pages
via MoMA

Exh. reviews: Robert Smith (NY Times, 1999), Economist (1999), Thomas Crow (Artforum).

Exhibition
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (65 MB)