Levine, Sherrie

The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect

The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect is the stunning catalog that accompanies an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art during the spring of 1999. The show takes an insightful look at the way different artists deal with the ideas, concepts, and criticisms of "the public museum." The collected artists span both generations and degrees of fame, from French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson to pop artist Claes Oldenburg to contemporary artists Gillian Wearing and Mark Dion. The show, and by extension the book, illustrates the impact that the invention of the museum (just 200 years ago) has had on art making. It is fascinating to peer through the eyes of individual artists whose personal and intimate visions are both outside of the museum and inextricably linked to it by their choice of career. The artwork in the exhibition is wide-reaching and the reproductions for the book are beautiful. Hiroshi Sugimoto's black-and-white photo series of natural-history museum dioramas; a taxidermied polar bear and a seal on a bed of fake ice; and a re-creation of underwater sea life are all exquisite in their quiet and choreographed other-worldliness. This book should not be missed; it offers a great chance to look at art by artists who use their work to address the complexities of their own relationships with the massive institutions that are our museums. --Jennifer Cohen

296 pages, 114 full-color images, 132 black-and-white images

Since public museums came into being in the late 18th century, artists have looked upon them with a mixture of reverence, complicity, suspicion, and disdain. In The Museum as Muse, artists of many persuasions speak their minds about museums, their functions and spaces, their practices and politics, and their relationship to the art they contain. More than 60 artists are represented by a wide range of works: photographs of museum patrons by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliot Erwitt; "personal museums" and "cabinets of curiosities" by Charles Wilson Peale, Marcel Duchamp, and Claes Oldenburg; fantasies of the destruction or transformation of museums by Hubert Robert, Ed Ruscha, and Christo; and more, including works created especially for this project by contemporary artists, and an anthology of statements and writings by artists about museums. This volume was published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Parkett No. 32 Imi Knoebel, Sherrie Levine (Parkett)

Artwork by Sherrie Levine, Imi Knoebel.

Sherrie Levine talks to Howard Singerman. ('80s Then).(Interview): An article from: Artforum International

This digital document is an article from Artforum International, published by Artforum International Magazine, Inc. on April 1, 2003. The length of the article is 1782 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Sherrie Levine talks to Howard Singerman. ('80s Then).(Interview)
Publication: Artforum International (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 1, 2003
Publisher: Artforum International Magazine, Inc.
Volume: 41 Issue: 8 Page: 190(2)

Article Type: Interview

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Sherrie Levine--Fountain: 4 May to 25 May 1991

Sherrie Levine/Joost van Oss

Sherrie Levine (New work)

Sherrie Levine: Art At The Edge

Sherrie Levine: [exhibition] June 11-September 4, 1988, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia

New photography

Sherrie Levine: 12 September to 10 October 1987