Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction: Museums and Biographies – Telling Stories about People, Things and Relationships
- INDIVIDUAL BIOGRAPHY AND MUSEUM HISTORY
- 1 A Show of Generosity: Donations and the Intimacy of Display in the ‘Cabinet des médailles et antiques’ in Paris from 1830 to 1930
- 2 Introducing Mr Moderna Museet: Pontus Hultén and Sweden's Museum of Modern Art
- 3 Sydney Pavière and the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston
- PROBLEMATISING INDIVIDUALS' BIOGRAPHIES
- INSTITUTIONAL BIOGRAPHIES
- OBJECT BIOGRAPHIES
- MUSEUMS AS BIOGRAPHY
- MUSEUMS AS AUTOBIOGRAPHY
- Endpiece: The Homunculus and the Pantograph, or Narcissus at the Met
- List of Contributors
- Index
2 - Introducing Mr Moderna Museet: Pontus Hultén and Sweden's Museum of Modern Art
from INDIVIDUAL BIOGRAPHY AND MUSEUM HISTORY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction: Museums and Biographies – Telling Stories about People, Things and Relationships
- INDIVIDUAL BIOGRAPHY AND MUSEUM HISTORY
- 1 A Show of Generosity: Donations and the Intimacy of Display in the ‘Cabinet des médailles et antiques’ in Paris from 1830 to 1930
- 2 Introducing Mr Moderna Museet: Pontus Hultén and Sweden's Museum of Modern Art
- 3 Sydney Pavière and the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston
- PROBLEMATISING INDIVIDUALS' BIOGRAPHIES
- INSTITUTIONAL BIOGRAPHIES
- OBJECT BIOGRAPHIES
- MUSEUMS AS BIOGRAPHY
- MUSEUMS AS AUTOBIOGRAPHY
- Endpiece: The Homunculus and the Pantograph, or Narcissus at the Met
- List of Contributors
- Index
Summary
Time: 1:30 pm, Friday 30 May 2008
Place: Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Jean Tinguely's Fiesta Bar is lined with liquor bottles. Tasty-looking snacks by Claes Oldenburg are available for visual consumption. People hungry for knowledge can read from an extensive library. The even more inquisitive are able to salve their curiosity by nosing through some postcards sent by On Kawara. Those wishing to exercise their bodies rather than their minds can follow Andy Warhol's handy Dance Diagram and foxtrot around the gallery. There is, alas, no musical accompaniment. Indeed, time seems to stand still, like the motionless hands of Ed Kienholz's clock. Suddenly the silence is broken when someone presses an inviting red button, bringing Tinguely's Fiesta Bar into life. The metal clanking of this kinetic sculpture harmonises with the click and whirl of a more technologically advanced mechanism. The latter, operated by touchscreen computer, makes it possible for visitors to select a painting from a menu of available works and watch as it glides across the ceiling before slowly coming to rest in the middle of the gallery. Emblazoned on the work I decided to pick were written the familiar words: ‘In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes.’
Someone who has been famous for considerably longer than 15 minutes is Pontus Hultén. His renown certainly rivals and arguably even eclipses that of Moderna Museet, the museum he once led.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Museums and BiographiesStories, Objects, Identities, pp. 29 - 44Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012