MoMA PS1 Major Exhibition Reflects Upon "September 11"

Written by Graham Flitwick Wednesday, 29 February 2012 21:10

New York City. - MoMA PS1 is presenting "September 11", a major exhibition reflecting upon the attacks of September 11th 2001, and the ways that they have altered how we see and experience the world in their wake. Eschewing images of the attacks on 9/11, as well as art made directly in response, the exhibition provides a subjective framework within which to consider the attacks in New York and their aftermath. Organized by MoMA PS1 Curator Peter Eleey, September 11 will occupy the entire second floor of the museum, with additional works located elsewhere in the building and in the surrounding neighborhood. The exhibition will open on the tenth anniversary of the attacks, and will remain on view through January 9th 2012.

The exhibition brings together more than 70 works by 41 artists — many made prior to 9/11 — to explore the attacks' enduring and far-reaching resonance and the ways that they have altered how we see and experience the world in their wake. Since that morning, "September 11" has come to connote a broad swath of feelings and subjects that range from the personal to the national, while continuing to weigh upon the landscape of New York and its inhabitants, especially those directly affected by the attacks. Witnessed by an estimated 2 billion people, the attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York City were likely the most pictured disasters in history, yet 9/11 remains, a decade later, underrepresented in cultural discourse—particularly within the realm of contemporary art.

A Diane Arbus photograph of a newspaper blowing across a New York intersection at night, for example, assumes a haunting cast in the context of 9/11 (despite having been taken in the late 1950s), as does a series of pictures that John Pilson took in the World Financial Center in the late 1990s depicting intimate scenes of office life across the street from the World Trade Center towers. When Mary Lucier made "Dawn Burn" (1975), a video installation of a sunrise over the East River, the brightness of the sun rising in the sky scarred the camera’s tube, leaving behind a dark burn in the image. The resulting installation is unsettlingly both an enactment of trauma and a representation of trauma’s persistence in memory. Against the backdrop of 9/11’s anniversary, September 11 features a number of works that explore commemoration and its rituals, including Susan Hiller’s installation Monument (1980–81), which centers upon photographs of a Victorian monument erected in a London park to mark the heroism of ordinary citizens who died saving others. Harun Farocki’s more recent film 'Transmission' (2007) examines pilgrimage sites that tourists feel compelled to touch—for luck, healing, or remembrance—such as the foot of the statue of the Apostle in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and the names engraved in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D. C.


The public desire to participate in communal mourning and grief is suggested by one of Thomas Hirschhorn’s street altars from the late 1990s, which will be installed for the first month of the exhibition on a street corner near MoMA PS1. To make her audio installation 'The Forty Part Motet' (2001), Janet Cardiff adapted a 16th-century piece of choral music, recording each member of the choir individually. The 40 separately recorded voices are played back through 40 speakers arranged in a large circle, allowing each voice to emerge distinctly as visitors move throughout the room-size installation. When the Motet went on view at MoMA PS1 in the weeks following the attacks, its joining of collective song and individual voice summoned for many visitors 9/11’s distinctive combination of national tragedy and personal loss. In September 11, Cardiff’s piece will be reinstalled in the same gallery where it was first presented a decade ago. Like the exhibition itself, the echoes of the Motet resounding once again in that room will invite us to consider what has changed in the intervening ten years, and what history has allowed to remain substantially the same.

September 11 will be accompanied by a 248-page catalog designed by Kloepfer-Ramsey and published by MoMA PS1. In addition to Peter Eleey’s curatorial essay, it will include new contributions by philosopher Robert Hullot-Kentor, Chair of the Critical Theory department at the School of Visual Arts; and art historian Alexander Dumbadze, Assistant Professor of Art History at George Washington University; as well as texts by Alexander Kluge, W.J.T. Mitchell, and Retort. SPONSORSHIP: The exhibition is made possible by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation, the Teiger Foundation, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Generous support is provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation. Artist featured in the exhibition include Diane Arbus, Siah Armajani, Fiona Banner, Luis Camnitzer, Janet Cardiff, John Chamberlain, Sarah Charlesworth, Christo, Jem Cohen, Bruce Conner, Jeremy Deller, Thomas Demand, Shannon Ebner, William Eggleston, Harun Farocki, Lara Favaretto, Jane Freilicher, Maureen Gallace, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jens Haaning, Susan Hiller, Roger Hiorns, Thomas Hirschhorn, Alex Katz, Ellsworth Kelly, Barbara Kruger, Mark Lombardi, Mary Lucier, Gordon Matta-Clark, Harold Mendez, Mike Nelson, Cady Noland, Roman Ondák, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, John Pilson, Willem de Rooij, George Segal, Rosemarie Trockel, James Turrell, Stephen Vitiello, and John Williams.


MoMA PS1 is one of the oldest and largest nonprofit contemporary art institutions in the United States. An exhibition space rather than a collecting institution, MoMA PS1 devotes its energy and resources to displaying the most experimental art in the world. A catalyst and an advocate for new ideas, discourses, and trends in contemporary art, MoMA PS1 actively pursues emerging artists, new genres, and adventurous new work by recognized artists in an effort to support innovation in contemporary art. MoMA PS1 achieves this mission by presenting its diverse program to a broad audience in a unique and welcoming environment in which visitors can discover and explore the work of contemporary artists. MoMA PS1 presents over 50 exhibitions each year, including artists' retrospectives, site-specific installations, historical surveys, arts from across the United States and the world, and a full schedule of music and performance programming. MoMA PS1 was founded in 1971 by Alanna Heiss as the Institute for Art and Urban Resources Inc., an organization devoted to organizing exhibitions in underutilized and abandoned spaces across New York City. In 1976, it opened the first major exhibition in its permanent location in Long Island City, Queens, with the seminal 'Rooms' exhibition. An invitation for artists to transform the building's unique spaces, Rooms established the MoMA PS1 tradition of transforming the building's spaces into site-specific art that continues today with long-term installations by James Turrell, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Lawrence Weiner, and others. For the next twenty years, the building was used as studio, performance, and exhibition spaces, in support of artists from around the world. After a building-wide renovation, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1) reopened in 1997, confirming its position as the leading contemporary art center in New York. True to the building's history and form, the renovation preserved much of the original architecture as well as most of its unique classroom-sized galleries. In 2000, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center became an affiliate of The Museum of Modern Art to extend the reach of both institutions, and combine MoMA PS1's contemporary mission with MoMA's strength as one of the greatest collecting museums of modern art. 2010 marked the completed merger of the two institutions and celebrates P.S.1's new and exciting chapter as MoMA PS1. A true artistic laboratory, MoMA PS1 aspires to maintain its diverse and innovative activities to continue to bring contemporary art to international audiences. Visit the museum's website at ... http://ps1.org

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