What's that delicious smell wafting from the Museum of Modern Art's second-floor contemporary art galleries? Is it the smell of a fresh new re-hang (and rethinking) of the museum's contemporary art collection? Partly. But mostly, it's the installation of Rikrit Tiravanija's "Untitled (Free/Still)," a version of the artist's 1990 performance in which he cooked his family's traditional pad thai for visitors to the Paula Allen gallery. This time, Tiravanija is helping MoMA (who bought the original performance) dish up steaming cups of Thai green curry on rice.
There's much to experience before getting to the curry, though. In what is the museum's best installation to date in their previously vaguely-defined, messily-programmed spaces for contemporary art across from the atrium, MoMA curators give as comprehensive a look at contemporary art practice as is possible in a major museum. The work on view ranges from the '80s forward, a refreshing change from the galleries' earlier '70s starting point. The relevancy of the work — its newsy, risky quality — is what makes the new installation so powerful.
Starting off with Barbara Kruger's "Untitled (You Invest in the Divinity of the Masterpiece)" and continuing to Chris Wool's "Cats in Bag, Bag in River" and Allan McCollum's "Collection of Forty Plaster Surrogates" (those blank-faced faux-paintings that are a fixture in the Post-Modernism section of every art history textbook), MoMA's installation is best described as a series of art-historical vignettes anchored by iconic works. In one curatorial flourish, a series of Richard Prince prints of his scribbled one-liner jokes sits next to Sherrie Levine's series of copied Malevich and Egon Schiele drawings and a Louise Lawler photograph of an Andy Warhol work on a museum wall — it's the Pictures Generation in shorthand. In another planned collision, Jeff Koons's "Three Ball 50/50 Tank" (those basketballs floating in the aquarium) are set against a rabidly energetic Keith Haring piece that wraps around three walls. One celebrates life; the other, lifeless consumption.
Different rooms are devoted to different moments in art history. In one early space, curators explore the buzz around 1980s Cologne with Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen, while another, labeled "Feminist Art in the 1980s" stars Senga Nengudi's erotic, exploitative "R.S.V.P. I" stretched pantyhose sculptures. One of the interesting curatorial tricks on view is a rotating set of solo gallery installations that showcase one artist's work at a time — these will rotate every few months, according to MoMA's chief curator of painting and sculpture Ann Temkin, exposing hidden corners of the museum's collection and providing a chance to look closer at single oeuvres. Currently, a sparkling candy field by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, an extensive installation of Andrea Zittel, and a spare group of works by Doris Salcedo take top billing.
In the penultimate gallery is the unabashed crescendo of the contemporary art installation, and an acquisition coup for MoMA. Museum-goers enter into a wooden architectural frame, like a house under construction, and are hit full in the face with the smell of something cooking. The source is a few steaming pots and boiling rice cookers full of the ingredients for Tiravanija's version of Thai green curry. That MoMA now owns art history's foremost work of Relational Aesthetics art (a term Temkin called "pretentious") is presented as if it were no big deal, but of course it is. Every day from 12:00 to 3 p.m. (Fridays from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.) a staff member will be on hand serving the dish, which is certainly worth the trip, with its mild hits of spice, fish sauce, and coconut milk. Visitors will eat the concoction, while socially interacting and experiencing the art, in a café setting with fold-out tables and stools. Relics from the original performance, including a decrepit fridge, round out the scene.
The new installation ends with a post-2000 gallery that pictures the contemporary art world in its current globalized state. A Huma Bhaba bust looks on at one of Mark Bradford urban abstractions; two Ai Weiwei prints from his "Study of Perspective" series show the artist giving the finger to Hong Kong and Berne, respectively; Dieter Roth's epic video installation shows the daily routines of the artist's last year of life. This final environment is a formless, confused one, but then the museum can’t hope to peg now as well as it has the art of the '80s and '90s, which the museum has done in a clear, approachable, and above all interesting fashion. One can only hope that the installation stays as dynamic as Temkin and her fellow curators promise.
To see some of the highlights of MoMA's contemporary art re-hang, click here, or on 'view slideshow.'