The Official Program - Guide to The Museum of Modern Art's First Unofficial Show
  • ephemera
  • offset-printed
  • loose leaves
  • black-and-white
  • 27.7 x 21.6 cm.
  • [1] pp.
  • edition size unknown
  • unsigned and unnumbered

The Official Program - Guide to The Museum of Modern Art's First Unofficial Show

Harvey Stromberg

The Official Program - Guide to The Museum of Modern Art's First Unofficial Show

description

"Program-guide" to an unofficial show by Harvey Stromberg held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1971, where Stromberg claims as his artwork are faux permanent, preexisting, elements of the Museum such as light switches, door knobs and air vents. The exhibition was reviewed by A.D. Coleman in The New York Times, August 1, 1971.

"… Harvey Stromberg is a photographer. Or a media manipulator. Or a self-made chance factor. Or an impresario. Or a guerrilla activist. Or a fraud. All of the above. None of the above.

Harvey Stromberg employs photographic images in his work. Sonic people may have encountered them last winter, when he strewed Central Park with photographic reproductions of autumn leaves in 'A Last Tribute to Fall.' Stromberg's notoriety, though, rests primarily on his creation of the longest-running (two years to date, and still ongoing) one-man photographic exhibit the Museum of Modern Art has ever housed.

The museum is not altogether happy with the part it has played in setting this record, particularly since Stromberg has been showing there unofficially and without sanction. MOMA's problem, however, as Stromberg puts it succinctly, is that 'there's no way of stopping me.'

Stromberg's method of showing at the museum is admirably simple. He makes exact-to-scale, trompe-l'oeil black-and-white photographs of such museum features as keyholes, alarm buzzers, light switches, electrical outlets, bricks, cracks on the walls, and air vents. These neatly cropped images are then backed with double-faced masking tape and hung, surreptitiously, at appropriate spots around the building. Sometimes they are discovered and removed (though Stromberg claims that a number of them, particularly those in the sculpture garden, have been up since the beginning); but they are easy to replace. And, as Stromberg points out, even if he himself were barred from the museum, he could simply send someone else in to carry on the project…" -- excerpt from Coleman's exhibition review.

$175.00
Condition:  Poor / Fair. 8.5 x 1.1 cm. loss to left side edge of page, 3.5 cm. tear to bottom edge, Folded in twelve, creased as if it has been crumpled up and then flattened. Writing in black ink on verso measuring 10 x 4.3 cm.
[Object # 36324]