Projects 195: Park McArthur

Park McArthur often makes work on the occasion of specific exhibitions and in response to their spatial and institutional conditions. Projects 195: Park McArthur draws upon the narratives that The Museum of Modern Art produces—through exhibition titles, for example, or in conjunction with its current building and expansion project—and the social realities and possibilities existing within and beyond the architectural parameters of site and scale.

The exhibition comprises works on paper, an audio work, and a modular, stainless steel structure that will be rearranged periodically during the run of the exhibition. This structure doubles as an exploratory visualization of a multistory, mixed-use building that would offer below-market apartments for disabled and non-disabled people who mutually receive and provide care. The building proposal also includes space for artists’ studios, a public gallery, and amenities, such as a swimming pool. McArthur’s exhibition is situated in relation to MoMA’s institutional space and its proximity to the residential building currently under construction at the west end of the Museum campus. Scheduled for completion in 2019, MoMA’s expansion project will add exhibition spaces in this newly developed tower, with 145 private luxury apartments above the Museum.

For Projects 195, McArthur expands the MoMA audio guide to include visual descriptions akin to those used by visitors who are blind or partially sighted. In addition to describing individual pieces, the guide also provides information about sites in and outside the Museum, such as the showroom for the apartment complex above MoMA’s new galleries, as well as imagined features of McArthur’s building proposal. In line with ideas McArthur developed in previous work, the exhibition foregrounds the social nature of dependency and the limitations of conceiving accessibility solely in terms of policy or physical access.

Initiated by MoMA in 1971 as a platform for new and experimental art, the Elaine Dannheisser Projects Series, now presented at both The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1, provides a forum for the most urgent international voices in contemporary art. While this presentation is number 109 in the Projects series, McArthur has changed the title number to 195, as the Museum organized 86 Projects exhibitions before introducing the numbering system in 1986. This alteration to the title links the history of the series’ institutional nomenclature to the future-oriented proposals offered by Projects 195.

Projects 195: Park McArthur is organized by Magnus Schaefer, Assistant Curator, with Tara Keny, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art.

Gallery sessions:

Monday, November 5, 1:30pm
“Site and Scale”
Andrew Blackley in conversation with Magnus Schaefer

Monday, December 3, 1:30pm
“Where do we go from here? Creating a home in New York City”
Paula Stuttman in conversation with Park McArthur

The Elaine Dannheisser Projects Series is made possible in part by the Elaine Dannheisser Foundation and The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art.
 
MoMA Audio is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.