Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through August 23
Admission: $20 (includes same-day film screening)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
As the August doldrums begin to take hold, it’s getting harder and harder to even remember what day it is. To add to the confusion, multimedia performance artist Bruce Nauman has installed “Days” at MoMA. For nearly fifty years, the Indiana-born Nauman, who has been based in New Mexico since 1979, has been challenging the conventions of art and language via neon sculptures, film and video, live performances, and unique installations. Created for the 2009 Venice Biennale, “Days” is not really much to look at: fourteen relatively bland speakers in two rows, with a handful of stools between them in an otherwise empty room. But oh, what beautiful noise reverberates throughout the gallery. Nauman recorded seven people reading off the days of the week, each person given a different, random order, none following the established Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc. Visitors can approach a particular speaker, where that specific voice and order will gain prominence, or can stand off to the side or in the middle and let all the days of the week reverberate in ways that end up being more comforting than confusing. By having men, women, and children of different ages and speech patterns calling out the days, Nauman allows the viewer/listener an opportunity to contemplate time as both a personal reality and a metaphysical concept. We recommend grabbing a stool, sitting in the middle of the room, and letting the “music” roll over you like waves on the beach. As far as forgetting what day it is goes, you should try to remember Fridays, when admission to MoMA is free after 4:00, and Tuesdays, when the museum is closed. And as long as you’re there, you might as well check out a couple of other pretty sweet exhibits, including “Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917,” “Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography,” and “The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today.”