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by Seth Rogovoy
NORTH ADAMS, Mass., July 26, 1996 -- Fully two years before it is scheduled to officially open, and with representatives from the national and international news media in attendance, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art last night unveiled its first public exhibition, a site-specific installation created by David Byrne, the multi-media artist and musician best known as the leader of the influential punk/new-wave band Talking Heads.
"It's great to focus on art for once," said Mass MoCA Director Joseph Thompson. "It's a lot more fun than dealing with soapbox building."
Byrne was on hand for a press conference and an invitation-only opening, at which he greeted visitors and mingled with the crowd while they walked through the sprawling exhibition, which includes color photographs, a laser-disk show, a model cityscape and a soundtrack.
Byrne, who lives in New York City, was upbeat about the prospects for Mass MoCA's long-term success. "On the drive up here I was imagining what it could be, what if these buildings were filled with permanent and rotating exhibitions and live performances," he said. "It really would be a place people would travel to from quite some distance."
Apparently editors around the world agree, as journalists from Japan, Italy and Scotland, as well as from New York and Boston, were in attendance, according to a MoCA spokesperson.
Thompson said the exhibition originated in wanting "to do something to announce that we're in business. As we thought of the institution we're trying to be, we wanted something not too stuffy. We range across the visual arts, dance, theater and music."
Byrne spoke of the difficulty he faces escaping being pigeonholed as a musician and being taken seriously as an artist -- even though he is a product of art school who has exhibited work in galleries throughout the world.
This in part accounts for his having agreed to stage his first solo museum exhibition at Mass MoCA. The New York art world, he said, "keeps me at arms length." He repeatedly credited Thompson and the MoCA staff for their openness to his ideas. "We each kept saying `yes' to each other until someone would stop us," he said. In the end, no one did.
Dressed in a black suit jacket, a plaid vest and black jeans and emanating nearly as much charisma from his skinny frame as in his days with the Talking Heads, the artist, visibly exhilarated, said, "I haven't had time to breathe, but I'm really happy about the show. I'm really happy it's kept its sense of play. It's not ponderous and didactic."
The exhibition itself includes posters in bus-shelter-style, illuminated light boxes overlooking a model city constructed by North Adams resident William Sweet, two videowalls, and a word- and-music soundtrack. Its home through Oct. 20 is Building 13 -- previously home to the Night Shift Cafe, a nightclub where a dozen rock concerts have taken place since opening last September.
The photographic images, video and soundtrack are laden with new- age and corporate-style motivational slogans, such as "Winners are losers with a new attitude." These slogans are juxtaposed with picture-postcard landscapes, with jarring images of drug paraphernalia, street weapons and foreign currency at their center like nuclei. The soundtrack similarly consists of motivational phrases such as "Live your life like the movie it was meant to be," combined with commercial and movie music.
Byrne, who admitted that he finds some of his work "amusing and darkly disturbing at the same time," said when he began working on the series, he noticed a common thread among the drug paraphernalia, the inspirational phrases and the pretty landscapes.
"They seemed to be the last things in the world you would put together, but when I did put them together it seemed like of course they belong together," he said.
Viewing the show for the first time, State Sen. Jane Swift (R- North Adams) said, "Obviously I'm not qualified to comment on the art, but it's nice to see the parking lot full and people coming in and out."
Cassandra Cleghorn, a thirtysomething professor of American Studies at Williams College, described herself as a long-time fan of Byrne's. "In college he loomed so large," she said, "but I'm still in `Crosseyed and Painless' and he's in a new place. But he's still working out some of the same things, and this is the perfect place for his work -- he's savvy about contexts."
Byrne's photographs have been shown in solo and group gallery exhibitions in the U.S., Europe, Asia and South America. "Strange Ritual," his book of photographs and text, was published last year by Chronicle Books, and selected by the New York Times as one of the top ten photography books of the Christmas season.
The show opens to the public today from 11 to 5, and will be open those hours on Thursday to Monday through Sept. 2. From Sept. 3 to Oct. 20 the exhibition will be open weekends only. Admission is free.
Mass MoCA is scheduled to hold the official opening of its 12- acre, multi-disciplinary arts complex in the summer of 1998. The Byrne exhibition is the first in a series of joint programs between MoCA and the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, which funded the show. Additional support was given by Gannett Outdoor Group, Magnani & McCormick, Inc., and Pioneer New Media Technologies. The exhibition was organized by Thompson and Sara Krajewski, a graduate student in the Williams/Clark Graduate Program in the History of Art.
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