The Museum of Modern Art is proudly displaying the third installment of the multimedia exhibit “Looking At Music 3.0” from February 16th to June 6th 2011. This installment of Looking At Music features influences from the 1980s and 1990s — from hip hop to the birth of remixes and more.
The exhibit delivers everything it promises at the quality you’ve come to expect from an exhibit at the MoMA; fans of the previous two installments will not come away disappointed.
But the existence of this exhibit in and of itself raises a simple, albeit heavy, question — what is music doing in an art museum? Music already has countless sanctuaries. Everything from pop radio stations to opera houses, to seedy dive bars, and everything in between all lay claim to the celebration of the sonic stimuli.
I’m far from a veteran of the art scene, but as best I can tell, an art museum is a place for displaying and honoring that which, without necessarily making a sound, can challenge the mind and touch the soul. It’s a place where beauty speaks for itself, and is appreciated in quiet internal reflection.
In this exhibit, unlike in the concert halls and pop radio stations, the sound of music is not the star of the show. The beauty on which the MoMA’s patrons are expected to reflect exists in the intimate connection between music and our cultural history as Americans.
Music has the potential to be more than a hobby. Music has long represented a litmus test for the attitudes of generations, a point of comparison between cultures, and a representation of the forward progress of nations, among a great many other things. That, in of itself, is a beautiful thing. That is what’s on display at the MoMA.
If you’re lucky enough to contribute in some way to the music industry, before you begin work tomorrow morning, I urge you to take just a moment of quiet reflection to put your daily labors into cultural and even historical perspective — what you do for a living is a small piece of that by which our generation and our culture will one day be judged. It’s the stuff they’ll put in museums one day. That’s a pretty intense statement, but it’s true. All of us in the music industry are intensely lucky to be a part of something larger than ourselves. I hope we all try to bear that in mind as we strive to help create something our generation can one day be proud to have left behind in a museum.
Post by Alex Horowitz
