1979
(Untitled) Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 1979

Image: MCA (view of site), 1979

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Max Neuhaus

(first accession of a sound installation by an institution) 

The space at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art was a big column of air with a three dimensional pathway through it. I wanted to be able to activate this column anywhere, so I said, we build this speaker system of thirty channels that goes from the floor to the ceiling, we build it into the corner, and we build a thirty channel amplifier - a thirty channel amplifier! The contradiction of the work is amazing. It is quite loud, but many people can walk through it and not realize it's there. When it was finished the museum's board of directors was outraged. They said, we paid 50,000 dollars for this sound piece and we got another 25,000 dollars' worth of loudspeakers donated - (they had to use three different airplanes for them because the magnetism was too much for the navigation system of just one) - and nothing is here! It's the emperor's new clothes! People are like that in Chicago. But John Neff, the director of the museum then, was completely behind the work; he fought them very well and won. First he came to me and said, I know that we have this agreement that once this piece went on it would never be turned off again, but I want to ask you this one favor - one evening I would like to bring the whole board into the space and turn it off for exactly thirty seconds. I was curious, but I just said, OK. So one evening all these people were ushered into the work. He asked them all to be quiet for one minute, and then he gave the signal to the engineer to turn it off. The space just imploded, the bottom dropped out of it, it left them in a sterile void. And then he put it back on again and walked out of the room. They never forgave the work.

Max Neuhaus