During our most recent trip to New York in December, Madame Soho ventured uptown to MoMa (we always have a mooch up there whenever we’re in town) to check out what was new, and were pleased to stumble across the powerful exhibition, Scenes For A New Heritage: Contemporary Art From The Collection.

On entering the exhibition, a profound sense of space and time, in flux, could be felt. Temporality seemed disrupted, history appeared boundary-less and melded with the present. Not only because the artworks on display were created across various decades by miscellaneous artists and brought together under one roof, but this sensory perception also seemed to reflect the sprawling, rapidly accelerating disjointedness of modernity.

 

Representing more than 30 international artists, the exhibition presents a number of themes, from exploring the role of the internet in media and communications in the current climate to the patterns of migration to swelling cities, and the way in which imagery is captured, circulated and distributed in today’s society.

Some of the artists use the perspective of history, reflecting on past events or archaic artistic traditions, as a means of assessing current conditions.

 

Words by Ray Kinsella

Scenes for a New Heritage: Contemporary Art from the Collection
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Through Sunday, April 10

 

Art Art in the Digital Age Artists Kara Walker Migration Mixed Media MoMa Museum of Modern Art New York City Exhibitions Photography Takashi Murakami