Unmonumental at the New Museum

The new New Museum's mission statement couldn't be more succinct: New Art, New Ideas. Unmonumental, the museum's first exhibition, explores contemporary takes on collage via sound installations, a few paintings, photo montages, and "sculptural assemblage." Lots of sculptural assemblage, including piles of clothes tied together with rubber house; a chain-link fence, also featuring a hose of some kind; and a big pink box covered in belts.

The exhibition succeeds in that it's jarring, upsetting, fragmented, discordant, and a barrage of other not-so-pleasant sensations.

But the building's really cool. Covered in silvery mesh, it rises up from the Bowery like so many boxes about to topple over. We started our time there by taking the elevator up to the Sky Room, a glassed-in area with a small terrace, and views in three directions of the Lower East Side and Chinatown.

photo 1: Shinique Smith, Bale Variant Number 0011 (2005)
photo 2: thanks