iSolomon R. Guggenheim MuseumUpper East Side
Taryn Simon | Father Country I Do Love You
A major new commission premieres never-before-seen photographs, text, video, and sculpture in a single interactive installation spiraling through the entire rotunda.
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Partway up the ramp there is a cabinet with a hand crank. Turn it and marbles roll down a track while a screen shows an elderly man presenting slides. In e-flux, Saul Ostrow called it "perhaps the most engaging single part of the show".
It is one of 42 chapters winding up the rotunda, the first time the Guggenheim has given the whole rotunda to one new body of work by a photography-based artist. Simon spent nearly a decade tracing the career of one unnamed federal agent, which touched the Marion Barry sting and the Nairobi embassy bombing. Forty-two chapters spiralling up one ramp is your 1am Wikipedia rabbit hole made physical, minus the phone at 4%.
Critics were split. Ostrow found the route "stubbornly linear" and the signage "ill-considered", while Aruna D'Souza in Hyperallergic argued that injustice here "seems purely systemic, not the result of individuals behaving badly". Plan to read. Admission is $30, and the museum is open daily 10:30am to 5:30pm.
Editor's pick
Taryn Simon fills the whole rotunda with one federal agent's career, told in 42 chapters up Wright's ramp. Simon builds her work from photographs, documents and text, so plan on reading as much as looking.
Look for
The marble cabinet
Crank the handle and marbles run down a track while a screen plays an elderly man narrating slides.
Jodie Foster's fingerprinting drill
Foster reenacts a color-coded fingerprinting exercise from her preparation for The Silence of the Lambs.
Paul Ames and the auction lots
Portraits of Paul Ames, son of the convicted spy Aldrich Ames, hang beside photographs of confiscated items sold at government auction.
Letters from Lee Boyd Malvo
Correspondence and artwork from the incarcerated sniper, part of the agent's wider paper trail.
The teak-panelled introduction
Text panels set against teak paneling, a replica of a Bangkok spy's living room, recount her father's stories and her meeting with the agent.
Good for
- Going Solo
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
About 180 min
Skip if
You want to wander freely: one critic found the route "stubbornly linear" and reliant on reading.
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Image credits
8
- Taryn Simon | Father Country I Do Love YouCourtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
- The SubstituteCourtesy of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
- There Are No Words: Si Lewen's ParadeCourtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Solomon R. Guggenheim MuseumAjay Suresh, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design MuseumEpicgenius, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Neue Galerie New YorkFrancesca.hyanna19 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- The Metropolitan Museum of ArtHugo Schneider, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- American Museum of Natural HistoryIngfbruno, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0