Art & Exhibitions
At the Mmuseumm, Everything Is Art
THE DAILY PIC: The collection ranges from cup-lids to Styrofoam rocks.
Blake Gopnik
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MY DAILY PIC: Bottom line, art is always about taking a closer, art-trained look at fascinating things. By that definition, the tiny, wondrous Mmuseumm, which makes its home in a converted loading dock in a New York alley, is properly considered an art museum – despite claiming (or pretending to claim) that it is dedicated to “modern natural history”.
Very few if any of its objects started their lives in the art world. Items from its wide-ranging collection, or on loan to it, include a hoard of things removed from patients’ bodies by a small-town doctor, tools and devices handmade by prison inmates, bits of Styrofoam that look like rocks and a substantial inventory of varying coffee-cup lids (as featured in today’s Pic). Most of these would barely draw attention if you saw them lying on the street. We’ve only had the skills to pay them serious notice since Marcel Duchamp’s invention of the readymade, and because of early modernism’s (temporary, grudging) rejection of the high-low divide. I’m glad we’ve acquired those skills. Art-style looking can open up worlds. (Image courtesy Mmuseumm)
For a full survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.
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