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Who Is Queen? critically questions the notion of the museum
as repository. Utilizing social and contrapuntal compositions,
Who Is Queen? will include a months-long program of live
ADAM PENDLETON: events, including screenings, readings, lectures, and musical

WHO IS QUEEN? performances. It will also serve as a platform for the display
of layers of exhibited material: new paintings, drawings, and
The Museum of Modern Art sculptures; moving images; slideshows of archival material; and
a sound piece.

Who Is Queen? can be understood as a sophisticated,
The Museum of Modern Art will present Adam Pendleton: generative device through which a multiplicity of sounds and
Who Is Queen?, a large-scale multimedia installation that will images are captured, modified, displayed, and played back. The
be on view in the Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium work is a “machine” imperfectly regulated by an algorithmic
from July 25 through October 4, 2020. Based in New York, Adam score that presents, documents, collects, archives, digests, and
Pendleton (American, born 1984) is a Conceptual artist who represents material. Audio documentation of the live events
uses historical and aesthetic content from visual culture to will be edited and mixed back into the installation on a regular
explore the ways in which context influences meaning. basis, and each day of the exhibition will feature a different
Pendleton reconfigures words, forms, and images to provoke combination of looped tracks played simultaneously.
critical questioning.
For this presentation, Pendleton’s monumental installation The project is in part a response to popular mobilizations of
will bring the formal mechanics of musical counterpoint— the past decade such as the Black Lives Matter and Occupy
the folding and unfolding of simultaneous voices—into movements. Drawing on the work of figures as disparate as
contact with the aesthetics of protest. For the duration of the Michael Hardt, Ruby Sales, and Glenn Gould, Who Is Queen?
exhibition, MoMA’s Marron Atrium will be transformed into an seeks to present works at the nexus of abstraction and politics.
arena encompassed by three wooden, floor-to-ceiling vertical The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication that serves
scaffolds. These modular systems, built from four basic units, as a primer and handbook, edited by Stuart Comer and Adam
will be designed to resemble balloon framing used in American Pendleton with Danielle Jackson and Alec Mapes-Frances, and
house construction. Adam Pendleton: Who Is Queen? is with contributions by Adrienne Edwards, Mario Gooden, and
organized by Stuart Comer, The Lonti Ebers Chief Curator of Lynne Tillman.
Media and Performance, with Danielle A. Jackson, Curatorial
Assistant, Department of Media and Performance. Images from L/R: Poor People’s Campaign, Resurrection City, June 25, 1968.
AP/ Bob Daugherty; Adam Pendleton, Untitled (Who is Queen), 2019; Adam
Pendleton, Queen, 2020 (detail)

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