A Museum of Nothing

February 23, 2020 3:14 PM

No Show Museum is a museum dedicated to artworks which depict nothing in all its forms, as Notion, Statement, Lacuna, Reduction, Invisibility, Emptiness, Annihilation and Refusal. It features artworks by various well-known artists, such as Ai Weiwei, Yoko Ono, Marina Abramović, Karin Sander, lots and lots of Yves Klein, and many, many others. For more info on the artists and their works, click the little “i” sign next to their names. The “information” tab on the website will answer most of your questions, and two short videos will show you what exhibitions looks like.
posted by Kattullus (21 comments total)

No comment.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:19 PM on February 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

Untitled
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 3:38 PM on February 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

Perfect setting for a Seinfeld episode.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:07 PM on February 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

posted by Omon Ra at 4:19 PM on February 23, 2020 [4 favorites]

It gets a little boring after four and a half minutes or so.
posted by notoriety public at 4:34 PM on February 23, 2020 [3 favorites]

Actually seems like kind of an interesting museum, but I'm not sure I could handle the way they play 4'33" on constant repeat over the audio system.
posted by LionIndex at 4:36 PM on February 23, 2020 [9 favorites]

This is really fascinating. I like how you can stroll through, and how things are organized much in the way a museum would. This is a fun example of a cool thing on the internet, and is why I come to MetaFilter! Thanks for posting, truly!
posted by hippybear at 4:44 PM on February 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

Yves Klein with tanks of various gases is always a crowd pleaser.
posted by clavdivs at 5:18 PM on February 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

nope
posted by lalochezia at 5:43 PM on February 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

Ceci n'est pas un commentaire.
posted by Lizard at 6:07 PM on February 23, 2020 [3 favorites]

James Lee Byars per the navigation column has a work called, The Ghost of James Lee Byars (1969). This brings up a black panel stating, "This work is currently not shown in the NO SHOW MUSEUM." I thought, how meta.

But Spencer Finch displays the same piece. Tom Friedman and others have remarkably similar work.

Perhaps I can apply to list as "currently not shown" my modest collection of tech-oriented null set referents: ∅, {}, /dev/null, void, ...
posted by gregoreo at 6:13 PM on February 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

There can be a separate wing of the museum dedicated to syllogisms of the form: "Nothing is better than eternal happiness" and "A ham sandwich is better than nothing" ⇒ "A ham sandwich is better than eternal happiness"
posted by gregoreo at 6:16 PM on February 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

Does this include that banana taped to the wall, now that it's been eaten?
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:38 PM on February 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

reminds me a bit of Lana Newstrom's 'Invisible Art' featured in CBC's 'This Is That' (2018)
posted by ovvl at 6:47 PM on February 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

I also like how some of the artists have several works grouped together, that show their own variation on the theme of the bigger wing of the museum they are in.

This whole thing is very clever, and I'll probably keep exploring it for a while. Thanks, again for posting!
posted by hippybear at 8:41 PM on February 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

LionIndex: Actually seems like kind of an interesting museum, but I'm not sure I could handle the way they play 4'33" on constant repeat over the audio system.

Are you sure it's not the extended edit? Or STUMM433, the cover album from Mute? Or Sounds Like Silence, or maybe Below 20 Db?

There's also a compilation of other silent tracks, but I'm not finding it at the moment.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:47 PM on February 23, 2020

Thanks for the post. It reminded me of an exhibition I saw once. (I think this is the exhibition.) The museum cleared out nine rooms in the permanent collection and put a piece of art consisting of an empty room on display in each one. Which is to say, they put labels on the wall with "Yves Klein, The Void", "Art & Language, Air Conditioning Show", etc. It was literally nine empty rooms, with the rest of the museum just outside, but it was impressive in a weird way to see all that nothing.

I wonder how the artists felt about their work being exhibited in a different context. For instance, one of the pieces was Maria Eichhorn’s "Money at the Kunsthalle Bern", which originally involved using the exhibition budget to pay for repairs in the gallery she was exhibiting in. Originally, the repairs would have been part of the piece, and if you visited over a few weeks, you would see the repairs progressing, but if you remount it, it's just an empty room with a label. I guess it's like performance art: you can't recreate it, but you can document what happened.
posted by ectabo at 8:56 PM on February 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

i immediately went to the "shop" - it's fantastic.
posted by lapolla at 10:02 PM on February 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

A little nothing goes a long way
posted by Dokterrock at 12:44 AM on February 24, 2020 [2 favorites]

This is extremely my shit. Thank you for posting! Enjoying it a lot.
posted by threecheesetrees at 5:12 AM on February 24, 2020 [1 favorite]

> This is extremely my shit.

So, you and Kim Jong Un then, eh
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 6:38 AM on February 24, 2020