April 1970: “Listening To Pictures”, officially opened in April of 1968 is again accessible to Museum visitors after having been closed for months in order to rearrange the collection and perfect audio and recording equipment.
“Listening To Pictures" utilizes taped, spontaneous conversations recorded in the homes and studios of contemporary painters and sculptors and includes all of the sounds usually attendant in these situations. Through these recordings, the artists for the first time, become their own interpreters to the museum public of a particular work of their own.
The collection, in a specially designed and equipped gallery on the 5th floor, combines realists such as Edward Ho[p]per, Charles Sheeler, and John Koch with abstract expressionists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan and Larry Rivers, and cool abstractionists such as Mary Bauermeister, Ursula Meyer and Ad Reinhardt.
Visitors may purchase or rent three-ounce ster[e]ophonic earphones which activate recordings incorporated in an information rail located before each work. Viewers may move in any direction and at any pace. There are no limitations as to time, number or sequence of works. Recordings are three-minutes in length and installed in separate message repeaters. Admission to the gallery is free.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1953 - 1970. 1970, 001.
