Our Education department installed a cork board in the lobby featuring changing questions about the galleries, exhibitions, etc. Our Education intern Kate wrote the following blog about the first question on the board and the answers we got.

Petah Coyne’s exhibition Everything that Rises Must Converge has attracted viewers across all audiences. How can we tell? A question board in MASS MoCA’s lobby recently displayed patron’s selections for a hypothetical soundtrack accompaniment.

In many ways, all of us have personal soundtracks to our lives. With the innovation of MP3 players, particularly the iPod, it’s quite common to see someone out for a stroll casually bopping to their favorite tunes – whatever they may be. Curiously, the vast display of Petah Coyne’s artwork has evoked an equally vast musical response.

What’s interesting about these song selections is that in many ways they delineate the unique ways artwork has potential to move disparate audiences. Responses on the board eclipsed age differences and genres, spanning from Bach’s eighteenth century piano concertos, English rock hits such as Blackbird from the Beatles’ two-disc White Album, to contemporary singles by bands like The Postal Service, Smashing Pumpkins, and the artist Lady Gaga.

Though it may be hard to imagine a soundtrack juxtaposing songs such as Big River by Johnny Cash with Maurice Ravel’s solo piano rendition of Gaspard de la Nuit, below are my personal favorite responses for the Petah Coyne soundtrack:

The Everything that Rises Must Converge soundtrack is only the first question on the feedback board for the summer. Stay tuned for future questions in the MASS MoCA lobby.

Sebastian Smee from The Globe made our week with nice reviews of both Material World and the Petah Coyne exhibitions,   saying, “MASS MoCA, the most consistently stimulating museum devoted to contemporary art in New England, has space to burn, making it the ideal place to show this kind of work. Material World: Sculpture to Environment, a group show devoted to large-scale, environment-altering installations made from cheap and plentiful materials, sees the museum playing to its strengths.”

And about Petah Coyne: Everything that Rises Must Converge, he said, “I admired the fearlessness of her aesthetic, which is the absolute antithesis of minimalist cool.”

There is still plenty of work to be done to complete our newest exhibition Material World, opening on Saturday April 24. Below are a few snapshots of what you can see in the galleries right now.

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If you’re in NYC this Friday, February 5, stop by the opening of Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s new show at Max Protech Gallery from 6 – 8 PM.  Called Happiness is a state of inertia, it is inspired by the materials and design of Mies van der Rohe’s unbuilt House with Four Columns (or 50×50 House, 1951), and it  functions as a working fish tank.

If you can’t make it this weekend, its on view through March 27.

If you’re headed to Sundance you should try to get tickets to Sam Taylor-Wood’s film, Nowhere Boy. (Salon.com loved it.)  Sam’s work is part of These Days: Elegies for Modern Times, currently on view through the middle of February on the second and third floors.

If you find yourself in Madrid, visit Galleria Soledad Lorenzo where Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle‘s  solo exhibition just opened.  Beautiful photos here.

Not planning a trip to Spain? You can see his work on this side of the pond at Max Protetch in New York after February 6 when his solo exhibition opens there.

Photo of Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With by Arthur Evans