Exploring the intertwined themes of theater, performance, and museum display—ranging from props, stages, and pedestals to actors, impersonators, avatars, and the ghostly image of the audience itself—this exhibition presents works from MOCA’s permanent collection. Through sculpture, video, photography, painting, and archival materials, Fictions of Display foregrounds performance strategies that permeate museum spaces and its modes of presentation.

At its core are iconic works from MOCA’s collection, including Claes Oldenburg’s sculptural renditions of everyday consumer goods—shoes, dresses, cakes, ice cream—made from muslin soaked in plaster and painted with enamel that were originally part of his immersive, performative project The Store (1961–62). These works set the tone for a broader exploration of how objects are not only displayed but also staged—re-staged within the conventions of a museum after initially being displayed outside an institutional context. In a note written in 1962, Oldenburg stated that theater was the most powerful art form because it is the most involving. A few lines later he added: “I no longer see the distinction between theater and visual arts very clearly . . . distinctions I suppose are a civilized disease.”

The exhibition also introduces several new acquisitions, as well as works never installed in our galleries, like a painting by groundbreaking Polish theater director Tadeusz Kantor, known for his avant-garde and deeply personal approach to performance, or Catherine Sullivan’s video installation, which merges theater, film, and visual art to examine systems of acting and representation.

Fictions of Display includes figures who have made significant contributions to the history of performance, such as Eleanor Antin, Colette, Rebecca Horn, Mike Kelley, Senga Nengudi, Yoko Ono, Raphael Montañez Ortiz, and Johanna Went, among others. A live element is subtly woven into the gallery experience: For Tania Pérez Córdova’s Portrait of an Unknown Person Passing By, a performer dressed in a garment featuring the same pattern as a ceramic object on view will quietly circulate among visitors at unannounced moments.

Fictions of Display is organized by José Luis Blondet, Senior Curator, with Paula Kroll, Curatorial Assistant.

Exhibitions at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Exhibitions with major funding provided by Tatiana Botton, The Goodman Family Foundation, and Alicia Miñana and Robert Lovelace. Generous funding is provided by Michael and Zelene Fowler, The Earl and Shirley Greif Foundation, Pamela and Jarl Mohn, Jonathan Segal, the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation, and Pamela West.