FROM THE he current exhibiton DISLOCATIONS includes seven instal tions created by ertists especialy for te Museum, several of \whichwere conceived and constructed specifically withthe ‘Museum's spaces inmind. On many previous occasions, the ‘Museum has invited aris and architeets to participate in creat- ing werks in the Museum's galleries, works unique tothe ste and tine of creation, which were utimately dismantied. The 1969-10 Spaces exhibition was a show of site-specific works; EPHEMERAL Pd inhis 1978 exhitition, SolLewit worked directly on Museun gallery wals; and the Projects series includes many examples of such works. In two instances tho intentional dostuction ofthe works thom: selves played an integral aarti their exhibition. In March 194 in Conjunction with the exhibition Indian rt ofthe United States, ‘wo Navajo hatea! (medicine men) fromWindow Rock, Arizona, executed sand paintings inthe galleries Six daysa week, on a ‘welve-oot-square bed of sani they created their designs by siting diferent colors of powdered rock (black, white, blue, and iui yllow) through their fingors, producing intieat,high¥-ey- ized, abstract designs representing gods, goédesses, and such natural phenomena as plants end clouds. We have no visual record of teir work The Navejos conser a san painting 1 be nota fixed object but sacred tual; any type of preservation on {iim would have given an improper permanence to the image or the process of creating it Writen cbservations survive, however, since this work generated groat del finterastand was widely reported innewspapers othe time, In February 1960, the Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely, wha died on August 30 ofthis year, was invited by the Museum to stage an installaionin the Museums garden. The event, whichis treatee inMuseum records 2s an exhibition, tock plece on the evening of March 17: Homage to New Yor, a selt-constucting and set- destroying work of art conceived and built by Jaan Tinguely, was atendad by 250invited guests The occasion was treated with tongue-in-cheek reverence: a broadside was issued to mark the ‘occasion, and the prtion written by Alfred H. Barr, Jr, subtitled ARCHIVES “Tirguoly ox machina,” includad a phrase borrowed from tho laciators’salutaton “moriuri te salutamus” (we who are about to die saute you).Tinguely had built sel-destroying sculpture, ‘wenty-tiree feet ong and weny-seven feet wide, out of found ‘objects including eighty bicycle wheels, arts of fifteen motos, ‘an upright piano, an enamel bathtub, and empty botles. ‘Te moment arived. The evening was cold, gray, anc diz. ‘An ¢ag0: eromd was assomblod,butthe machine moroly shud dered once and, in the wars of an observer, ded with one rasp- ing breath, An effort to repair it failed, The device burst nto flames, end wes extingished by the New York Cty Fire Depart ‘ment. A fragment ofthe piece is preserved in the Museum's permanent callecton, and the process ofits creation and brief ‘existence is dacumented in photographs. In daseribing the genoral comtant ofthe work in DISLOCA- TIONS, Rober Stor explains that each piece locates viewers inareal or imagined siuation, yet shits the ground beneath them in order to remind them thettheir perceived place inthe world ‘maybe based on questonable assumptions. Tinguely would have Lnderstood ths idea, and might have made his point witha ‘machine: when they werk, they ae instruments of himan pertec- tion; should they malfuretion, they become, as Dore Ashton ‘wrote, “the sums of imperfections, mere human than machi ona Roob is Museum Archivist