'Will It Be a Likeness?' Coming to the Clark
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute will screen "Will It Be a Likeness?", a film version of the award-winning theater piece originally conceived for radio by the artist Juan Muñoz and the writer John Berger, on Sunday, Sept. 12 at 3 p.m. The Clark currently is presenting an exhibition of the Spanish artist’s sculptures at its Stone Hill Center."Will It Be a Likeness?" was originally presented in 1996 in Frankfurt and simultaneously broadcast by Hessischer Rundfunk and BBC Radio. Conducted in English with Spanish translations, the piece provides a fresh perspective on Muñoz’s work.
During his 20-year career, Juan Muñoz (1953–2001) invented a mode of storytelling using objects that inspire new ways of relating to space, memory, and displacement. His first sculptures employed an architectural language of disappearance and loss—wood banisters in unused spaces and metal balconies estranged from buildings. Though early in his career Muñoz used an architectural vocabulary to tell stories about people, he turned his focus to the human body in the late 1980s.
Muñoz proposed the radio collaboration to Berger during a meeting in Istanbul in 1995, and Berger was "seduced by the idea." In this unique and surprising meditation on art and the imagination, Berger plays a radio commentator whose live program is interrupted by Goya's dog, three disappearing women, and a sound-effects artist.
The exhibition Juan Muñoz is on view at the Clark through Oct. 17 and was curated by Carmen Giménez, Stephen and Nan Swid Curator of Twentieth-Century Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, with independent curator David Breslin for the Clark. Breslin will provide a brief introduction to the film.
The Clark is located at 225 South St. The galleries are open Tuesday through Sunday, from 10 to 5 (daily in July and August). Admission is free November through May. Admission is $15 from June 1 through Oct. 31. Admission is free for children 18 and younger, members, and students with valid ID. For more information, call 413-458-2303 or visit clarkart.edu.
