Rediscovering Mark Rothko with an Audio Tour at SFMOMA

Up until my recent trip to San Francisco, I think that the work of Mark Rothko had been ruined for me. A few years ago, I was dragged to a Broadway play set in a hospital waiting room decorated with Rothko posters. Perhaps the Rothko poster industry had a “moment” in the late 00’s because I started seeing 11” X 14” Rothkos in cheap Ikea frames all over the city– in dentist and doctors’ offices, school lobbies, and calendars in every cubicle from here to Philadelphia. I began to associate Rothko works with the smells and images of sanitization. Needless to say, my eyes had gone numb to the simple complexity and passion of his work, until I made a voyage to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)  and listened to an audio tour stop featuring painting No. 14, 1960.

Over the last three years, I’ve listened to many audio stops all over the country, but I’m rarely surprised by what I hear. As a person who works on audio tours for the Rubin Museum, I end up testing the audio tour experience at other museums vs. really listening to what is going on. My experience at SFMOMA started like many other audio tour ventures. I surrendered my license and was strapped into a bright, yellow lanyard, headphones, and iPod with a custom, yet slightly cumbersome case. I’ve become immune to feeling like a dork while wearing an audio tour device (and let’s just be realistic, there is no way to look cool with headphones and a bright yellow lanyard, so it’s best just to own your audio tour awkwardness). SFMOMA has an extraordinary collection, and they’ve made a substantial effort in contextualizing their modern and contemporary works through media experiences. There weren’t thousands of audio stops, but a few well-placed experiences that intermingled between additional content, and curator interviews.

Painting No. 14, 1960 was the focal point of a large galley, and as I walked into the room I was struck by how big the painting was. In front of me (as if perfectly set up by the museum marketing department to advertise audio tours) was a young woman sitting elegantly on a stark modern bench, enraptured with the painting, and really looking like she was listening to something important. I felt bad walking in her field of vision to see the stop number, and quickly punched in the numbers on the digital screen resting around my neck.

I was surprised by the stop. With so much one could say about the impressive work, the curator being interviewed mentioned that Rothko had been inspired by Buddhism. I immediately envisioned a future exhibition with Rothkos and thangkas side-by-side, and found a new familiarity with something that I had become all too familiar with. I was reminded of our Grain of Emptiness exhibition, and quickly scouted the room for other familiar Buddhist inspired work. Not too far away was a great work by Agnes Martin, which then led me to works by Josef Albers (not necessarily inspired by Buddhism, but one of my favorite artists of all time). The little clip of audio led me on my own scavenger hunt, allowing me to re-curate SFMOMA’s collection to my liking.

So the moral of this story is: Audio Tours- try them out. You may look like a dork, but be brave. You may hear and see things you didn’t expect to, and that makes museum way more fun.

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