The Musical Brain

The Musical Brain was organized by Cecilia Alemani, Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, and Melanie Kress, High Line Art Associate Curator.

Opened in April 2021, The Musical Brain is a group exhibition named after a short story by the Argentine contemporary writer César Aira which explored the ways that artists use music as a tool to inhabit and understand the world. It features an international array of artists who approach music through different lenses — historical, political and performative — and who created installations and soundscapes throughout the park.

Traditionally, music is thought of as an art form we construct ourselves. With different organizing rules, instruments, and traditions across cultures, music has underpinned essential collective moments in societies. But music is also the way that we hear the world around us. Often used to described nature (wind whistling through trees), the cosmos (in the Music of the Spheres, or musica universalis), and even the built industrial environment (the rhythmic lull of a train car), music is the order we project onto a cacophonous world. Humans seek order and patterns but also relish chaos and noise; in many ways, music becomes the way that we can experience both at the same time.

The artists in this exhibition listen closely to the sonic world and explore the different temporal, sculptural, social, and historical dimensions of the ways we make music, and the ways we listen. They wonder what stories discarded objects tell when played, what happens when a railway spike becomes a bell, and how the youth of our generation sing out warnings to save our planet. They remind us that music is a powerful tool for communication, especially in times when spoken language fails us. The sonic brings us together to celebrate, protest, mark the passage of time, and simply be together.

Raúl de Nieves (b. 1983, Michoacán, Mexico) makes colorful beaded sculptures and elaborately costumed performances. Having learned to sew and crochet as a child, de Nieves collages found beaded fabrics onto mannequins and canvas coveralls to create fantastical figures that he displays as sculptures and wears in musical performances. De Nieves installs three of these figures sitting on benches on the High Line. The sculptures reference the costumes musicians wear to become their larger-than-life personas and interrupt the crowds with their magical splendor.