Making the Museum Dance: Simone Forti’s Huddle (1961) and its Acquisition by the Museum of Modern Art

Abstract

In 2015, Simone Forti’s Dance Constructions, a group of understated, equipment-based performances from 1960–1961, entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) as the museum’s first acquisition of historical dance works. This essay details Forti’s arrangements with MoMA for the Dance Construction Huddle, which complicated the already complicated proposition of how to collect and care for dances in a visual art institution. Examined closely, the acquisition process reveals both how the museum transformed Forti’s work and how Huddle—and dance more generally—presses back on the institution and its investments in objecthood, singular authorship, and private property.