The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose

I am OBSESSED with Marina Abramovic’s piece “The Artist is Present”. If you haven’t read up or watched snippets of her masterpiece at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, check it out! This book is written around the exhibit and captures your heart as you read it.

Thank you Algonquin books for sending me a copy in exchange for my honest reivew.

Synopsis from Goodreads: She watched as the final hours of The Artist is Present passed by, sitter after sitter in a gaze with the woman across the table. Jane felt she had witnessed a thing of inexplicable beauty among humans who had been drawn to this art and had found the reflection of a great mystery. What are we? How should we live? If this was a dream, then he wanted to know when it would end. Maybe it would end if he went to see Lydia. But it was the one thing he was not allowed to do. Arky Levin is a film composer in New York separated from his wife, who has asked him to keep one devastating promise. One day he finds his way to The Atrium at MOMA and sees Marina Abramovic in The Artist is Present. The performance continues for seventy-five days and, as it unfolds, so does Arky. As he watches and meets other people drawn to the exhibit, he slowly starts to understand what might be missing in his life and what he must do. This dazzlingly original novel asks beguiling questions about the nature of art, life and love and finds a way to answer them.

I just cherish this book on so many levels. It is a wonderful expression of how art changes us and shapes the world around us. I found out about “The Artist is Present” when it was released in 2010. I became engulfed in watching videos of the exhibit, especially the one where Marina gets surprised by her ex-boyfriend. Check it out:

I am amazed every time I watch this video. The emotion, the silence, the love…what I experienced the first time watching this, I got to experience again when reading this book.

4.5/5 Stars