Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held March 14-June 1, 1999. Exhibition curated by, edited by, and with an essay by Kynaston McShine. Texts by artists and Lilian Tone, Birgit Pelzer, Brian Wallis, Susan Stewart, Magdalena Dabrowski, Ecke Bonk, Jodi Hauptman, Kristen Erickson, Coosje van Bruggen, James Trainor, Thomas McEvilley, Sally Yard, Thomas Kellein, James Roberts, Kitty Scott, Kate Linker, Dave Hickey. Extensive illustrations, artist's biographies, bibliography. Artists within exhibition: Vito Acconci, Eve Arnold, Art & Language, Michael Asher, Lothar Baumgarten, Barbara Bloom, Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Sophie Calle, Janet Cardiff, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Christo, Joseph Cornell, Jan Dibbets, Lutz Dille, Mark Dion, Herbert Distel, Marcel Duchamp, Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler, Elliot Erwitt, Roger Fenton, Robert Filliou, Larry Fink, Fluxus, Gunther Forg, Andrea Fraser, General Idea, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Susan Hiller, Candida Höfer, Komar and Melamid, Louise Lawler, J.B. Gustave Le Gray, Jac Leirner, Zoe Leonard, Sherrie Levine, El Lissitzky, Allan McCollum, Christian Milovanoff, Vik Muniz, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Charles Wilson Peale, Hubert Robert, Edward Ruscha, David Seymour, Robert Smithson, Thomas Struth, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Charles Thurston, Thompson, Jeff Wall, Christopher Williams, Fred Wilson, Garry Winogrand. Endpapers of book by Daniel Buren. "Since public museums came into being in the late 18th century, artists have looked upon them with a mixture of reverence, complicity, suspicion, and disdain. In The Museum as Muse, artists of many persuasions speak their minds about museums, their functions and spaces, their practices and politics, and their relationship to the art they contain. More than 60 artists are represented by a wide range of works: photographs of museum patrons by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliot Erwitt; 'personal museums' and 'cabinets of curiosities' by Charles Wilson Peale, Marcel Duchamp, and Claes Oldenburg; fantasies of the destruction or transformation of museums by Hubert Robert, Ed Ruscha, and Christo; and more, including works created especially for this project by contemporary artists, and an anthology of statements and writings by artists about museums. This volume was published to accompany an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York." -- publisher's statement.