2008
https://www.sfmoma.org/publication/art-participation-1950-now/
In the 2008 exhibition and accompanying catalogue, The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now, curated by Rudolf Frieling at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Max Neuhaus is featured as a foundational figure in the history of participatory and networked art.
Key Inclusion: Public Supply (1966)
The exhibition highlights Neuhaus's Public Supply I (1966) as a seminal example of "open-system" participation.
Neuhaus utilized the existing telephone and radio infrastructure to create a two-way communication loop. Listeners were invited to call into the radio station (WBAI in New York), where their sounds—whistling, talking, or ambient noise—were mixed in real-time and broadcast back to the public.
The work is analyzed as a radical departure from the "composer-performer-audience" hierarchy. In this model, the artist acts only as a catalyst, while the "public" provides the primary sonic material.
Theoretical Significance in the Catalogue
Rudolf Frieling's essay positions Neuhaus within a lineage of artists who moved beyond the static art object toward systems of interaction.
Neuhaus is framed as a pioneer of media art who anticipated contemporary internet-based collaboration by using the telephone network as a massive, social "instrument".
The exhibition connects Neuhaus's participatory radio works to his later site-specific installations, emphasizing how his work requires the physical or active presence of a participant to be fully realised.
Exhibitions / 2008 - SFMOMA, The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now. November 8, 2008 – February 8, 2009