1977
TIMES SQUARE by Max Neuhaus 1977.
Collection: Since 2002, Dia Art Foundation. New York City. Extant: 1977–1992 and 2002–Present

Sound Work References: Collection: Since 2002, Dia Art Foundation, New York Location: Pedestrian island between 46th and 45th Streets, New York City Dimensions: triangle 6 x 12 meters Proposed: -Underground Music(s) 1973

Photo: Max Neuhaus in Times Square, 2007. Ph. Silvia Cecere Neuhaus

Neuhaus’ Times Square was discontinued in 1992 then later brought back in 2002 by the Dia Art Foundation, which currently maintains the work.

The foundation has long collaborated with sound and installation artists and has exhibited works by the likes of land artist Michael Heizer, multimedia artist Bruce Nauman, and sound artist Camille Norment.

The Times Square Street Business Improvement District (BID), and Christine Burgin collaborated with MTA Arts for Transit and Dia to reinstate the project in May of 2002 as a permanent piece in the Collection of Dia Art Foundation. Visitors and residents in Times Square may experience the artwork 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

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Times Square

The aural and visual environment is rich and complex. It includes large billboards, moving neon signs, office buildings, hotels, theaters, porno centers and electronic game emporiums. Its population is equally diverse including tourists, theatergoers, commuters, pimps, shoppers, hucksters and office workers. Most people are in motion, passing through the square. The island, as it is the junction of several of the square's pathways, is sometimes crossed by a thousand or more people in an hour.

The work is an invisible unmarked block of sound on the north end of the island. Its sonority, a rich harmonic sound texture resembling the after ring of large bells, is an impossibility within its context. Many who pass through it, however, can dismiss it as an unusual machinery sound from below ground.

For those who find and accept the sound's impossibility though, the island becomes a different place, separate, but including its surroundings. These people, having no way of knowing that it has been deliberately made, usually claim the work as a place of their own discovering.

Max Neuhaus