Sarah Michelson Will Turn MoMA’s Atrium Into a Living Question About What Dance Can Be

NEW YORK — Choreographer Sarah Michelson will bring a newly commissioned performance exhibition titled “nowhere” to the Museum of Modern Art from September 15 through October 11, transforming the Marron Family Atrium into a space where movement, repetition and museum-going unfold together. The work is scheduled during regular museum hours except Fridays, making performance part of the building’s daily rhythm.

Michelson will appear with a rotating cast rather than present a fixed evening program to a seated audience. That structure changes the basic contract of a dance event. Visitors may arrive in the middle, watch briefly, return later or encounter the work unexpectedly while moving between galleries, allowing duration and attention to become part of the choreography.

MoMA describes the project as an inquiry into a deceptively simple question: What is dance? Michelson has spent nearly three decades resisting easy answers, creating works that scrutinize technique, authorship, institutional space and the labor of performance. “nowhere” places that investigation in one of the museum’s most public interiors, where bodies are always already on display.

The atrium is a demanding site. Its height and openness can make even large installations feel exposed, while sound and movement travel across multiple levels. A performance there must compete with architecture, foot traffic and the shifting pace of visitors. Michelson’s choice to work inside those conditions turns distraction from a problem into material.

Unlike a conventional theater, the museum offers no single ideal viewing position. One person may see a dancer at floor level while another watches from above; neither experience is complete. That fragmentation suits a project concerned with how dance is defined, remembered and authorized. The work exists not only in the choreography but also in the unequal ways it becomes visible.

Duration matters for another reason: it makes labor impossible to ignore. A polished stage performance can conceal the repetition, waiting and physical management behind each gesture. A work unfolding across museum hours invites viewers to notice stamina, concentration, transition and recovery. Those less spectacular moments are part of the artistic event rather than backstage evidence kept out of sight.

Michelson’s practice has long occupied the border between dance and visual art without treating either field as a neutral container. Presenting “nowhere” at MoMA acknowledges that history while raising familiar institutional questions. When a museum commissions live work, it must consider scheduling, preservation, documentation and care for performers alongside the object-centered systems it already knows.

The exhibition format also gives visitors unusual freedom. Someone intimidated by contemporary dance does not have to commit to a full program or understand a formal vocabulary before entering. The work can be met in passing. That accessibility does not necessarily make it easier, but it lowers the barrier between the curious museum visitor and an art form often separated by ticketing and specialized venues.

At the same time, casual access can challenge performers. Museum audiences talk, take photographs, walk away and bring different assumptions about etiquette. Michelson’s rotating cast will operate within that unstable field of attention. The resulting tension between rigorous practice and unpredictable spectatorship may become one of the project’s most revealing qualities.

The commission is organized by MoMA’s Department of Media and Performance, with Ana Janevski, Martha Joseph and Sibia Sarangan named on the curatorial team. Their involvement situates the project within the museum’s sustained effort to collect, commission and interpret live art, even as performance continues to test conventional ideas about what a museum can hold.

“nowhere” also arrives at a moment when major museums are increasingly expected to offer experiences that cannot be reproduced on a phone. Live performance answers that demand, but Michelson’s work is unlikely to function as simple spectacle. Its value lies in asking viewers to stay with ambiguity: to notice when movement becomes dance and who gets to make that declaration.

By occupying the atrium for nearly a month, Michelson is not simply inserting choreography into a museum. She is using the museum to expose how dance is framed, watched and given value. Visitors who enter expecting a clear beginning and ending may instead find a living situation—one that changes with every body, every vantage point and every decision to remain.