Exhibition Details
Stephen Prina: A Lick and a Promise is the first in-depth survey to focus on the artist’s long engagement with music and performance, bringing new perspectives to a central factor in Prina’s wider oeuvre: how cultural artifacts find new lives in different contexts.
Unfolding across multiple locations in the Museum, including the Kravis Studio, the exhibition presents the world premiere of A Lick and a Promise (2025), an orchestral commission for 16 instruments, alongside restagings of works such as Sonic Dan (1994–2001).
Unfolding across multiple locations in the Museum, including the Kravis Studio, the exhibition presents the world premiere of A Lick and a Promise (2025), an orchestral commission for 16 instruments, alongside restagings of works such as Sonic Dan (1994–2001).
Additional Details
For the past five decades, artist, musician, and composer Stephen Prina has developed a singular and irreverent approach to installations, films, and musical performances. Prina frequently brings together networks of cultural materials—a Joni Mitchell song, Robert Bresson films, Glenn Gould recordings, the paintings of Édouard Manet—recombining them in different contexts to surface new meanings and associations.
This exhibition offers an opportunity to celebrate Prina’s innovative approach to appropriation—one uniquely focused on sound and music—and the rare warmth and intellectualism that mark him as a prescient and still-evolving artist.
This exhibition offers an opportunity to celebrate Prina’s innovative approach to appropriation—one uniquely focused on sound and music—and the rare warmth and intellectualism that mark him as a prescient and still-evolving artist.
Location
MoMA
Floor 4
11 West 53 Street, Manhattan
New York, NY 10019
Image: Beat of the Traps. 1992. Performed in Expanded Art, Wiener Festwochen, The Remise, Vienna, Austria, 1992 / courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York