Inspire

May 28, 2020

SMoCA Director and Chief Curator, Jennifer McCabe met with Curator Heidi Zuckerman to discuss the installation of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work, “Untitled” (Fortune Cookie Corner) (1990) at SMoCA and the impact of art like this during such an uncertain time.

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Felix Gonzalez-Torres
“Untitled” (Fortune Cookie Corner), 1990
Fortune cookies, endless supply
Overall dimensions vary with installation
Original installation: approximately 10,000 fortune cookies

Internationally curated by Andrea Rosen and locally curated by Heidi Zuckerman.


On view May 25 – July 5, 2020

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Fortune Cookie Corner), 1990. Photo: Claire A. Warden

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) is pleased to join 999 other diverse sites around the world in presenting an artwork by the late artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996, Cuban). The 1990 work “Untitled” (Fortune Cookie Corner) consists of a pile of fortune cookies that viewers are invited to take and consume. From 1987 to 1991, Gonzalez-Torres was part of Group Material, a New York-based art collective whose members worked collaboratively to initiate cultural activism and community education. Using simple everyday materials, such as stacks of paper, candy, beads, and puzzles, his work employed both Minimalist and Conceptual Art strategies to address topics of love and loss, sickness and rejuvenation, or gender and sexuality. In many works, and this one in particular, viewer participation is essential in establishing meaning. The work exists for as long as the fortune cookies last and they will only be replenished on June 14, 2020. 

Andrea Rosen Gallery and David Zwirner gallery, in New York, invited 1,000 people to organize an installation of “Untitled” (Fortune Cookie Corner) in recognition of this globally significant moment and in reflection of the ever-relevant and flexible nature of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work. In turn curator Heidi Zuckerman chose SMoCA as a location. Please join the global art community in celebrating the power of art, the meaning of participation, and hope for an ever-adaptive and promising future. 

Use #FGT🥠exhibition and tag @felixgonzaleztorres.foundation on social media.

“We are honored to be chosen as a site to display the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres as a way to connect to a global community of art lovers. While our museum doors remain temporarily closed we offer a small token of appreciation for our audiences who we hope will come back to see us soon,” said Jennifer McCabe, SMoCA director and chief curator.

“What does it mean to be kept company? And how do we tangibly create community in a time of isolation? Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s works elegantly define the idea of connection and allude to perpetuity, but also to its fragility. My family and I have been quarantining in Scottsdale and are so grateful for the hospitality of this community. When I was invited along with 999 others by Andrea Rosen to be a “place” as part of the Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner) I immediately recognized the genius of idea and wanted to collaborate with the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. I hope people will come by the museum often and enjoy the generosity and fun of participating in this artwork,” said Heidi Zuckerman, host of the Conversations About Art podcast.