Tucked away in the darkness of the Brooklyn Museum’s new Moving Image Gallery lies a thrilling new addition to the institution’s repertoire. Doors (2022), a recent cinematic collage by conceptual artist and film-maker Christian Marclay, was co-purchased by the Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC.
Marclay, a Swiss and Californian pioneer of time-based media, turned the art world on its axis with The Clock (2010), a 24-hour filmic opus that debuted at New York’s Paula Cooper Gallery before embarking on a global tour. Dubbed “an addictive masterpiece” by The New Yorker, The Clock earned Marclay a reputation as a singular Pop Art synthesist; the following year, the film earned him the coveted Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale.
Doors debuted in London in 2023 and builds on the visual language of The Clock with an eye on thresholds. It features hundreds of spliced moments from films found and foraged in which characters enter and exit interstitial space. Using expert editing to explore the endless permutations of discovery, Doors ruminates on the connectivity of sight and sound, leading viewers through a rhapsodic cycle of bodies, eras, dialects and experiences. Relatively concise compared to its predecessor at just 54 minutes in length, Doors includes several recurring clips, lending the work a cyclical, musical element.
Installation view, Christian Marclay: Doors, Brooklyn Museum, until 12 April 2026 © Christian Marclay. Photo: Paula Abreu Pita
The Brooklyn Museum’s Moving Image Gallery was constructed specifically for Doors, according to Marclay’s specifications. “We’ve been wanting to increase our collection of time-based media works,” Kimberli Grant, the museum’s curator of Modern and contemporary art, tells The Art Newspaper. “In doing that, we wanted to also make sure we had a really nice space to be able to show those works. Because the acquisition took a little bit longer than we anticipated, it allowed us to have the time to find the space and outfit it as we needed to make sure that we could present the work correctly.” She describes the installation as “theatrical”, a departure from the typical “small black box” treatments time-based works are often presented in at museums.
“We want people to have more of a moment,” Grant says. “They can spread out as they come in. With certain films like Doors, you don’t really know where it stops and starts, so that allows for a bit more interest—you can see what about it attracts the audience or makes them stay longer.”
Doors opened 12 June at the Brooklyn Museum, after having its US debut at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston earlier in the spring. Visitor response has been glowing, according to Grant. “For us, it’s a bit of an experiment since we haven’t had a large gallery space to actually show time-based media before,” she says. “Even for me, as someone who has watched this film several times now, there’s so much to absorb because there are so many international and older works included. You can almost go through cinema history through Doors, which is a huge part of the context of the work.”
- Christian Marclay: Doors, until 12 April 2026, Brooklyn Museum