Carsten Höller is Putting a Giant Slide in the New Museum

Architizer News

Carsten Höller is Putting a Giant Slide in the New Museum

October 11, 2011

Photo via PSFK

Belgian artist Carsten Höller will be installing a 40-foot-high slide in the New Museum for his retrospective show starting on October 26^th. The slide, a signature site-specific installation that has appeared in other cities including Berlin, Milan and London, is to function as “an alternative transportation system within the museum,” running through ceilings and floors and shuttling viewers through the exhibition “as a giant 102-foot-long pneumatic mailing system.” More after the jump.

Inside Höller’s slide at the Tate (2006), photo via L Magazine.

Portions of the museum floors and ceilings will be removed to accommodate the twisting and turning chute, and unlike the artist’s earlier slide installations, the slide at the New Museum is slated to be made of transparent plastic, according to the New York Times. This is certainly a new way to appreciate the spaces of SANAA’s iconic stacked building. What do we have to say about it? HELL YES!

Höller‘s slide installation in the Tate’s Turbine Hall (2006), photo via L Magazine.

Correction on October 20th, 2011: This is not the first slide by Carsten Höller to be installed in New York. In 1999, Höller installed a slide piece entitled Female Velario at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, Queens. The slide was built for the exhibition “Children of Berlin: Cultural Developments 1989-1999,” curated by Klaus Biesenbach and Alanna Heiss to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Thank you to Juliette Cook for the information!