In 1991, under the auspices of MoMA's 'Projects Room' series, Adams' 'one-man' show consisted of site-specific installation work including a chain of hand-crafted vitrines, wall-size photographs of MoMA's 'Road to Victory' exhibition from 1942, and an image reflected on the glossy black surface of the back wall. He titled his show, 'Road to Victory,' like a child named after a deceased grandparent. But, unlike the naming convention, Adams' use of the title did not simply commemorate something from the past. Rather, it was used to question the history and memory of an institution that established a paradigm (perhaps the paradigm) for modern visual culture.

In his larger body of work, which includes installations on bus shelters, public plazas, galleries as well as museums, Adams explores the intersection of cultural memory and physical site. Neither is fixed in form or meaning. In this work, he brings these issues to bear on the most powerful of cultural institutions, The Museum of Modern Art.

The following are excerpts of an interview with Mr. Adams (in March 2003) on the subject of his exhibition, 'Road to Victory.'

Marcus Bleyer: I suppose I'll begin with the most standard of questions: are there particular artists that have influenced you?

Dennis Adams: Of course, there are a lot of artists that interest me, from Klucis to Aldo Van Eyck. Yes, and a thousand details from films swirling in my head. I am also interested in the history of exhibition design. I look at and read many things beyond the scope of my immediate interests. My excuse is that it may all one day come in handy. It protects my doubt and procrastination. Of course, my work has never completely celebrated anything. It has always been critical in one way or another. But the dimension and weight of that edge is very different from project to project. I always begin at ground zero.

MB: How did you get the opportunity to make an exhibition at MoMA?

DA: They invited me. The Projects Room where I was asked to work is MoMA's way of accomodating contemporary art. Their program of course focuses on the history of Modern Art, not contemporary art, but where does one draw the line between recent history and the present. From my perspective, I wanted to address the institution and its history. New York has more than enough spaces for contemporary art. Just to do another exhibition is not interesting.

MB: And did you then have to submit a full proposal for their review of what you were going to do?

DA: No, when you're invited by a museum it's generally considered an invitation to do what you want. At least, I go on that assumption. However, if you begin to probe the institutional boundaries you might get burned.

MB: Where did your research for the exhibition begin?

DA: With the physical facts of the place. There is a line of floor to ceiling windows running along the Projects Room that looks out to the sculpture garden. They are the focus of the space and the only link to a sense of the architecture. The steel and glass expanses of those windows are already an image, a direct reference to the likes of Johnson and Mies. The eight large vitrines that I made for the space ran in a straight line along those windows. Their material construction [steel and tinted glass], in fact, quoted those windows. Beyond that, they were situated in such a way that you had to pass between them to enter the second part of the installation. So they were not just objects, but border crossings.

MB: So the exhibition consisted of those two components: the vitrines and the photographs on the back wall?

DA: Yes. I saw the installation as two works, linked but different.

MB: In addition to the large format installation-shots of the original "Road to Victory" exhibition from 1942, there was an additional image reflected on the back wall that was composed of two other blurred photographs.

DA: Those were two identical images of a soldier from desert storm wrapped up in camouflaged netting. I turned them on end so they looked like cocoons. They were situated behind the Road to Victory photos in such a way that they were only visible as reflections on the back wall that I painted a glossy black. The Gulf War had just broken out, so I was really shooting from the hip. It's important to take these last minute liberties. I was thinking about historical cycles, connections between MoMA's historical relationship to war through Steichen and maybe even its future. Given where we are at today with Iraq I hope it was not prophesy.

MB: Was MoMA open to those last minute kind of changes?

DA: Not really. You know, you massage and push and hope for the best. For the most part, I got what I wanted in the end . But its really an Institution with a big "I." There are a lot of ground rules and many fault lines between departments. One senses that Modernism is not only promoted but also protected.

MB: So, Modernism with a capital "M."

DA: Yeah. In many ways they invented the ground rules and sold the world on their view of it. So they have a lot invested.

MB: Speaking of last minute additions, when did you decide that the work was complete?

DA: Where to begin a project? Where to end it? These are always the most difficult questions. The rest is just production. Of course, the dream is to bring everything to bear on the project at hand. I'm like a beginner that tries to put too much into their work. I always tell my students to clean house in their work then I go home and just put one fucking thing after another in my own projects.

MB: Getting down to some of the details of the work, the reconnaissance photographs that you used in the vitrines, were those exhibited in Steichen's "Road to Victory" exhibition?

DA: No, they were part of the Steichen archive at MoMA. They were his war souvenirs from his position as head of the American aerial reconnaissance photography operations in France during WWI. He kept a few of the best for their artistic appeal. You know, the old modernist link between aerial views and abstraction. But this all became problematized when Steichen became Director of the photo department at MoMA. This story had already been put on the table in the seventies in a groundbreaking article written by Allan Sekula for Artforum. An article that had a big effect on Paul Virillo. But what also interested me in those photographs beyond their link to MoMA's historical role as a forum for nationalistic propaganda was the ambiguity of their status as artistic artifacts.

MB: And in order to use these photographs did you have to get approval from both the estate as well as the museum?

DA: Yes, as I remember, I was sent up to the Steichen archive at MoMA to talk to a woman who appeared to be in her nineties. Off the record, I believe I was told she had been Steichen's mistress. But it was never clear to me whether she was the one giving permission. She fell asleep during our discussion and I thought she had died. I went for help but was told she does this all the time. In any case, it was an omen. Later, I was told that permission had been denied. A curator told me that the museum does not approve of the idea of appropriation. That the museum protects the boundaries of authorship. That they would never show someone like Sherry Levine. That evening I related the story to a friend over dinner. This guy is a very successful businessman that knows how to play hardball. He questioned how Steichen, his estate or the museum could claim ownership of military property. He said, "forget all this appropriation crap, the bottom line is that Steichen's a thief". In fact, he thought that the photos might have already been transferred from the military to the public domain. He asked if I had checked the National Archives in Washington. The next day, I called and found they had an enormous archive of those photos. I immediately traveled to Washington. There were hundreds more than MoMA, including the same ones in their collection. In fact, they were in much better condition. So I took them from the source. I informed the museum of my rights to images in the public domain. The exhibition as planned was on again.

MB: And what about the installation-shot photograph showing Steichen's "Road to Victory" exhibition?

DA: They gave approval for that. After all those were documents of an exhibition and did not have the status of artistic artifacts. From the beginning, I wanted to somehow use that photograph from the original "Road to Victory" exhibition. I loved that it showed this curtain at the center of all these angled photographs. I kept asking myself what's behind the curtain. In a funny way, that became the mental litany that generated the entire project. My first idea was to use that photo on the official MoMA poster for my exhibit that is showcased in the vitrine outside the museum. I wanted it as an entry image. I originally had no intention of using it in my installation. But it came down from the publicity department that I could only use an image for the poster that was drawn directly from my installation. So in a crazy way, I developed the second part of the installation around that photo, so that I could use it on the poster outside.

Dennis Adams, Coccoons, from the Road to Victory Exhibition at MoMA, 1991.

MB: But, they were willing to let you use it in the exhibition they just weren't willing to let you use it to advertise the exhibition?

DA: Yes, but for me the poster and the exhibition are all part of my work. I don't privilege one over the other. The point is that I was responding and building the exhibition around some of these institutional barricades. So, probably I was forced to react quicker than I would have liked and was pushed into shaping things in another way. But there are always more ways than one to skin a cat.

MB: Do you think you were raising eyebrows within the institution? I mean, in a way that perhaps these limitations were somehow intended to censor the work?

DA: You mean about the work itself as being critical? I can't say. You can never say whether some of those bureaucratic motions have a larger agenda. I always assume that there are certain institutional guidelines in place, but whether or how one chooses to use them might be an indicator of something darker. In this case, I have no evidence to that effect. However, my experience with museums tells me, that if they want to manipulate the artist's work in some way they would never do it directly.

MB: I know there has been quite a lot of critical writing about that show, but what originally drew your attention to it and what was it about it that made you want to work with it?

DA: On a very basic level, I have a fascination with the period in which I was indoctrinated into the world. I'm a post war baby. There were only three books in the house when I was growing up: the bible, Mary Baker Eddy's "Science and Health," and later "The Family of Man" catalogue from MoMA. But in terms of my work at that moment, I was doing a lot of installations, both on public sites and in museums and galleries, that dealt with ideas of history and collective memory. In this respect, museums are not normally the best place to work; but in the case of MoMA it has this heavy history. It demonstrated the intersection between nationalism and modernist exhibition design, not only in the "Road to Victory" exhibition but also in its sequel "Power in the Pacific" from 1945. These two exhibitions set the tone for the emergence of America as a world power after the war. Along with the "Family of Man" exhibition from 1955, MoMA was instrumental in securing the cultural context as a naturalizing agent in this process.

MB: How do you see the relationship between the aesthetic concerns of your project and its critical intentions?

DA: The forms structure the reading. I was interested in revealing a kind of glimpse at the underside of Modernism, like a kind of bad dream. Something lurking just beyond all that steel and glass. As you know, the vitrines are empty. Their identity as glass containers for objects has been displaced. The Steichen photographs are literally built into their underside. They are visible only as reflections in their mirrored bases. Many people didn't know where those images were coming from when they first saw them. It looked as if they were floating on the floor somewhere beneath the vitrines. I have always been interested in destablizing perceptions as a kind of entry level. I want people to first be taken back a bit physically before they enter into the full implications of the work.

MB: Were you aware of earlier critical projects at MoMA, for example Hans Haacke's MoMA Poll, Louise Lawler's project, or Barbra Kruger's work?

DA: I knew Haacke's piece, although I did not see the "Information" show. I saw Louise's show for the Projects Room. I think it was shortly before mine.

MB: Yes, it was in 1987.

DA: I remember; it was with the glasses, right?

MB: The glasses and the photographs of the bench in front of a painting by Miro.

DA: That's a wonderful piece. I'm a big fan of Louise. Her work has a displaced, poetic edge that I love. Her sensibility overrides the ideas.

MB: I'm sure you were aware of the term "institutional critique."

DA: Oh sure, it was already a beaten horse.

MB: Do you feel that you were working in relation to that framework?

DA: I would never have used it to describe what I was doing. My work had developed out of public projects for the street. So I was coming from a different place. I was simply responding to a new set of site conditions when I did the MoMA project.

MB: Would you say that critical work was in a period of transition when you did your MoMA piece? That it was moving on from where, lets say, Hans Haacke was coming from as the father figure of such work. Were artists feeling less inclined to take on the museum as a critical subject?

DA: As long as we have these mega-institutions, there will always be artists that bite the hand that feeds them. But to sustain any kind of critical posture one has to mix it up a bit, change tactics. Haacke was, and is very clear headed. Fathers have to be. He positions himself in a symmetrical relationship to power. He stands tall and talks back. That opened things up for the next generation to be more nuanced, even playful. This is certainly true of Louise's work and I think my own as well.

MB: With your work, what is the difference between creating something for a museum as opposed to a gallery or public site? What is it about the museum as an institution with a social and political role?

DA: In terms of a place like MoMA it has an amazing history. During WWII and its aftermath, its mission clearly intersected with national politics and propaganda. This was translated not only through the content of its exhibitions, but also through exhibition design. MoMA played a big role in the appropriation of Fascist design practices for the purposes of American Propaganda.

MB: Your project has been discussed in a larger analysis of MoMA's cultural and exhibition policies in Mary Anne Staniszewski's book [Power of Display]. How do you feel about using artwork as a tool of cultural theory?

DA: Mary Anne's book was a project waiting to happen. It's well researched and well written. But there is a lot of other stuff out there that is very slim. In general, I don't believe in the lead of cultural theory. More subtle art works that are not as demonstrative get pushed to the side. The other thing is that as cultural theory has expanded its scope to include every little blip on the radar screen it has become less attached to real issues. There is nothing at stake except the seductiveness of the next eccentric topic. Roland Barthes can perhaps be blamed for a lot of this. Although he is still the best example of it. I prefer the early writings of someone like Dan Graham. All that youth culture stuff being pushed up against everything else.