The Guggenheim Brings Alternative Art Therapy to Downtown Brooklyn

Photographer Kristopher McKay
June 02, 2011

The Guggenheim Museum is kicking off their two-year long public art initiative, stillspotting nyc, this weekend and next with artist Pedro Reyes’ installation Sanatorium in downtown Brooklyn.

As stillspotting nyc organizer and architecture and urban studies curator David van der Leer explains "what I’m trying to do for the museum is develop a series of programs that are all about taking the museum outside of the institution." The stillspotting nyc initiative will unleash artists, designer, musicians and educators across the city's five boroughs to explore the struggle for "space" in the city that never sleeps. For his contribution to the project, Reyes has chosen to install a temporary clinic, "which combines the best of New York’s existing therapy landscape with unexpected, short, experimental treatments. In two-hour windows, Sanatorium visitors experience up to three sessions from a roster of sixteen special 'urban therapies.' Upon arrival, visitors will meet a receptionist who will assign a series of “therapies” to each person. Balancing reality and parody, Sanatorium draws from Gestalt psychology, theater warm-up exercises, Fluxus events, conflict resolution techniques, trust-building games, corporate coaching, psychodrama, and hypnosis. While some of the sessions should be experienced alone, others are specifically catered to couples and larger groups. On Sundays, special sessions will be offered for children."

Reyes' Sanatorium will be up both this weekend and next (June 2-5 & 9-12). You can buy tickets here.

Here is a list of "therapies" you can enjoy at the Sanatorium.

1. Leave words behind and let your brain relax in a Conversation with the Bird.

2. Need to find the answer to that burning question? Why not ask the best minds that have walked the earth at the Philosophical Casino?

3. Confess one urban secret, and take another with you with no questions asked at Cityleaks.

4. Write the words that you’ll be remembered by at Epitaphs.

5. Is she or he the perfect match for you? Taste the flavor of love at the Compatibility Test for Couples.

6. See your city dilemmas abridged as a mathematical formula at Onthological Algebra.

7. Channel your healing energies even when you are far away from Brooklyn with Goodoo.

8. Make a spatial analysis of the hidden forces that control Brooklyn at The Great Game of Power.

9. Align your energies by using simple hand movements at The Department of Mudras.

10. There won’t be more blessings in your life if you don’t express thanks at Ex-Voto for the ones you already have.

11. Making collages can be therapeutic because our lives are a constant flux of cut-and-paste. Come make a coat of arms of your family or your professional life at the Heraldry Mint.

12. If your name is truly your destiny, you had better understand the meaning of your name or even consider changing it. We can help at Anagrams, Acronyms, and Aliases.

13. Curate an exhibition about your life in the city at The Museum of Hypothetical Lifetimes.

14. Explore how the senses interact at The Sinesthetic Test.

15. Do you have urban frustrations? Vent and resolve them through The Vaccine against Violence (originally developed by Antanas Mockus, former mayor of Bogotá, Columbia).

16. Engage is group therapy by recalibrating your senses and solving subconscious problems with The Tuning Effect (created by Mel S. Kimura-Bucholtz), or fastening your seat belts for a mystery trip across dimensions at Inner-Visioning.


Upcoming stillspotting nyc events will include works by Arvo Pärt, a composer, in collaboration with Snøhetta, as well as a project by the young architecture firm SO – IL.

stillspotting nyc, Pedro Reyes, Installation view: Sanatorium, June 2-5 and 9-12, 2011
(c) Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

Posted: June 02, 2011
The Guggenheim Brings Alternative Art Therapy to Downtown Brooklyn