Bedtime Stories

Image: Maurizio Cattelan

As part of its series of new digital initiatives, the New Museum presents “Bedtime Stories,” a project initiated by the artist Maurizio Cattelan.

Inviting friends and other artists and performers he admires to keep us company, Cattelan imagined “Bedtime Stories” as a way of staying together during these days of isolation. Each participant has been asked to read a selection from their favorite book – a sentence, passage, chapter, or more – to be shared with the New Museum’s online audiences. Some chose to read existing works, others to read their own writings, still others to create impromptu performances. Whether drawn from memory, imagination, or cherished volumes kept close at hand, the recordings by artists were captured quickly in an unfiltered fashion on phones or laptops in their homes or studios around the world.

A Bedtime Story by Michael Stipe

Michael Stipe reads The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Carlton Abrams.

A Bedtime Story by Black Thought

A Bedtime Story by Piotr Uklanski

A Bedtime Story by Brent Green

A Bedtime Story by John Bock

A Bedtime Story by Camille Henrot

A Bedtime Story by Martin Creed

A Bedtime Story by Cheryl Donegan

A Bedtime Story by Takashi Murakami

A Bedtime Story by Ugo Rondinone

A Bedtime Story by Rachel Feinstein

A Bedtime Story by Jeff Koons

A Bedtime Story by Tracey Emin

A Bedtime Story by Elizabeth Peyton

A Bedtime Story by Damián Ortega

A Bedtime Story by Jordan Casteel

A Bedtime Story by Jimmie Durham

A Bedtime Story by Seth Price

Price reads the book inside his head.

A Bedtime Story by Russell Tovey

Tovey reads a letter to Cookie Mueller from her friend, the filmmaker Gordon Stevenson, who died of complications related to AIDS in 1982. Reprinted in Nan Goldin, Cookie Mueller, Pace/MacGill Gallery, 1991.

A Bedtime Story by Adrian Villar Rojas

A Bedtime Story by Thomas Hirschhorn

A Bedtime Story by Suha Traboulsi

A Bedtime Story by Ibrahim Mahama

Mahama reads an excerpt from “The Artist as Producer In Times of Crisis” by Okwui Enwezor.

A Bedtime Story by Cally Spooner

Spooner reads from The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller.

A Bedtime Story by Gabriel Kuri

Kuri reads a piece by Umberto Eco.
Listen in English:

Listen in Spanish:

A Bedtime Story by Wu Tsang

Tsang reads “The Symphony,” Chapter 132 from Moby Dick by Herman Melville, for Sophia Al Maria.

Photo: ©AlinePaley

A Bedtime Story by Nicolas Party

Party reads from “The Pillow Book” by Sei Shōnagon

Image: Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome. Photography: Toby Coulson

A Bedtime Story by Joan Jonas

Jonas reads a text written during quarantine.

A Bedtime Story by Jordan Wolfson

Wolfson reads from “I’m Your Man” by Leonard Cohen.

A Bedtime Story by Marilyn Minter

A Bedtime Story by Nicole Eisenman and Sarah Nicole Prickett

A Bedtime Story by Minerva Cuevas

Cuevas reads from “Celebration of Fantasy” from The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano, translated by Cedric Belfrage (New York: Norton, 1992).
Listen in English

Cuevas lee “Celebración de la fantasía” de El libro de los abrazos libro de Eduardo Galeano (Siglo Veintiuno Editores. México, 2003).
Escucha en español