Museum to Open With Nearly Nude Models

V I E N N A, Austria, Feb. 13 -- An art museum in Austria is planning to celebrate the opening of a new wing with a performace exhibit that includes 45 nearly nude young women.

The women, mostly models, will be part of a project choreographed by New York artist Vanessa Beecroft, to mark the presentation of the new Kunsthalle Wien building in Vienna’s Museumsquartier, Feb. 16.

Beecroft plans to have the models stand in carefully arranged poses for three hours. The idea is that the models will start to weaken as time goes on and the perfect arrangement will begin to disintegrate.

“First they will be uniform, very choreographed,” said Thomas Soraperra, press director for the museum. He said Beecroft has “promised equal looking models, almost looking the same. Same outfits. Almost the same haircut.”

But the models will soon lose their uniformity, he says, as they get tired. “You will see their own personality coming back,” he said.

The models will be dressed only in boots, but they will be standing in a heated hall of the museum. They will not speak or move and will make no contact with the public.

$200 Star Search

The museum began advertising for the 45 women earlier last year, requiring that they all be between 18 and 35 years old, slim and between 5 feet 9 inches and 6 feet tall.

A spokesman said: “Most important of all the women should not be shy of appearing naked in front of strangers.”

Some of the women are professional models, and others are volunteers, but none are famous.

The models will be paid about $200 each for their work, said Soraperra.

Beecroft, born 1968 in Genoa, Italy, seeks to demonstrate the contrast between standardized ideals of beauty and the individuality of the body.

In her arranged living sculptures, she depersonalizes the female body into a visual spectacle.

A Country of Museum-Lovers

The Museumquartier will be the biggest museum and art complex in the world when the new wing opens.