I've had quite a few emails pertaining to our article about visiting the Museum of Modern Art after seeing the play Red about artist Mark Rothko. Most of the e-mails involved questions about the Marina Abramovic Performance Art retrospective which has attracted a lot more visitors than either Rothko or any of the other artists hanging in the Modern's painting galleries. The questions that came up repeatedly were: 1. Are these nude performers in the Abramovic show professional actors? 2. Have they caused any incidents of unseemly audience behavior and if so, how are they dealt with? Well, before I could investigate any further, New York Times reporter Claudia LaRocco answered all these questions in an article headlined "Some at MoMA Show Forget ‘Look but Don’t Touch’" (April 16, 2010). To answer question # 1, it seems most of the performers are professional dancers and choreographers, one of whom a young contemporary dancer named Will Rawls is extensively quoted. And to answer question #2, yes, there have been cases of visitors giving themselves permission to touch the "art " and to make comments even though immobility and stillness are the key to these performances. The exhibit most subject to such incidents involves the "Imponderabilia" piece (originally featuring Abramovic herself) that has a nude man and woman facing each other in a narrow doorway so that visitors wanting to enter that way must squeeze past them. Mr. Rawls who is one of the performers relates how several weeks ago he noticed an older man preparing to walk through. "He proceeded to slide his hand onto my ribs and back and then touched my butt. As he was passing me he looked me in the eyes and said ‘You feel good, man.’ "

So how did Rawls and the museum deal with the man? Rawls said he turned just long enough to face the security guard and tell him that the man was touching him. The man wasn't handcuffed to sent to jail but MoMA did revoke his long-term membership and barred him from ever coming back. While not an every day occurence, according to another performer named Gary Lai quoted in the Times piece, there've been at least three instances of people "removed from the gallery for inappropriate touching".

Other incidents have included a visitor in high heels watching another performance inadvertently backed up onto female performer Kennis Hawkins' toes causing her to faint. Rawls also noted that having to stand with his arms at his sides has left him losing count of the erections felt across the back of his hand. There has also been unanticipated verbal audience participation ranging from praise to criticsim to wiseacre comments like "your fly is down."

Despite the unpleasant and unexpected encounters and the inherent challenges of these performances (the performance shifts have been reduced to 95 minutes after several performance fainting spells), the performers Ms.LaRocca spoke to were positive about the experience saying that it made them feel simultaneously more vulnerable and more empowered. As the previously quoted Gary Lai put it "You’re causing a definite reaction in the audience, different from the typical reaction you want in a regular stage performance. This is more about human nature."