Barbara Bloom

In The Reign of Narcissism, Barbara Bloom creates a personal museum devoted to her own likeness, which is emblazoned on all of the objects in the collection, including Greek-style sculptures and bas-reliefs, tea sets and chocolates displayed in vitrines, a tombstone, and a published series of books entitled The Complete Works of Barbara Bloom (1989). These are displayed in a hexagonal parlor-style room that evokes the private museum. A parody of the monomania that can consume collectors, this work is, for the artist, "less related to Freudian narcissism than it is to the narcissistic aspects of artmaking and collecting." _________MoMA