Brass art hits sour note - Front Page - Cornelia Parker's installation Breathless - Brief Article

British artist Cornelia Parker, known for sculptures made from exploded and crushed objects, recently received some noisy feedback for her site-specific installation Breathless. Part of a recently inaugurated wing at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, designed by architect Alastair Courlay in cooperation with interior design firm CassonMann, the approximately $80,000 commission is an arrangement of 54 brass band instruments, some of them antique, flattened by a hydraulic compressor. Filling a large oculus between two floors, the compressed wind instruments are suspended mid-air on thin wires to form a decorative horizontal plane.

While the installation has been generally well received, a number of musicians have expressed outrage over the piece. The work was intended as a tribute to Britain's brass band tradition, but Norman Harvey of the Churchill Society, which promotes music education in the U.K., told the BBC that the piece represents an act of vandalism. He called on the museum to contribute at least the cost of the piece to education charities that provide musical instruments for schools. Museum spokespersons, however, maintain that the instruments were in poor condition and most were beyond repair before they became part of Parker's artwork.

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