Elizabeth Dee

It’s not uncommon for artists to innovate using references to other artworks from the past, but it’s practically unheard of for them to do so with actual art objects belonging to a major institution. But such is the case with British artist Oliver Beer, whose current show at The Met Breuer marks his first in New York. Beer, 34, is a sculptor, filmmaker and performer whose works focus on the acoustical properties of space, and here, that interest takes form as a group of items from the The Metropolitan Of Art’s storied holdings; the artist has selected 32 of them and assembled the group into an installation that could be described as a cross between a pipe organ and a seashell held to your ear. Vessel Orchestra, as Beer calls it, is just the latest in a series of the artist’s efforts to upend the traditional gallery paradigm. Sitting in his London studio, Beer talks about his latest piece, the performers and collaborators who’ve help him realize it, and his notion that art can be experienced audibly as well as a visually. Can you talk about your show and how it came about?   I was invited about three years ago to plan a show for The Met, and I settled on using objects from its collection with the idea of approaching them from a new angle—musically. I wanted to see how you could start to listen to historic artworks that we normally only look at.   How do you mean?   Because it filters ambient noise, a hollow object—a wine glass, say, or a seashell—continuously resonates at a f