ONLINE TICKETS 
Jean Tinguely
Homage to New York (Klaxon)
Fragment
1960
Material / technique: Pram wheels, scrap iron, electric horn (klaxon), electric motor
Size: 48 x 70 x 65 cm
Inv.Number: 11139
Catalog: Bischofberger 1124
Creditline: Museum Tinguely, Basel
In 1960 Tinguely constructed his “Homage to New York” in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York , a 16-metre-long machine sculpture that self-destructs before the audience in a happening. This action, which naturally provoked a scandal, opened the doors of the American art scene to Tinguely for a few years. The collection of Museum Tinguely includes a fragment of this sculpture that – alongside a few others, among them a piece preserved at the Museum of Modern Art in New York – is one of the few remainders of the spectacular happening. Otherwise, we have only photos, a film, several eyewitness reports and a press article that comments in part enthusiastically and in part disapprovingly on what was a new kind of art for America as well.
Pictures in our Collection
The following applies for uses of pictures in relation to our collection:
Museum Tinguely does not own any copyright in works by Jean Tinguely or other artists in the collection. The clarification of these rights and payment in respect of them is a matter for the applicant. In Switzerland, the collecting society responsible for this is ProLitteris, Zurich (link website: www.prolitteris.ch). Museum Tinguely undertakes no liability for third party claims arising from infringement of copyright and personality rights.
Collection of Museum Tinguely
Works and work groups belonging to all phases of Jean Tinguely’s career are to be found in the museum's collection. Along with selected temporary loans, they afford the visitor an extensive view of the artist’s career. Apart from sculptures, the collection furthermore comprises a large number of drawings and letter-drawings, documents, exhibition posters, catalogues and documentation such as photographs. In the measure of the possible all the exhibits are accessible to the public and regularly shown, be it in the permanent collection or as loans to exhibitions worldwide.
The museum’s collections are the result of a generous donation by the artist’s widow, Niki de Saint Phalle, made on the occasion of its foundation, a donation of works from the Roche collection, as well as several other gifts and acquisitions.
>> Biography of Jean Tinguely
>> History of the collection