NEAR the entrance to "Ecstasy," the winning new thematic group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art's Little Tokyo warehouse space, Berlin artist Klaus Weber has installed a three-tiered fountain made from Victorian cut-glass. Water gaily burbles from the otherwise rather cheesy-looking fountain, splashing down the crystal tiers into a square concrete pool surrounded by tempered-glass walls.
According to a signed certificate hanging on a nearby wall, the fountain's water is laced with LSD. The most potent psychotropic substance known to science, it was produced for the artist in a British homeopathy lab. The fountain is a signature piece for a show that proposes art as a mind-altering substance. Think of it as the drug culture equivalent of a champagne fountain at a wedding celebration, or maybe a chocolate fountain at the party after a movie premiere.
Presumably, a visitor could reach over the fountain's surrounding glass walls, wet his finger and take a taste, launching into an altered state of consciousness for up to six hours. According to the homeopath's website, a mere 1/6 milligram of the drug is sufficient to induce and maintain the trip.
There's just one hitch. Is it true? Is the fountain really spurting LSD?
We trust what our museums tell us about the art they enshrine. And great art is itself commonly supposed to contain inherent transformational properties. Does this one? There's an obvious way to know for sure, but like Eve with the apple, getting that knowledge requires a long-term commitment after breaking a museum taboo: Do Not Touch. Reaching over the glass barrier is verboten.
What predominates here? Does the authority of the museum prevail -- or the authority of the artist, or the viewer? Does some negotiation take place among all three?
Over in the corner on a pedestal, Weber has installed a small wooden model for a pavilion he wants to build in Dresden, Germany, to permanently house the LSD fountain. His crystal palace is a sleek Modernist box, meant to be plunked down over an existing urban landscape. Instantly all the mundane things on the street -- trees, lampposts, fireplugs, park benches, sidewalks, trashcans -- would be transformed into artifacts in a virtual museum of modern life. The LSD fountain gurgles in the center.
