Image: Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams
MASS MoCA will present ‘Machine Dazzle: Changes: The Costume Design for Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,’ an exhibition of wearable sculptural costumes created for Taylor Mac’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated performance. The exhibition will go on view December 19, 2026, in gallery B6.2 at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts.
The presentation coincides with the United States’ 250th anniversary and examines the 24 decades since the country’s founding in 1776 through Machine Dazzle’s elaborate designs. The collection was created for ‘A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,’ a singular 24-hour performance art concert that considers the nation’s history through a queer lens and gives voice to marginalized communities often excluded from mainstream historical narratives.
The costumes incorporate images and objects associated with political movements, social histories, and inventions from the periods represented in the performance. Many of the garments use cast-off materials, which Machine Dazzle transforms into highly constructed and theatrical forms. The artist describes this approach as applying “glitter to litter,” a phrase that captures the designs’ combination of spectacle, reuse, and material-cultural reference.
According to MASS MoCA, the exhibition will feature extravagant looks that can be understood as sculptures as well as costumes. Their sources range across the objects and visual languages of American history, while their original function was bound to a live performance involving music, theatrical action, and an extended engagement with historical time. The North Adams presentation will shift these works from the stage into a gallery setting, where visitors can examine their surfaces, construction, and accumulated references directly.
Machine Dazzle has worked as an artist, costume designer, set designer, and performance artist for more than 30 years, presenting genre-defying work in settings ranging from Broadway to the runway. The designer was a co-recipient of the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Visual Design and received a Henry Hewes Design Award from the American Theatre Wing, as well as the TDF/Irene Sharaff Ascending Artist Award, formerly known as the Kitty Leech Ascending Artist Award.
The original production of ‘A 24-Decade History of Popular Music’ was presented as a work in progress at MASS MoCA before premiering in 2016. It was later adapted into an HBO Original Documentary Film directed by Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein and co-produced by Pomegranate Arts. Machine Dazzle won the 2024 Emmy Award for Outstanding Costume Design for the film. The costume exhibition will remain on view at MASS MoCA’s B6.2 beginning Saturday, December 19, 2026; no closing date is listed by the museum.
