Promotions for Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album were recently projected on several museums in New York City ahead of its hotly anticipated March 29 release.
Among those institutions were the Guggenheim, the Whitney, and the New Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design. The rotunda of the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Guggenheim displayed the projected phrases: “This ain’t a country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.”
The lines are taken from Beyoncé’s March 19 Instagram post outlining her thoughts about the country music genre, how she didn’t feel that musicians welcomed her working in it, and the criticism she experienced before becoming the first Black woman with a #1 single on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart.
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The singer posted an Instagram story on Wednesday night highlighting the coordinates of the museum.
The cover image of Cowboy Carter features Beyoncé dressed as a rodeo queen, riding side-saddle on a white horse and holding the American flag. This image was also projected on the exteriors of the New Museum, the Whitney Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design on Wednesday night.
Parkwood Entertainment is the management, production, entertainment company and record label founded by Beyoncé in 2010. On the evening of March 20 and the morning of March 21, Parkwood senior vice-president Justina Omokhua posted images of the “Cowboy Carter” projections at the Guggenheim Museum, the New Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design to her Instagram Stories.
The Guggenheim’s own Instagram account acknowledged the musician’s fan base with a post on the morning of March 21 about Franz Marc’s 1910 painting Three Horses Drinking that led with “This ain’t Texas.” The same sentence is the opening line of “Texas Hold ‘Em,” the co-lead single of Cowboy Carter.
Then came an official statement from the Guggenheim to ARTnews saying that the institution “was not informed about and did not authorize this activation. However, we invite the public—including Beyoncé and her devoted fans—to visit the museum May 16–20 when we present projections by artist Jenny Holzer on the facade of our iconic building to celebrate the opening of her major exhibition.”
Press statements to ARTnews from the other museums also indicated the promotions for “Cowboy Carter” were a surprise.
“While the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) was not involved in the activation, we are thrilled to see Beyoncé shining a light on the importance of museums in the cultural landscape. Her influence undoubtedly opens doors for even more people to explore and appreciate Black creativity, such as pioneering textile artist Sonya Clark, whose comprehensive survey, “Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other,” opens this weekend at MAD.”
The email statement from the Whitney Museum press office to ARTnews was even simpler: “We wish Beyoncé well with her album, and look forward to seeing her at the Whitney Biennial soon”.
Some fans online also noted that the Guggenheim’s current exhibition, “Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility” is a presentation of “more than 100 works by a group of 28 artists, the majority of whom are Black and more than half of whom are women.”
Design critic Alexandra Lange also noted on X that the “Guggenheim owns the rights to reproductions of itself, so if you want to publish your own photo of the museum you have to pay them”.
Beyoncé worked with the Louvre for an album launch in 2018, when she and Jay-Z released a video for the song “Apeshit“ to promote their collaborative album Everything Is Love. Much of the video was filmed at the Louvre in Paris and included dramatic shots of numerous masterpieces from the museum’s collection, including the Mona Lisa. The museum’s website still features a self-guided tour of the highlights from the “Apeshit” video.
Representatives from the New Museum did respond to requests for comment from ARTnews.
Update, March 21, 2024: updated after publication to include a statement from the Guggenheim Museum Press Office.
Update, March 22, 2024: updated after publication to include a statement from the Whitney Museum press office, the Museum of Arts and Design press office, screenshots from Parkwood Entertainment executive Justina Omokhua, and comment from Alexandra Lange.