Art Production Fund and Rockefeller Center are proud to present a new public Art in Focus exhibition by Cynthia Talmadge, now on view across the Rockefeller Center campus.

Kicking off the iconic holiday season at Rockefeller Center, the site-specific installation situates Talmadge’s rigorously detailed and conceptually layered practice within the historical and cultural context of the Center. Here, Talmadge continues the story of Alan Smithee, an ongoing character and muse in her work. “Alan Smithee” has been historically used by Hollywood directors who remove their names from a film gone wrong. Talmadge brings that pseudonym to life, imagining Smithee as a man with a colorful personal life and new ambitions. In her exhibitions, his story appears through objects that act as both props and evidence.

The first act, Goodbye to All This: Alan Smithee Off Broadway, was shown at Bortolami Gallery in 2023. There, Smithee appeared as a washed-up Hollywood director with over eighty films and countless burnt bridges behind him, recently divorced, he's left with only his Tribeca loft, beloved Maserati, and a newfound ambition to win serious artistic acclaim as an experimental playwright. Talmadge continues Smithee's story for Rockefeller Center.

This time, the colors explode in fuchsia, sky blue, and acid green, fitting a delirious new chapter. Capitalizing on a specious rumor that he is Irving Berlin’s nephew, he sets his sights on creating a hit musical. Riding the wave of accidental nepotism, he throws himself into a frenzied creative episode—working without sleep, writing a shamelessly clichéd musical that heavily “borrows” melodies and themes by Sondheim and others. To everyone’s shock, his show, The Sound of Manhattan, is a massive commercial success. Smithee stars as himself, and for a brief moment the troubled director remembers the warmth of a life in the spotlight. Unsurprisingly, his professional relationships sour and paranoia takes hold—he is convinced the stagehands and technicians are plotting his murder. In a fevered haze, he stumbles into Bemelmans, “singing” for bewildered patrons before being carried off to Bellevue Hospital. In a final craze, Smithee vandalizes and boycotts his own Broadway show.

Talmadge employs sculptural elements to bring Smithee’s world to life. Skewed dioramas of his new musical's set fill a 45 Rockefeller Plaza lobby vitrine, and another contains a bright pink Hollywood star of his name now wears a comedy-tragedy mask. Playbill posters, freshly designed, are scrawled and annotated in Smithee’s hand, as if hot off the press from his chaotic imagination. Photographs of costumes from the production showcase the leading man's pajamas: heavily patched baby-blue plaids clash with green and pink piping, projecting a well rehearsed eccentricity. Even within Talmadge's clear frame narrative, the objects she imagines shift too easily between costume and clothing, object and prop. It is hard to distinguish any boundaries when Smithee is always playing himself.