Franz Ackermann’s site-specific installation Songline, 1998, is another milestone in the rigorous development of his work. In previous shows, Ackermann deployed street scenes and topographical maps as metaphors for movement, travel, and urban existence; here he constructed a space through which the viewer can move. He built freestanding plaster dividers inside the actual walls of the museum, so that one initially experienced the work as an architectural intervention, a hermetic space-within-a-space reminiscent of the living-cells created by the French artist Absalon.

Entering the installation