The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose

Read: June 2026
Format: eBook

I have been excited to read this since I came across it when I was looking for books with museum in the title. When I realised the author is Australian, it was an ideal pick for my Law of Fives challenge. Unfortunately, it wasn’t what I thought it would be, or what I wanted it to be.

The premise of the book is interesting. It uses the real-life artist Marina Abramović and the real exhibit The Artist is Present at the MoMA in New York in 2010 as the setting. It follows primary protagonist Arky Levin, and a handful of others, who find themselves drawn to visit the museum every day for the few months it’s on.

I thought this would be a reflective and character-focused novel that used the art piece as a way into the lives of the protagonists, and help them cope, learn something new or move forward with their relationships. I think it tries to do that, it wants to be a meditation on the meaning of art, and might be successful in doing so for other readers, but for me, it goes about it in a way I found very dull.

It felt like half the book was spent just telling me the history of Marina Abramović’s life and career. I found this very dry in a novel, and I’d have been better served reading a Wikipedia article. I find real-life people depicted in fiction a real turn-off. I think it reveals the artifice, because there is no way that the author knows the Truth of the person, I become more aware of the Writing and less engaged with the story.

The main protagonist is ageing film score composer Arky Levin. I didn’t warm much to Arky initially. He’s very wealthy, he knobs about the art intellectual Society set, he’s a New Yorker, and he’s an older man, so there is very little to relate to. And then the more I got to know him and more about his relationship with his wife and daughter was revealed, the more I disliked him, the more he started to disgust me.

The reason he’s a Sad Man and goes to the museum all the time is that his seriously ill wife is in a care home and has taken out a restraining order to stop him from visiting her. At first, it is framed like she did this out of love for him, because she wanted him to live his life without her as a burden. Later, it becomes clear he’s always been kind of a useless husband, relying on his brilliant, energetic and high-flying wife to do everything and to prop him up. I think she just couldn’t fucking deal with it anymore, alongside her degenerative illness. She didn’t need him to make her feel like a burden; she didn’t need to tell him how to care for her and constantly manage his feelings.

The fact that he’s content to submit to this arrangement, feels relieved by it, and doesn’t fight back against it speaks volumes. I didn’t know how his daughter, who is involved with her mother’s care, stands him. It isn’t until the end of the novel that he does something, and by then it is too late. I actually liked the ending for this character – I liked the ambiguity in his wife’s empty stare when he finally visits him. I just didn’t care to be along on this journey.

I realised that I’m not actually that interested in the types of people who can afford to spend entire days and weeks sitting in a museum watching a performance art exhibit. Arky can do it – not because he is retired, he’s not retired – but because he has a highly successful architect wife and he has a 1% highly paid creative job where he can keep his own hours. He has a house keeper than cleans and fills his fridge for him (arranged by his wife, he doesn’t even know how this woman is paid). He doesn’t have to do anything for himself. There is an incredible privilege in being able to indulge in that, which sort of makes those people less interesting to me… and this novel solidified that feeling rather than changing it.

Other characters are less materially wealthy but still have enough that they can enter this scene. A retired art teacher and Midwestern window who has inherited a successful business and can afford to stay for a couple of weeks in New York. An art PhD candidate from Amsterdam, writing her thesis on Marina Abramović; she has less money and must stay in a hostel, but there is still a privilege in being able to indulge in such a subject, and I couldn’t relate. An incredibly attractive NPR podcaster, singer, art critic, and friend ot Arky’s Healayas. Every time she appears on the page, we must be reminded of her beauty, her ‘ebony skin,’ and her sex life, which started to get a bit weird.

There are occasional chapters that try to frame the whole thing from the point of view of a muse who is visiting these characters, but this just felt cheesy to me. As did the idea of Marina’s mother being there as a ghost (and again, we have the fictionalised real person issue).

I found myself bored by 50%, and I powered through until I was basically just skim-reading the last 30% of it. I probably should have written it off as a DNF.

Also, the title – I didn’t feel much love in this book! Certainly not any concept of “Modern Love?” There was love in Jane’s grief over her husband, but Arky’s love for Lydia and his daughter is selfish; then we have Marina’s mother’s twisted, unshown and conditional love. Healayas is having an affair with her older married co-host, but this is mainly just sex. Much more present is the theme of regret and neglect. Whatever Heather Rose wanted to say about love in this book is lost on me.

I do find the concept of The Artist is Present to be interesting. You can watch videos of it on YouTube, and there is a quiet simplicity to it that I do find moving. However, I’m less sure about some of the artist’s other works!

For Law of Fives, this is a book by an Australian author… and the Aussies have a low hit rate. I seem to keep choosing the wrong books! I really thought this would be a winner!