Vik Muniz’s Clouds offered millions of busy New Yorkers a reason to pause and smile during one week of dreary February afternoons: using a modified crop-dusting plane, a skywriter drew a series of cloud shapes—designed by Muniz—over the Manhattan skyline. The project reflected the artist’s interest in the illusory nature of even the most commonplace images or objects.

Clouds coincided with Muniz’s show, The Things Themselves: Pictures of Dust at the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as the premiere of a documentary about the Brazilian artist’s work entitled Worst Possible Illusion: The Curiosity Cabinet of Vik Muniz.

Multiple Artists

Clouds

New York City

2001