In 2013, visitors to New York's Museum of Modern Art encountered actress Tilda Swinton sleeping in a raised glass box in the lobby, a performance piece titled *The Maybe*. Swinton first performed the work at London's Serpentine Gallery in 1995, developed with Joanna Scanlan, and has reprised it only twice: at Rome's Museo Baracco in 1996 and at MoMA in 2013. The MoMA iteration, curated by Klaus Biesenbach, featured Swinton alone in the glass case for eight hours a day over seven days, without the historical curiosities that accompanied the original Serpentine installation. Swinton has stated in a 2024 interview that she intends to perform *The Maybe* again "when least expected."
The piece matters because it bridges performance art, celebrity culture, and existential reflection. While some critics, like Jason Farago, noted the loss of context when the work was stripped of its original historical oddities, others interpret *The Maybe* as a memento mori, exploring the boundary between life and death in cultural spaces. Swinton revealed that the work was inspired by the deaths of filmmaker Derek Jarman and many friends from AIDS, transforming personal grief into a public meditation on presence and absence. The piece also highlights the intersection of high-profile figures and avant-garde art, a trend exemplified by Biesenbach's programming at MoMA P.S.1.