Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.

Cart Full of Action

Cady Noland American

Not on view

The title, Cart Full of Action, is at odds with the sculpture itself: an industrial cart, scarred by use, into which an assortment of found automobile fixtures and accessories—hubcaps, a side-view mirror, and cleaning supplies—have been piled in a seemingly haphazard fashion. If the cart promises action at all, it is that of a shopper walking down an aisle or a drifter collecting items along a street. The automobile is an icon of American culture, a symbol of both prosperity and excitement, not to mention virile masculinity. Noland, however, makes of it something other: dissected into parts that amount to no conceivable whole, the car figured here is alluring, perhaps, but impotent, dysfunctional, full only of unrealized potential.

Cart Full of Action, Cady Noland (American, born Washington, D.C., 1956), Industrial cart, hubcaps, car parts

Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.

Open Access

As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.

API

Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API.