In Lean Times, New Ways to Reach Out

March 19, 2009, The New York Times — Some 150 yoga fanatics, mats in hand, gathered in the second-floor atrium of the Museum of Modern Art one recent Saturday morning. They were there to “Put the oM in MoMA,” as the invitation read.

Assembled in a circle, the group practiced poses while on the walls surrounding them flowed giant images of budding tulips, slithering worms and a pig in a verdant meadow biting into a juicy apple, all part of the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s monumental video installation “Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters).” The free 75-minute class was such a success that there is talk of holding another in the museum’s sculpture garden.