This is Only a Test July 1, 2006

David Hockney, Snails Space with Vari-Lites, "Painting as Performance", 1995-1996, oil on two canvases, acrylic on canvas, covered masonite, wood dowels, 84 1/4 x 264 x 135 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Nan Tucker McEvoy, 2003.31A-X

Offset from the modern/contemporary Lincoln Gallery is a dark room (the kind of museum space in which you might watch a video piece) where David Hockney's 1995–96 Snails Space With Vari-Lites, "Painting as Performance" is installed. It's a pointilist-looking group of pockmarked paintings that spill from the wall onto the floor; a series of variegated lights illuminate the piece, with the colors changing to emphasize different hues. I'm still looking for an opportunity to see this one in a quiet, meditative setting.

The last time I sat in the room (i.e., before the opening), I'd seen maybe two "rotations"—from a light setting that made the installation appear brightly blue to one with a red glow—when the fire alarm went off as a part of a test of the building's systems. (For a moment I puzzled over the bright bursts of light from the alarm installed in the faintly lit room. But it occurred to me, of course! deaf persons—like Hockney himself—wouldn't know about an emergency without the light.)

No alarms today, but the Hockney room is still buzzing—with a murmur of visitors seeing the piece installed here for the first time.

• David Hockney, Smithsonian American Art Museum