• A Day at the Museum in handwriting

    A Play Without Words

Sunshine portrays the three paintings in "A Day at the Museum": "Innocence", "Motherhood" and "Sensuality".  (photo:Chris Andersen)

Sunshine portrays the three paintings in "A Day at the Museum": "Innocence", "Motherhood" and "Sensuality". (photo:Chris Andersen)


A Day at the Museum

Play by Robert Barnett
Music by Brian Wilbur Grundstrom

Nudity, comedy, and art...set to music.


A wordless comedy set to an original orchestral score by Brian Wilbur Grundstrom. A nude woman in a painting looks out at people whose lives intersect while visiting an art museum. A playfully sexy look at love and art.


Washington DC Premiere

Directed by Perry T. Schwartz

A Day at the Museum Press Download Materials

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A Day at the Museum is a silent movie come to life. The play is an ensemble mime piece set to an original score by Brian Wilbur Grundstrom and takes place in an art museum over the course of a day. In this New York world premiere, the cast creates a quick-change soufflé of people and personalities whose interweaving storylines become a visual fugue as they visit a museum gallery to view a series of three paintings. The aging artist’s model wanting to share her past acclaim with her adult daughter…the snooty critic, the chattering matrons, the uncomprehending tourists, the put-upon docent, the lovers…become their own living pictures at an exhibition, set to the music that only we, the audience, hears.

"Much of the credit for A Day at the Museum’s success, however, has to go to Brian Wilbur Grundstrom’s striking score. It’s a curious, often intoxicating mix of chamber ensemble and electronic timbres. No mere incidental music, Grundstrom’s score works very much like a modern Wagner opera in miniature — leitmotifs letting you know not just who’s on stage, but also if they’re good or bad, happy or sad. Syncing live motion to canned music is a notoriously difficult enterprise. If I had just one wish, it would be that one day, this specific Day will get the real accompaniment it rightfully deserves."

Washington City Paper

"A Day at the Museum is an artful, surprising, and engaging Capital Fringe work .... Just as vital to this purpose is the score of Brian Wilbur Grundstrom who composed the music and also happens to be the play's producer. A celebrated composer, every step, shrug, head tilt, and double-take taken corresponds to the notes of Grundstrom's strong score."

Joshua Novikoff - DCist.com

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World Premiere

(formerly "Fugue Series")
Presented by The New Zenith Theatre
Directed by Ed Wierzbicki
New York International Fringe Festival


August 9,10,15,18 & 23, 2008
New School for Drama Theatre
151 Bank Street, New York, NY
Press Release

Fugue at New York International Fringe Festival - click for larger image

Fugue at New York International Fringe Festival - click for larger image