Tell Me Something Good: A Collaboration between Kim Schoenstadt and Rita McBride at the Santa Monica Museum of Art takes Art by Telephone as its inspiration and its starting point. For the project room at SMMoA, Schoenstadt conceived of an exhibition in which both artists would literally phone it in: each would tell the other what to produce. Schoenstadt made and installed a body of work to McBride’s specifications; McBride’s work, in turn was made in accord with Schoenstadt’s instruction. Like its MCA predecessor, Tell Me Something Good featured a catalog in LP form, which played throughout the duration of the show—allowing visitors to hear the primary source material from which the exhibition has sprung.

Tell Me Something Good, the song title of the 1974 hit by the funk band Rufus, refers to Schoenstadt’s and McBride’s voice-only exchange. It slyly asks each artist to be kind to the other, to communicate a project that can be produced successfully, or perhaps even to suggest something up the other’s alley.