This made MoMA’s kickoff of a series of 24-hour screenings on New Year’s Eve a perfect fit, a civilized alternative to the mobbed masses huddled to the south. The work strikes midnight dramatically with an extended clip from The Stranger, in which Orson Welles dangles from a clock tower, followed by 10 one-second clips by way of a punctuated countdown.

It must have been great for those who made it into the theater. For the 75 or so museumgoers stranded in line, The Clock was a more curious decision: There would be no dropping ball, no Mayor Bloomberg dancing with a surprise celebrity, no drunken shouts heralding the new year.

What could be said for them?

That they were the regular MoMA-going crowd: urbanites and tourists, art lovers and students, one 7-year-old and a smattering of well-heeled society-types who appeared close to midnight and seemed to slip past the line? That they’d chosen to pass the passing of another year passing time in a line to watch a film focused on time’s passage? That they’d forsaken food and drink and good cheer to quarantine themselves from the madness outside? Had they stepped out of time? Had time passed them by?

“They said nothing good happens after midnight,” said Tricia Melloy, in from New Jersey to see The Clock. “I guess I wanted to find out.”

“We wanted to avoid all the New Year’s nonsense,” Justin McKinney told the Transom.Mr. McKinney was in from Montreal with his wife. They’d spent some time watching The Clock earlier in the evening, and after a bite at the MoMA Café, they decided to stick around for the climax.

And so they waited in the museum’s second-floor atrium. They passed time in conversation, or stretched out on divans in the center of the room. They drifted into the contemporary galleries, or popped into the café for a dessert plate or a sip of champagne. One young woman gave the crowd a taste of the spectacle they were missing out on in the streets, pantomiming a strip tease on Philip Worthington’s “Shadow Monsters” installation. Not that anyone really noticed.

Time passed, the line inched forward, and those in it became philosophical.

“Time is arbitrary anyway,” Dan Nation told the Transom. Chinese New Year, he pointed out, is situated, more logically, at the end of winter. “Besides,” he said, “I imagine there are people waiting on line to get into a club somewhere.”

“It’s all very meta,” David Osit admitted, having given up on The Clock to lead two out-of-town friends in search of a bar. “The experience of watching something passing seemed interesting. The experience of waiting on line, not as much.”

Last-ditch strategies were discussed. Rush the door, someone suggested. Tell people the show is canceled. Yell fire. Midnight neared. With 30 seconds to go, an iPad was thrust in the air, live-streaming the end of the year. Everyone shouted out the last 10 seconds.

And then it was over. There were handshakes and hugs and sedate kisses. Everyone looked a little better than they should have in the soft museum light. Ten blocks south, amid the Times Square madness, thousands were dancing in neon, laughing and shouting and who the hell knows.

Time passed. At 12:06, the first lucky patrons began exiting the theater, but we were still waiting. —P.C.

From 'The Clock.'

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston has abandoned its original plan to charge $200 for its debut viewing of Christian Marclay's The Clock, following outrage from Bostonians and a displeased statement from Mr. Marclay himself. Instead, the 24-hour video installation will now be shown a day earlier for free — with admission when the museum is open, completely free when not — with the $200 viewing party going ahead as planned.

From the press release:

For the 24-hour premiere, The Clock is included in Museum admission during MFA hours—from 4 p.m. until 9 p.m. on Friday, September 16 and 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Saturday, September 17. Overnight from 9 p.m. (September 16) through 10 a.m. (September 17), when only The Clock will be on view, guests will be admitted free of charge. There are no reservations and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. The Loring Gallery will be arranged with couches and room for standing to accommodate a total of 48 visitors.

As thrown bones go, this one's not bad! Let's hope this pleases the Clockheads.

A still from Christian Marclay's "The Clock" (2010) (White Cube and Paula Cooper Gallery)

After drawing large crowds at the White Cube gallery in London, the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Venice Biennale, Christian Marclay's 24-hour film The Clock, which is comprised of thousands of short clips from a variety of movies that show time passing in real time, will go on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, on Sept. 17., at the opening of its contemporary art wing.

The ticket price? $200, which breaks down to about $8 per hour.

MFA officials argue that the steep admission price is to cover the cost of keeping the museum open through the night--the film will run from 7 p.m. on Sept. 17 to 7 p.m. the next day--and covering other aspects of the party, which includes food, drink and a performance by Irish artist Amanda Coogan, but the Boston Globe reports that some people are not pleased with the ticket price.

Artist and Kingston Gallery director Ilona Anderson called the price "revolting," and added, "If they want to cultivate an audience for contemporary art, they need to make it available. It shouldn’t be exclusive." And Ashley Lee, who writes about museum admissions fees, offered this trenchant argument: "Treating it as a gala opener and disrespecting its true, 24-hour purpose really degrades the work."

The museum says that it will schedule other 24-hour screenings of the film, without the $200 ticket price, later in the year. The rest of the time, it will be visible to the general public only during museum hours, meaning a vast section of the film will go largely unseen. The MFA also notes that the ticket price for the opening will decrease throughout the night. Arrive at 11 p.m. and admission is $100. At 3 a.m. it drops to $50, and it will become free at 7 a.m.

The Observer would like to float an alternative pricing scheme, which is sometimes adopted by organizers of Erik Satie's Vexations piano piece, a work that can last for more than 18 hours. (It features 180 notes, which are repeated 840 times.) Instead of charging people based on their early arrival, this method involves charging people when they leave, rewarding people who stay longer.

At a 1963 performance in New York, to cite one example, people paid $5 to enter the theater, but received a refund of 5 cents for every 20 minutes they stayed, and those that made it through the entire show actually earned 20 cents. Granted, that model may not be the best way to raise money.

Update: The Israel Museum announced today that it plans to show a copy of The Clock, on loan from Mr. Marclay, beginning Aug. 23.