Goodnight Moon: A Rhythm, A Tempo

Matthew-Robin Nye | The Rooms | November 21, 2025 – March 8, 2026

Reviewed by Mary Germaine 

Around the corner and past Erica Rutherford’s scenes of an otherworldly desert society, you’ll find the door to a second dreamy situation: Matthew-Robin Nye’s installation Goodnight Moon: A Rhythm, A Tempo. The life-size re-creation of “the great green room” from the 1947 bedtime book is an experiment in how a space may dictate the cadence of experience. And for avid readers of Goodnight Moon such as myself and the Precious Angel (my ten month-old gallery companion), it’s like a little trip to Harry Potter World or Disneyland, a chance to walk around inside the story. 

Except there isn’t much story to Goodnight Moon. In fact there’s no plot at all, just a slow tour of the room and a good night wish to each object therein. This attention to scenery is the focus of Nye’s project. Visitors are invited to slip off their boots, step onto the stage, and explore craftsman Rob Bird’s incredibly accurate construction of Clement Hurd’s illustrations. The comb, the brush, the bowl of mush, and the socks, the mittens—everything’s there except the two kittens. 

As soon as she was set free on the vermillion floor, the Precious Angel began acting exactly as she does at every bedtime: crawling away, clapping her hands, smiling, and trying to eat any wooly-boos she finds on the bed. She delights in anything that could accidentally kill her, so she was especially thrilled by the ball of yarn. 

Hard to say if she noticed, but the exhibit is chock-a-block with visual rhymes. Though many are original to the book (two clocks, two socks), Nye has made his own additions. The black slippers for visitors, arranged neatly at the edge of the platform, echo the moccasins beside the bed, and the framed pictures on the gallery walls match the pictures on the opposite green walls.

What’s more, Nye’s “little toyhouse” contains an even littler version of the great green room, and it, of course, has a little toyhouse of its own, which, we must imagine, might also contain a green room, and so on. We are looking at an infinite regress of bedtime scenes, not to mention a delightful confluence with the Toby Rabinowitz show “A World Within A World” also on display right now.

How do these repetitions set the pace? Usually there’s some compulsory activity that gives a place its specific rhythm; the Basilica and the Costco parking lot each make their expectations clear. But the life-size Goodnight Moon does not ask much of its visitors. (In that sense, it’s very different from the book version, which is always intended to gently make someone—please God—go to sleep.) The rhythm of the installation, well, it’s a lot like any art gallery’s. Same variety of moseying, sitting, looking at what you see or letting it wash over you. 

This pace is not the most radical or interesting aspect of the installation. Instead, the bizarre elements of the book that Nye has amplified are the most compelling. For reasons unknown, Hurd’s drawing includes a copy of Goodnight Moon on the bedside table of Goodnight Moon. Nye has done the same, forcing us visitors to do a double take. What world are we in? Have we stepped into the fictional green room? Or are we still in the real one, where we only read about such a place? 

In these uncanny times, artwork that manages to make ambiguity unthreatening is a welcome relief. For the second time today (or third, or eighth, depending on how many times you check the news) you may ask yourself, am I dreaming? without dreading the answer. 

Mary Germaine is a PhD student at the University of New Brunswick living in St. John’s. Her book is Congratulations, Rhododendrons (House of Anansi Press).