For 1 night only, MoMA is screening the entire 24-hour movie ‘The Clock’

The iconic video art piece “The Clock” is being shown at MoMA for the first time in 12 years – and a few lucky visitors will be able to spend a night at the museum on Dec. 21 to view the 24-hour artwork in its entirety.

The Swiss-American artist Christian Marclay and his team spent two years combing through film and television clips to assemble “The Clock,” a video montage of thousands of time reference clips spliced together and synchronized to local time.

The film is synchronized to real time, so when Bruce Willis grabs his father’s watch in a scene from “Pulp Fiction,” the time on that watch is the time on your own. At 12:20 a.m., James Bond checks his watch; at 6:30 a.m., Meryl Streep hits her alarm clock and this continues, clip after clip, for 24 hours.

“The Clock” is currently on at MoMA through Feb. 17. But with admission generally limited to normal museum hours, more than half of the 24-hour work cannot be seen. MoMA’s special 24-hour viewing aims to remedy that.

At 7 p.m. on Dec. 21, which is normally the museum’s closing time, the main lobby, second-floor galleries, and “Clock” gallery will remain open.

The museum store and a holiday pop-up featuring drinks and light snacks will remain open until midnight. And “The Clock” will remain open all night, with the final admission at 5:30 a.m.

Reservations are required, and become available to the general public at 11 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 12. Museum members could get tickets earlier and receive priority admission, but a block of seats on sale are reserved for the general public.

“The Clock” debuted in London in 2010 and quickly became a critical darling. It debuted in the U.S. at Paula Cooper gallery in Chelsea in 2011, and “gained rapid notoriety – within a few weeks daytime lines stretched 90 minutes out the gallery door into the February cold. After hours, drunken party-goers leaving bars stopped by for a few snatches of “Clock” time.

Only six copies of the work exist, with five owned by museums and galleries, including MoMA, and one owned by hedge fund billionaire and Mets owner Steve Cohen (who showed it on a monitor in his office). The work has not been screened publicly in New York since the winter of 2012-13.

Tickets for the 24-hour viewing of “The Clock” go on sale online at 11 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 12. They are included with regular museum admission of $30 and are available here.