Mike Kelley’s monumental “Day is Done” has made the University of Michigan Museum of Art a very interesting place to visit. In fact, the idea behind this lengthy (169-minute) video presentation—the inaugural offering of the UMMA’s New Media Gallery—has made the UMMA a far more interesting venue for art.

Taking the words directly from the museum's gallery statement, this new space is “devoted to the breadth of thinking around ‘new media.’ Loosely defined as modern and contemporary work that employs new technologies, digital projects, video, computer graphics, and interactive techniques, new media frequently quotes previous work and exploits its inherent mass communication properties. As a premier university art museum, UMMA is known for its renowned encyclopedic holdings, and the New Media Gallery expands the museum’s ability to showcase the range of positions that contemporary artists are exploring through new media technologies.”

Located just off the UMMA Apse, in what was formerly the Works on Paper Gallery, this New Media space is going to present “three to four works every year by different emerging and established artists.”

A Los Angeles-based artist with U-M roots, Kelly’s “Day is Done” has been described by New York City’s Electronic Arts Intermix as being a “carnivalesque opus, genre-smashing epic in which vampires, dancing Goths, hillbillies, mimes, and demons come together in a kind of subversive musical theater/variety revue.”

And this is only part of the story, because the UMMA presentation consists of Parts 2 through 32 of Kelley’s ongoing “Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstructions.” “Day is Done” is ultimately meant to be a body of video works that will eventually include 365 parts, one for each day of the calendar year.

Based on a series of photographs culled from high-school yearbooks depicting various “extracurricular activities,” the video is a non-stop amalgamation of Hollywood, Broadway and “Waiting for Guffman.”

Each segment—often randomly intermingling and jumping backward and forward—represents what Kelley has described to NYC’s Artforum magazine as “‘socially accepted rituals of deviance’: dress-up days, religious performances, fashion shows, singles mixers, and talent shows—among others.”

All these elements are on display in joyful, jump-cut abandon. Some vignettes have a ragged quality suggesting amateur talent. But other segments are as well produced and directed as any feature film. Perhaps it’s not totally surprising that the “artwork” itself is available for purchase as both a DVD feature and soundtrack album.

Granted, three hours of videography is a bit of a stretch to sit through. Yet it seems Kelley also has this longevity in mind as a matter of artistic and audience endurance. When he titled the work “Day is Done”—the man meant what he said.

Each part of Kelley’s proceedings strives to push social mores to the wall and provoke thought. And this it does.

Just stay long enough for the work’s 10-minute intermission repetitively playing ambient music against an orange-tinged sunset over the Pacific ocean. This meditative entr'acte runs in direct contrast to the confrontational tone of the feature presentation, and it fully illustrates Kelley’s multifaceted theatricality.

At the least, “Day is Done” is a rousing way to open a new gallery. It’s also a rousing way to introduce new concepts of art. So ready or not: Couple this cutting-edge venue with the museum’s experimental Irving Stenn Jr. Family Project Gallery around the corner, and the UMMA is well into the 21st century.

“Mike Kelley: Day is Done” will continue through Dec. 31 at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, 525 S. State St. Museum hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. For information, call 734-763-UMMA or see the UMMA website.