Of course, simply generating surveys will not save archives; with proper funding, AS-AP plans to provide additional fiscal and professional assistance to Survey respondents in developing archiving strategies. Meanwhile, AS-AP will make its data public, allowing scholars to begin to gain insight into the alternative and avant-garde structure, spaces, artists’ groups, and organizations nationwide.
Additional Information
In Julie Ault’s groundbreaking volume Alternative Art New York, 1965–1985 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, in association with the Drawing Center, 2002) Ault makes a persuasive argument that New York alternative spaces and artists’ groups and organizations continue to influence the contemporary international art world. The cross-pollination of artistic venues during this time exemplifies how communities overlap, thrive, and otherwise extend themselves in multitudes of directions—be it through artists’ books and periodicals, in performance spaces, within gallery-like venues, or in public spaces as small as alleyways and as expansive as Times Square.
But how do later art historians research the avant-garde of not only New York but also the nation, especially when these spaces were busy promoting new art rather than commodifying or institutionalizing artistic practice or even documenting their own activities? The history of the American avant-garde is largely unwritten, unaccounted for, or undervalued, though it is generally accepted to have transformed contemporary artistic practices. Few catalogues were produced for programming, rare reviews appeared in newspapers or periodicals, and perhaps a postcard, handbill, or other ephemeral materials document the moment of artistic production. Often, only a few individual artworks can speak to the time, space, and energy of avant-garde activity and it is the record of these works that marks its realization, relevance, and understanding.
Avant-garde and alternative art was and is still produced through disparate communities in venues that are often unnoticed by contemporary art discourse. Many producers and centers of this activity have only the most cursory grasp of their own histories and perhaps do not recognize their file cabinets, banker boxes, or waste bins as valuable repositories—historically and monetarily. A comprehensive investigation of the archives of the producers and communities that formed the foundation of avant-garde culture across the United States is the first step in uncovering this lost history and contemporary avant-garde practices.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Art Spaces Archives Project [AS-AP]
Center for Curatorial Studies,
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504
Ann Butler, Project Director
845-758-7566
butler@bard.edu
Steering Committee
Michael Fahlund, College Art Association
Linda Earle,
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
Milan R. Hughston,
The Museum of Modern Art
Elizabeth Merena,
New York State Council on the Arts
Andrew Perchuk,
Getty Research Institute
David Platzker,
Specific Object
Marvin Taylor,
New York University, Fales Library & Special Collections
Martha Wilson,
Franklin Furnace Archive
Maria Lind,
CCS Bard Graduate Program
Founding Members: Betsy Sussler, Ann Kalmbach, Kerry McCarthy
FUNDING CREDITS
Art Spaces Archives Project [AS-AP] has received generous support from The New York State Council on the Arts [NYSCA], The National Endowment for the Arts [NEA], and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. AS-AP also gratefully acknowledges operating assistance from the College Art Association.