The Museum of Modern Art Acquires the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection of Fluxus Art

Various artists. Several versions of Flux Year Box. c. 1965. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, 2008.

NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art has acquired the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, widely considered the largest and most important of its kind in the world, MoMA Director Glenn D. Lowry announced today. The collection, which was assembled in Detroit over three decades by the Silvermans, comprises approximately 3,000 works in mediums ranging from printed ephemera, multiples, drawings, and sculptural objects, to photographs and film. In addition, an archival component includes more than 4,000 files with such items as artists’ correspondence, notebooks and scrapbooks, as well as documents and photographs related to Fluxus performances and events. The final component of the Silverman Fluxus Collection is a reference library of over 1,500 related books and catalogues.

Gilbert Silverman, a longstanding member of the Museum’s Trustee Committee on Museum Archives, Library, and Research, with his wife Lila began collecting works by Fluxus artists in 1978, following an interest in the Dada movement. “Fluxus,” a word encompassing flow and change, refers to a range of innovative and provocative artists, objects, and activities that emerged in the early 1960s. Building on an iconoclastic tradition fostered by Marcel Duchamp, and absorbing ideas about chance also encouraged by the work of John Cage, Fluxus combined visual art, experimental music, poetry and theater, and turned against the heroic Abstract Expressionist painting that dominated the 1950s.

“With this extraordinary gift, The Museum of Modern Art becomes a major center for scholarship on Fluxus art,” said Mr. Lowry. “These works bring a new depth to our collection and archives, and will allow curators, artists, and academics, along with our general public, to more fully understand the progression of avant-garde art as it relates to both the 20th century and to today. The Museum is profoundly grateful to the Silvermans for their generosity.”

“At MoMA, the Silverman Fluxus Collection will provide for a full representation of this highly significant art movement within the Museum’s permanent collection galleries, thus demonstrating its vital relationship to other avant-garde tendencies of the 1960s and 1970s,” said Peter Reed, Senior Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs. “Its distinction also lies in its ongoing relevance for contemporary artists today, working with a similar interdisciplinary approach and radical spirit.”

Through their ongoing commitment to Fluxus, the Silvermans have made their collection available to scholars from around the world and have loaned large components of it to exhibitions exploring this movement, in addition to documenting its role in post-war art through a range of important catalogues. The couple enlisted Jon Hendricks to serve as curator of the collection in 1981. At MoMA, Hendricks will serve in a consulting capacity, working with curators and archivists to integrate the Fluxus collection into the Museum’s holdings.

The focus of the Silverman Collection is the Fluxus movement as envisioned by George Maciunas (1931-1978), a Lithuanian-born American artist, art historian, and graphic designer, who gave Fluxus its name and served as its catalytic figure. It includes art by some 150 individuals, working both individually and collectively. Among those making major contributions to the movement were such artists as , George Brecht (American, 1926-2008), Robert Filliou (French, 1926-1987), Dick Higgins (American, 1938-1998), Milan Knížák (Czech, b. 1940), Alison Knowles (American, b. 1933), Yoko Ono (Japanese, b. 1933), Nam June Paik (American, b. Korea, 1932-2006), Benjamin Patterson (American, b. 1934), Mieko Shiomi (Japanese, b. 1938), Ben Vautier (French, b. Italy, 1935), Robert Watts (American, 1923-1988), La Monte Young (American, b. 1935), and many others.

While fostering an international viewpoint, Fluxus also celebrated the connections between life and art. Commonplace activities were elevated, and humor and irony encouraged. Ideas, concepts, chance events, and playfulness were favored over conventional artistic facility. Collectivity was esteemed as much as individual contributions.

Among the earliest manifestations of Fluxus, in 1962, were festivals held across Europe, in Wuppertal, Wiesbaden, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, London, and Paris. Ideas embodied in these unorthodox performances spread to a range of artists worldwide. Maciunas himself encouraged such collective activities and often designed posters, flyers, and announcements for them, with a graphic aesthetic that became a Fluxus signature. He also spread the word through Fluxus newspapers and other printed ephemera, and compiled work by Fluxus artists into scrapbook-like compendiums that he planned as periodicals. Among Maciunas’s compendium formats was the “Fluxkit,” comprising an attaché case filled with objects by various Fluxus figures. Some elements, known as “scores,” were written or printed instructions describing simple actions that could be undertaken by anyone and hopefully instigated wider participation in the movement.

Maciunas also planned for Fluxus centers from Amsterdam and Copenhagen, to Nice, Prague, and Tokyo, with some to include Flux Shops that could help in the sale of inexpensive, editioned Fluxus artworks. The goal was a kind of mass-production, with distribution methods that could circumvent the gallery system and combat the idea of art as commodity. Fluxus’s revolutionary and idealistic spirit provided the potential to make art available to all.

As the most definitive of its kind, the Silverman Fluxus Collection at The Museum of Modern Art will join other public collections where this generative movement can be seen and studied. Important repositories of Fluxus include the Archiv Sohm at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and the Jean Brown papers at the Getty Research Institute, as well as smaller concentrations of material at the Tate, Walker Art Center, Centre Pompidou, Moderna Museet, and several university museums.

Following a process of relocation and inventory, the Silverman Fluxus Collection will be available at MoMA for scholarly access and exhibition purposes. Cross-disciplinary in nature, the Collection will be utilized by curators from all Departments of the Museum.

Source:
http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=29018

Fluxus Collection Donated to MoMA

Courtesy MoMAGeorge Maciunas, Announcement of "Flux Shop & Mail Order Warehouse for Fluxus Newspaper No. 5" (1965)

NEW YORK—The Detroit developer Gilbert Silverman and his wife, Lila, have decided to donate their extensive collection of Fluxus works to the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Times reports.

Silverman first learned of Fluxus, the avant-garde movement of the 1960s and '70s whose best-known figures include Nam June Paik, Christo, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, and George Brecht, when he traveled to Japan in 1970. Since then he has assembled approximately 3,000 works in various mediums, more than 4,000 files’ worth of artist notebooks and correspondence and documents related to Fluxus events, and a library of over 1,500 volumes. All of it will go to MoMA, where he is an honorary trustee.

“I’ve been attached to three museums: the Modern, the Detroit Institute of Art, and the Israel Museum,” said Silverman. “But the Modern is the Mount Everest of the contemporary art museums, and I wanted it to be available to the public. It just makes sense.”

For MoMA, the donation represents an important addition to the collection. “It is a whole sector of the 1960s and early ’70s that has not been a part of our narrative in the way American Pop art and Minimalism has,” said Peter Reed, the museum’s senior deputy director for curatorial affairs.
Published: February 13, 2009
source: ARTINFO
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/30403/fluxus-collection-donated-to-moma/

MoMA Updates Identity, Acquires Giant Collection of Fluxus Art

MoMA Updates Identity, Acquires Giant Collection of Fluxus Art


Lots of news out of New York's Museum of Modern Art, but first things first: you have only a scant four days left to see the enduringly fascinating "Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave," our pick for Best Museum Exhibition of 2008. The show also happens to be one of the first to feature the museum's refreshed identity, masterminded by Pentagram's Paula Scher and and further developed and applied by Julia Hoffmann, MoMA's Creative Director for graphics and advertising. "The new system...employs prominent use of the MoMA logo as a graphic device, dramatic cropping and juxtapositions of artwork, and a brighter color palette to create a bold, contemporary image," notes Pentagram's blog. "The identity also underscores the museum's leadership role in the field of design." And can you name that typeface? That's right, it's Matthew Carter's MoMA Gothic.


As if the new identity wasn't excitement enough, today MoMA announced its acquisition of the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, widely considered the largest and most important of its kind in the world (and oh, how we hope it's all carefully tucked into old-fashioned suitcases!). Assembled over three decades by the Silvermans, the collection cosnsists of approximately 3,000 works "in mediums ranging from printed ephemera, multiples, drawings, and sculptural objects, to photographs and film." There are also thousands of files packed with artists' correspondence, notebooks and scrapbooks, and documents and photographs related to Fluxus performances and events. Capping things off is a reference library of more than 1,500 related books and catalogues. Among the 150 artists represented in the collection are George Maciunas (the artist, art historian, and graphic designer who coined the term "Fluxus"), George Brecht, Yoko Ono, Dick Higgins, and Nam June Paik.

source: http://www.mediabistro.com/unbeige/museums/moma_updates_identity_acquires_giant_collection_of_fluxus_art_108559.asp?c=rss

Fluxus Art Bolsters MoMA’s Collection

The New York Times

Inside Art
Fluxus Art Bolsters MoMA’s Collection


By CAROL VOGEL
Published: February 12, 2009

After he had collected things as curious as antique locks, the Detroit developer Gilbert Silverman started to embrace art of the avant-garde. “All I could afford was very late, contemporary art,” he recalled. “I liked Dada, but it was too expensive.”

On a trip to Japan in 1970 he discovered the work of the so-called Fluxus artists: an anti-art movement made up of a loose international collective of young writers, musicians and artists in the early 1960s that included figures like Nam June Paik, Christo, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono and George Brecht. The work was fun and engaging, so much so that Fluxus art soon became a 30-year, all-consuming passion for Mr. Silverman and his wife, Lila.

“I’ve found material all over the world: Japan, Czechoslovakia, Germany, France, the United States,” he said. Now Mr. Silverman, 84, and his wife have decided to give their entire Fluxus collection to the Museum of Modern Art, where he is an honorary trustee. The gift consists of about 3,000 works in many different mediums, like printed ephemera, multiples, drawings, sculptural objects, photographs and films. It also includes more than 4,000 files — artists’ correspondence, notebooks and scrapbooks as well as documents and photographs related to Fluxus performances and events — and a reference library of more than 1,500 books and catalogs.

“I’ve been attached to three museums: the Modern, the Detroit Institute of Art and the Israel Museum,” Mr. Silverman said. “But the Modern is the Mount Everest of the contemporary art museums, and I wanted it to be available to the public. It just makes sense.” Once the collection is inventoried, it will be available at MoMA to scholars from all over the world.

For the museum the gift shores up its collections in an important chapter in the history of modern art, one that has clear roots in New York, said Peter Reed, MoMA’s senior deputy director for curatorial affairs. “It is a whole sector of the 1960s and early ’70s that has not been a part of our narrative in the way American Pop Art and Minimalism has,” he added.

AROMATIC INSTALLATION

Imagine monumental, amorphous shapes of gossamer-thin fabric sacks that resemble massive teardrops or cow udders or even human intestines. Now picture them hanging from a ceiling in a bizarre cobweblike environment. That’s what will emerge when the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto takes over the cavernous drill shed at the Park Avenue Armory from May 15 through June 14.

The work of Mr. Neto, 44, who has created similar projects in Paris and Malmo, Sweden, will not only be tactile and visual but also aromatic. The membrane-like sacks are filled with a total of 1,800 pounds of pungent spices: turmeric and cumin, ginger, black pepper and clove.

His largest such installation to date, Mr. Neto’s commission is the start of what will be an annual program of site-specific contemporary art projects at the armory. “The space will give artists an unprecedented opportunity to create large-scale work,” said Rebecca Robertson, president of the Park Avenue Armory, who saw Mr. Neto’s work at the Pantheon in Paris in 2006, an installation she described as “a little bit heart stopping.”

The new project has been financed in part with a $200,000 Rockefeller innovation grant and includes educational programs.

Mr. Neto said that when he came to New York to see the armory, he was overwhelmed not only by its scale but also by the raw state of the drill shed. “It’s a very kind of romantic space that is one city block,” he said in a telephone interview from his home in Rio de Janeiro, explaining that this work will be divided into sections and floor pieces so that people will be able to walk through it.

“I am trying to create a space where you have different experiences that you move through,” he said. The pendulous sacks, he added, will be created to give the viewer the feeling that “everything is falling down.”

This isn’t the first monumental project in the drill shed that has been installed under Ms. Robertson’s watch. In September 2007 the artist Aaron Young created “Greeting Card,” a theatrical piece consisting of 10 motorcycle stunt riders performing for seven minutes on 288 panels of painted plywood covering the floor, the patterns from their ride creating colorful swirls and zigzags on the panels.

“Greeting Card” was organized by the nonprofit Art Production Fund, which presents art installations. Mr. Neto’s project has been put together by Ms. Robertson and Tom Eccles, the armory’s consulting curator and executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture at Bard College.


“You wouldn’t encounter something like this anywhere else in New York,” Mr. Eccles said. “It’s what the city needs — a space where you can try out something daring.”

AUCTION OF A BRETON

Christie’s decision last month to merge two departments — 19th-century European paintings with old masters — has left an opening for Sotheby’s. “Now there are few other places to come and see just 19th-century paintings that are not the Impressionists,” said Polly Satori, director of the Sotheby’s 19th-century European art department. (Ms. Satori, it should be noted, ran Christie’s 19th-century European art department from 1987 until 2000.)

“But we’re not a museum, we’re a business,” she added. “And in 2008 Sotheby’s sold $41 million worth of 19th-century paintings. It’s a good business. Ten of those works brought more than $1 million.”

On April 24, when the auction house holds its 19th-century sale, Ms. Satori anticipates the audience will be eager to visit its York Avenue galleries. One of the attractions will be “Washerwomen of the Breton Coast,” an 1870 landscape by the French realist Jules Breton.

The painting, which depicts a seascape with laundresses working by the water’s edge, once belonged to Edwin Denison Morgan, governor of New York during the Civil War era and a United States senator who died in 1883. After the sale of his estate in 1886 the painting disappeared and was known to scholars only as a black-and-white image in books and monographs.

Much to Ms. Satori’s surprise, the painting recently turned up in a Paris apartment, where the owner had hung it in his dining room since the 1950s. (No records of where he bought it exist, Ms. Satori said, nor can he remember where it came from.) Now Sotheby’s is selling the painting, and experts there say it could fetch $400,000 to $500,000.

“There’s a real fan club for this artist,” Ms. Satori said, adding that the price of the canvas was estimated conservatively given the tough economic climate. Several factors make the work particularly desirable, among them its large size — more than 4 by 6 feet — and its inclusion of several figures, something that was unusual for Breton. It is also a painting that he exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1870. “That shows it was something he was proud of,” she added.


A version of this article appeared in print on February 13, 2009, on page C28 of the New York edition.


Many thanks to Billie Maciunas who sent me the link to this article!