Three Special Events in New York Tonight, 7 September 2016

Three Very Special Events Tonight

NYU Grey Art Gallery 100 Washington Square East A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avent-garde 19603-1980s curated by Lisa G. Corrin, Corinne Granof, Scott Krafft, Michelle Puetz, Joan Rothfuss, and Laura Wertheim Joseph; organized by Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University

6-8

NYU Fales Library in Bobst Library 70 Washington Square South Don’t Throw Anything Out: Charlotte Moorman’s Archive 4-7:30

CUNY Graduate Center James Gallery 365 Fifth Ave Alison Knowles: The House of Dust lison Knowles and Chloë Bass, Keren Benbenisty, Jérémie Bennequin, Hugo Brégeau, George Brecht, John Cage, Alejandro Cesarco, Jagna Ciuchta, Jean-Pascal Flavien, Mark Geffriaud, Beatrice Gibson, Eugen Gomringer, Dan Graham, Dick Higgins, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Allan Kaprow, Katarzyna Krakowiak, Nicholas Knight, Mikko Kuorinki, Alan Michelson, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Jenny Perlin, Nina Safainia, Mieko Shiomi, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Emmett Williams and more; curated by Katherine Carl, Maud Jacquin, and Sébastien Pluot 6-8

In what is arguably the most important museum exhibition of the Fall season, the Grey Art Gallery is presenting a tribute to Charlotte Moorman, who in a sense defined the avant-garde in the middle of the last century. From performance to video to curatorial work and event organization, she was everywhere and knew and supported everyone. The fifteen years she presented her annual avant-garde festivals in various spaces in New York, even as she was feeling the effects of the cancer that would kill her, are among the most fruitful in the development of the most radical form of art that had been seen since the end of the Nineteenth Century in Paris.  As a participant in some with my colleague Daryl Chin, I still remember the zest that both presenters and viewers felt during the events.

Charlotte Moorman was a friend and colleague to so many other artists during the perioed, including Alison Knowles, who is herself the subject of another univeristy exhibiton opening tonight at the James Gallery at the CUNY Graduate Center. Many of the works in this show are by artists, like Moorman’s collaborator Nam June Paik, who were closely associated with Knowles and her husband Dick Higgins throughout the later decades of the last century. As a side note, my colleague Daryl Chin and I cast their daughter Jessica Higgins in a number of performance pieces we staged in the Eighties.

In this image of a performance event from over three decades ago, many of the people in these exhibitions appear:

The Future of an Illusionism 1983

A performance panel conceived and directed by Daryl Chin with (left to right): Simone Forti, Elaine Summers, Michael Kirby, Alison Knowles, Carolee Schneemann, Charlotte Moorman.