Installation
Lynn Hershman Leeson
Wednesday, 24 Sep 2008 to Saturday, 25 Oct 2008
September 24 – October 25, 2008.
Gallery admission is free.
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New Langton Arts presents a selection of documents and ephemera from the archive of The Floating Museum, a project produced by Bay Area artist Lynn Hershman Leeson between 1975 and 1978. The Floating Museum was an early, unprecedented artist-curated model for exhibiting public and site-specific art. A pioneering organization, the Museum commissioned artists to create installations in rural landscapes, public buildings, city streets, and prison courtyards, as well as in the non-space of sound and the airwaves. Encouraged to use nontraditional art forms (at the time) such as video, performance, and environmental installation, Bay Area, national, and international artists produced over three hundred projects. Artists that participated in The Floating Museum included: Michael Asher, Eleanor Antin, Peter d’Agostino, Newton and Helen Harrison, Teresa Hak Kyung Cha, Douglas Davis, Motion, Judith Barry, Paul Cotton, and many others.
The Floating Museum allowed artists whose work did not fit the boundaries of the gallery to produce and present their work. A fundamental concept of The Floating Museum was to recycle existing resources and spaces, with the intention of bringing the artist’s work directly to the viewer in public places, transforming local sites into temporary exhibition spaces. The Floating Museum was structured as a collaborative, self-organized rotating system supported by membership donations.
Langton showcases an extensive selection of digital images from the archive of The Floating Museum held in the Special Collections of Stanford University. These images include among others, the exhibition (H)errata: a collaborative exhibition design with Jo Hanson and Pat Tavenner to correct the errors and omissions of women in local museum exhibitions; Global Space Invasion Phase I: a showed that presented new works by artists that traveled from California to various parts of the globe creating works that related to the countries visited; Global Space Invasion Phase II: an exhibition produced in collaboration with SFMOMA that used spaces in the city—from the Bay Area Rapid Transit to elevators and alleys—for staging the work of over one hundred artists; and the San Quentin Mural Project: a mural project produced by the prisoners of San Quentin. Alongside ephemera from the Global Space Invasion Phase II show, Langton will display documentation of projects by Eleanor Antin, Helen and Newton Harrison, Suzanne Lacy, and Peter d’Agostino. The Archive of Hershman Leeson’s The Floating Museum resides in the Special Collections at Stanford University.
THE FLOATING MUSEUM (1975-1978): LYNN HERSHMAN LEESON
Production, installation, and support: Sandra Percival, Director María del Carmen Carrión, Associate Curator Pete Nelson, Preparator Sam Spiewak, Development and Communication Zoe Taleporos, Gallery Manager Claudia Stillwell, Finances
We wish to specially thank artist Lynn Hershman Leeson whose visionary work is the subject of a year long dispersed survey in the Bay Area and for her diligence in making accessible information and material from The Floating Museum for the show at Langton. We also thank wish to thank artists Peter d’Agostino and Suzanne Lacy for contributing documentation and work from their archives. Special thanks go to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for loaning ephemera from the Global Space Invasion II show; and to Robert Trujillo, Frances and Charles Field Curator for Special Collections, The Stanford University Libraries, Stanford University, for facilitating access to The Floating Museum archive they hold, and granting permission to photograph it. Many thanks to Jeff Aldrich for photography, and Grace Cook-Anderson for archive research; very special thanks to Langton’s interns Mai Nguyen, Elizabeth Bidart, Anne Motlow, Emily Carr, Maria Ellena Ortiz, Melissa Martin, Sharron Lerner, Xiaoyu Weng; and to our many volunteers.
We wish to specially thank artist Julio Cesar Morales, Max La Riviere-Hedrick, Norma Listman, and Daniel Gorrell for their visionary work, Interrupted Passage, a project whose development and realization has been ongoing with Sandra Percival and New Langton Arts since 2004. We also thank him for his exhibition, tomorrow is for those who can hear it coming, the first in Langton’s newly renovated space.
Support for The Floating Museum (1975-1978): Lynn Hershman Leeson comes from the Adobe Foundation Fund at Community Foundation Silicon Valley, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation.
Langton receives significant support from Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation. Langton would like to extend a special thanks to our donors and supporters including Jerry and Jane Baldwin, Arthur S. Berliner and Marian Lever, Tecoah and Tom Bruce, Cecily Cameron and Derek Schrier, Timothy Collins and Susan Crossley, Kyu Che and Kumi Akiyoshi, Arianne Dar, Evie and Matt Davis, Christopher and Lara Deam, Christopher and Lisi Dean, Benjamin Dillon, Paul Dresher, Robert and Randi Fisher, Gruber Family Foundation, Cheryl Haines, Catherine and Daniel Homsey, Nancy and Tim Howes, Charles and Naomie Kremer, Laurence Mathews and Brian Saliman, Meridee Moore and Kevin King, Blair Moll, Sandra Percival, Lenore Perieira and Richard Niles, Steve and Nancy Oliver, Ted Ridgway and Ellena Ochoa, Ned and Holly Scheetz, Helen Schwab, Lisette Sell and Greg Lehman, Robert Shimshak and Marion Brenner, Jessica Silverman, The Swig Foundation, Laura Sydell, Susanne Vielmetter, Christopher E. Vroom, Robin Wright and Ian Reeves, Alex and Fiona Zecca; and to our Presenter and ArtNow members, along with all of our individual members, interns and volunteers without whom our artistic program would not be possible.
The Floating Museum (1975-1978) is part of Lynn Hershman Leeson: A project of Life², a year-long exhibition series on the work of Lynn Hershman Leeson initiated by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and jointly organized by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the de Young Museum, the Hess Collection, New Langton Arts, SFMOMA, and the 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge at the San Jose Museum of Art.
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