Image: Photo by R.A. Shuff, featured on The Vera List Center for Arts and Politics website during the AICA-USA Distinguished Critic Lecture at The New School, Wed 30 Oct 2013
http://www.veralistcenter.org/engage/event/1888/lucy-lippard/
An Inspirational Quote:
Installation is when you finally get to see what you’ve got as a whole instead of in fragments, it’s like holding a finished book in your hands at last, and makes the whole grueling process worthwhile.
—Lucy Lippard, From Conceptualism to Feminism Lucy Lippard’s Number Shows 1969-1974
Selected Exhibitions:
Eccentric Abstraction
In 1966 Lippard curated her first exhibition titled, Eccentric Abstraction, a group exhibition that featured artist such as Alice Adams, Louis Bourgeois, Gary Kuehn, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, Don Potts, Keith Sonnier and Frank Lincoln who were all creating innovative and new practices related to three-dimensional sculptures.[1] This exhibition blurred boundaries of what sculpture could be. Lippard also challenged the lines and her role as an arts administrator as she from critic to curator. Though, Lippard never saw herself as a curator; she considered her work, especially this exhibition, as a form of response or criticism.[2] Eccentric Abstraction was organized at the Fischbach Gallery in New York and became an important exhibition in Lippard's career.[3]
Number Shows: 1969-1974
From 1969-1974, Lippard created a multi-year curatorial project that allowed her to organize and curate four popular exhibitions since dubbed The Number Shows. This project came about after Lippard started working on an exhibition in May of 1969 titled, Number 7, which was featured at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York. Number 7 featured thirty-nine artists, all of whom were also featured in later shows. This exhibition brought together post-minimalist process-based conceptual art and work with a political focus.[4] Lippard credits this exhibition as being a progenitor of the other number shows, which would follow a few years later.[5]
The Number Shows became a popular series. Each project was hosted in a different city, with four specific locations each named after the city's population. Due to the low budget and lack of resources Lippard used an informal and nontraditional method called “Suitcase Shows” a model of creating work that could be transported from country to country. Because of her do-it-yourself curatorial method, a majority of the artworks she solicited were transportable, easy to produce on site, at and consisted of instructions provided by on 4x6 index cards by the artists who were often absent during the install and exhibition.[6] While the idea was innovative and economically easier than traveling with work or artists, it also lead to different interpretations of how the work was to be made or exhibited. Her hope for this project was to bypass institutions and encourage more international networking and face-to-face interactions amongst artists. For these exhibitions, the titles came from approximate population figures used to generate a natural, non-associative, non-relatable exhibition or category for artists to box themselves in and were scattered around the cities in which they were shown. Sometimes the exhibitions were expansive and scattered in a wide range of locations, including gallery space and site-specific installations around town.[7] Lippard wanted the exhibitions to be all-inclusive for the audience. The Number Shows did not include painting but instead sculpture, site-based items, photography, film, and sound art that were completely text-based or ephemeral in form and intention.[8] Additionally, her catalogue for the exhibits was written on 4x6 index cards and existed informally, which added another layer to the exhibitions and shined light on the way she worked.
In 1969, the exhibition 557,087 took place at Seattle World’s Fair Pavilion and ran from September 5 to October 5. This exhibition brought a new style of art to larger audience as Lippard had hoped and was sponsored by the Contemporary Art Council of the Seattle Art Museum. The exhibition consisted of 69 artists. After 557,087 she curated the second number show, which took place at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Student Union at the university of British Columbia from January 13 to February 8 of 1970. This exhibition included 62 artists and was titled 955,000, the numerical sum of Vancouver’s population. The third number show took place in December of 1970 and featured new artists that Lippard had never shown before. The exhibition, titled 2,972,453 after the population of Buenos Aires was on view at Centro De Arte Y Comunicación.
In the last of the series of her numbers exhibitions Lippard partnered with Cal Arts to curate an exhibition featuring only women, 26 in fact, most of whom she had never shown before.[9] This exhibition, 7,500, became a landmark for Lippard and a bridge to the rest of her life as a critic and curator. Starting at Cal Arts in Valencia, California, during May of 1973, 7,500 then went on a seven-year tour until February 1974. Lippard thought it was important for women to have a voice in the art world and soon became one of the leading figures in feminism.
Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries; consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia and Asia (with occasional political overtones)
Six Years is not a curatorial exhibition but a curatorial project book of records and archives from Lippard during the time frame of 1966-1972. This book became a catalogue that described the emergence of conceptual art in the late sixties and early seventies as a critical and chronological framework. The book acted as a written exhibition and was described by Lippard as her best curatorial experience.[10]
Six Years mirrored her number shows in situating artists and works of art. Lippard describes her approach as both the organizer of the number exhibitions and the writer/complier of the publication as one of over-the-top accumulation, the result of a politically intentional feminist and anti-exclusive aesthetic.[11] Six Years was an amazing book that many still look at today. It was an archival project that was cumulative, organized; energetic and mixed the voice of a curator, writer and cultural worker.
Mixed Blessings
Throughout Lippard’s career, her work has been about blending art, politics, and culture into the art world in hopes of creating an inclusive culture. Many of her projects have thought about the role of women artists but she is also interested in creating power for artists of color and different ethnicities during a time period where it was absent. Mixed blessings, while not an exhibition, still fits into the idea of one. Lippard used her analytical and writing skills to once again format a book-based exhibition project that was not a dissection of art, but again a critical response to the system. Lippard writes: “The art produced here demonstrates the ways in which cultures see themselves and others; it represents the acts of claiming turf and crossing boundaries now in 1990."[12] The book features a large group of art made by women and men from many cultural backgrounds and, at the time, offered a new view of what the art world could look like. Mixed Blessing does more than just show the work, it tells a narrative, becomes an important tool, and offers new voices and perspectives. Lippard’s book catalogs multicultural artists one after another and builds on the discussion of representation, stereotypes, identity, and discrimination. The book becomes an important tool.
Biography, Education, and Career:
Lippard was born on April 14, 1937, in New York to parents Vernon Lippard MD and Margaret Cross. She attended Smith College, graduating in 1958 with a BA in Art and then New York University Institute of Fine Art, for her MA in 1962. During her time at New York University, she also traveled to Florence for an Art History course.[13] After graduating from Smith, Lippard accepted a library position as an archivist at the Museum of Modern Art, where she worked from 1958 to 1960. During her time at MOMA, Lippard worked closely with Bernard Karpel who was a great influence on her and eventually steered her towards Dada and Surrealism, two art movements that would become very important to her. While working at MOMA, she met museum guards Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, and night guard Sol LeWitt, artists who would also play a huge role in her thought and career.[14]
Shortly after gradating from NYU, Lippard began writing as art critic for the journal Art International and Art Forum. In 1966, she published her first book, The Graphic Work of Philip Evergood, a monogram of the work made by the American artist.[15] Since then she has written over 20 books on a wide variety of topics such as feminism, art, and politics. Lippard is an amazing critic, curator and cultural producer who as has been in the center of the art world since 1969. She has played a huge role in various movements over the years. In 1969 she helped found the Art Worker’s Coalition; she was also a founder of Printed Matter, a New York non-profit dedicated to artists’ books and publications in 1976; she is also a founding member of the feminist collective and journal, Heresies, founded in 1976.[16]
Further reading:
Materializing Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, by Catherine Morris
From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women's Art, by Lucy R. Lippard
The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in Multicentered Society, by Lucy Lippard
Major Contributions to the Field of Curatorial Practice:
If you Google Lucy Lippard, there will be a multitude of topics, articles, videos and writings that come up. She’s known for her work as critic and curator as well as being one of the primary figures of two movements: conceptual art and feminism in the visual arts. Though, she’s noted for so much more. Her curatorial work over the years has pushed the boundaries of the way we see art and produce exhibitions. Though she would probably tell you she’s not a curator, she’s a complier, an exhibition-maker, and cultural producer who sets the stage for a new kind of curatorial practice, one that can connect, archive, and see art in a new light while at the same time trying to bring life back into the art world. Lippard uses curating as a physical extension of her writing and criticism. She is constantly blurring the lines, speaking up, and challenging the system. Her exhibitions and books become responses of criticism, important for us to see and hear.
Lippard has dedicated herself to life-long activism and the context of the social revolutions of her time. She is not afraid to roll up her sleeves and get dirty.[17]
Tags: #Contemporary Art, #Critic as curator, #Number Shows, #Feminism, #curator #1960s #1970s #conceptual art #Lucy Lippard
Research completed by: Ashley Delara DeHoyos
[1] Lippard, Lucy R. "Curating By Numbers." Tate Papers 12 (2009): Art Source. Web. 8 Apr. 2015
[2] Lippard, Lucy R. Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972; a Cross-reference Book of Information on Some Esthetic Boundaries. New York: Praeger, 1973. 5-6. Print.
[3][3] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.
[4] Lippard, Lucy R. "Curating By Numbers." Tate Papers 12 (2009): Art Source. Web. 8 Apr. 2015
[5] Lippard, Lucy R. "Curating by Numbers." Tate Papers 12 (2009): n. pag. Rpt. in Tate Papers. Vol. 12. London: Tate Modern, 2009. 1+. Web.
[6] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.
[7] Lippard, Lucy R. "Curating By Numbers." Tate Papers 12 (2009): Art Source. Web. 8 Apr. 2015
[8] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.
[9] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.
[10] Lippard, Lucy R. "Curating By Numbers." Tate Papers 12 (2009): Art Source. Web. 8 Apr. 2015
[11] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.p24
[12] Lippard, Lucy R. Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America. New York: Pantheon, 1990. Print. P4
[13] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.
[14] Lippard, Lucy R. From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women's Art. New York: Dutton, 1976. Print.
[15] "Lucy Lippard - Dictionary of Art Historians." Lucy Lippard - Dictionary of Art Historians. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2015. https://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/lippardl.htm
[16] "Lucy Lippard." The Creative Time Summit. N.p., 2015. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.
[17] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.
http://www.veralistcenter.org/engage/event/1888/lucy-lippard/
An Inspirational Quote:
Installation is when you finally get to see what you’ve got as a whole instead of in fragments, it’s like holding a finished book in your hands at last, and makes the whole grueling process worthwhile.
—Lucy Lippard, From Conceptualism to Feminism Lucy Lippard’s Number Shows 1969-1974
Selected Exhibitions:
Eccentric Abstraction
In 1966 Lippard curated her first exhibition titled, Eccentric Abstraction, a group exhibition that featured artist such as Alice Adams, Louis Bourgeois, Gary Kuehn, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, Don Potts, Keith Sonnier and Frank Lincoln who were all creating innovative and new practices related to three-dimensional sculptures.[1] This exhibition blurred boundaries of what sculpture could be. Lippard also challenged the lines and her role as an arts administrator as she from critic to curator. Though, Lippard never saw herself as a curator; she considered her work, especially this exhibition, as a form of response or criticism.[2] Eccentric Abstraction was organized at the Fischbach Gallery in New York and became an important exhibition in Lippard's career.[3]
Number Shows: 1969-1974
From 1969-1974, Lippard created a multi-year curatorial project that allowed her to organize and curate four popular exhibitions since dubbed The Number Shows. This project came about after Lippard started working on an exhibition in May of 1969 titled, Number 7, which was featured at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York. Number 7 featured thirty-nine artists, all of whom were also featured in later shows. This exhibition brought together post-minimalist process-based conceptual art and work with a political focus.[4] Lippard credits this exhibition as being a progenitor of the other number shows, which would follow a few years later.[5]
The Number Shows became a popular series. Each project was hosted in a different city, with four specific locations each named after the city's population. Due to the low budget and lack of resources Lippard used an informal and nontraditional method called “Suitcase Shows” a model of creating work that could be transported from country to country. Because of her do-it-yourself curatorial method, a majority of the artworks she solicited were transportable, easy to produce on site, at and consisted of instructions provided by on 4x6 index cards by the artists who were often absent during the install and exhibition.[6] While the idea was innovative and economically easier than traveling with work or artists, it also lead to different interpretations of how the work was to be made or exhibited. Her hope for this project was to bypass institutions and encourage more international networking and face-to-face interactions amongst artists. For these exhibitions, the titles came from approximate population figures used to generate a natural, non-associative, non-relatable exhibition or category for artists to box themselves in and were scattered around the cities in which they were shown. Sometimes the exhibitions were expansive and scattered in a wide range of locations, including gallery space and site-specific installations around town.[7] Lippard wanted the exhibitions to be all-inclusive for the audience. The Number Shows did not include painting but instead sculpture, site-based items, photography, film, and sound art that were completely text-based or ephemeral in form and intention.[8] Additionally, her catalogue for the exhibits was written on 4x6 index cards and existed informally, which added another layer to the exhibitions and shined light on the way she worked.
In 1969, the exhibition 557,087 took place at Seattle World’s Fair Pavilion and ran from September 5 to October 5. This exhibition brought a new style of art to larger audience as Lippard had hoped and was sponsored by the Contemporary Art Council of the Seattle Art Museum. The exhibition consisted of 69 artists. After 557,087 she curated the second number show, which took place at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Student Union at the university of British Columbia from January 13 to February 8 of 1970. This exhibition included 62 artists and was titled 955,000, the numerical sum of Vancouver’s population. The third number show took place in December of 1970 and featured new artists that Lippard had never shown before. The exhibition, titled 2,972,453 after the population of Buenos Aires was on view at Centro De Arte Y Comunicación.
In the last of the series of her numbers exhibitions Lippard partnered with Cal Arts to curate an exhibition featuring only women, 26 in fact, most of whom she had never shown before.[9] This exhibition, 7,500, became a landmark for Lippard and a bridge to the rest of her life as a critic and curator. Starting at Cal Arts in Valencia, California, during May of 1973, 7,500 then went on a seven-year tour until February 1974. Lippard thought it was important for women to have a voice in the art world and soon became one of the leading figures in feminism.
Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries; consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia and Asia (with occasional political overtones)
Six Years is not a curatorial exhibition but a curatorial project book of records and archives from Lippard during the time frame of 1966-1972. This book became a catalogue that described the emergence of conceptual art in the late sixties and early seventies as a critical and chronological framework. The book acted as a written exhibition and was described by Lippard as her best curatorial experience.[10]
Six Years mirrored her number shows in situating artists and works of art. Lippard describes her approach as both the organizer of the number exhibitions and the writer/complier of the publication as one of over-the-top accumulation, the result of a politically intentional feminist and anti-exclusive aesthetic.[11] Six Years was an amazing book that many still look at today. It was an archival project that was cumulative, organized; energetic and mixed the voice of a curator, writer and cultural worker.
Mixed Blessings
Throughout Lippard’s career, her work has been about blending art, politics, and culture into the art world in hopes of creating an inclusive culture. Many of her projects have thought about the role of women artists but she is also interested in creating power for artists of color and different ethnicities during a time period where it was absent. Mixed blessings, while not an exhibition, still fits into the idea of one. Lippard used her analytical and writing skills to once again format a book-based exhibition project that was not a dissection of art, but again a critical response to the system. Lippard writes: “The art produced here demonstrates the ways in which cultures see themselves and others; it represents the acts of claiming turf and crossing boundaries now in 1990."[12] The book features a large group of art made by women and men from many cultural backgrounds and, at the time, offered a new view of what the art world could look like. Mixed Blessing does more than just show the work, it tells a narrative, becomes an important tool, and offers new voices and perspectives. Lippard’s book catalogs multicultural artists one after another and builds on the discussion of representation, stereotypes, identity, and discrimination. The book becomes an important tool.
Biography, Education, and Career:
Lippard was born on April 14, 1937, in New York to parents Vernon Lippard MD and Margaret Cross. She attended Smith College, graduating in 1958 with a BA in Art and then New York University Institute of Fine Art, for her MA in 1962. During her time at New York University, she also traveled to Florence for an Art History course.[13] After graduating from Smith, Lippard accepted a library position as an archivist at the Museum of Modern Art, where she worked from 1958 to 1960. During her time at MOMA, Lippard worked closely with Bernard Karpel who was a great influence on her and eventually steered her towards Dada and Surrealism, two art movements that would become very important to her. While working at MOMA, she met museum guards Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, and night guard Sol LeWitt, artists who would also play a huge role in her thought and career.[14]
Shortly after gradating from NYU, Lippard began writing as art critic for the journal Art International and Art Forum. In 1966, she published her first book, The Graphic Work of Philip Evergood, a monogram of the work made by the American artist.[15] Since then she has written over 20 books on a wide variety of topics such as feminism, art, and politics. Lippard is an amazing critic, curator and cultural producer who as has been in the center of the art world since 1969. She has played a huge role in various movements over the years. In 1969 she helped found the Art Worker’s Coalition; she was also a founder of Printed Matter, a New York non-profit dedicated to artists’ books and publications in 1976; she is also a founding member of the feminist collective and journal, Heresies, founded in 1976.[16]
Further reading:
Materializing Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, by Catherine Morris
From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women's Art, by Lucy R. Lippard
The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in Multicentered Society, by Lucy Lippard
Major Contributions to the Field of Curatorial Practice:
If you Google Lucy Lippard, there will be a multitude of topics, articles, videos and writings that come up. She’s known for her work as critic and curator as well as being one of the primary figures of two movements: conceptual art and feminism in the visual arts. Though, she’s noted for so much more. Her curatorial work over the years has pushed the boundaries of the way we see art and produce exhibitions. Though she would probably tell you she’s not a curator, she’s a complier, an exhibition-maker, and cultural producer who sets the stage for a new kind of curatorial practice, one that can connect, archive, and see art in a new light while at the same time trying to bring life back into the art world. Lippard uses curating as a physical extension of her writing and criticism. She is constantly blurring the lines, speaking up, and challenging the system. Her exhibitions and books become responses of criticism, important for us to see and hear.
Lippard has dedicated herself to life-long activism and the context of the social revolutions of her time. She is not afraid to roll up her sleeves and get dirty.[17]
Tags: #Contemporary Art, #Critic as curator, #Number Shows, #Feminism, #curator #1960s #1970s #conceptual art #Lucy Lippard
Research completed by: Ashley Delara DeHoyos
[1] Lippard, Lucy R. "Curating By Numbers." Tate Papers 12 (2009): Art Source. Web. 8 Apr. 2015
[2] Lippard, Lucy R. Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972; a Cross-reference Book of Information on Some Esthetic Boundaries. New York: Praeger, 1973. 5-6. Print.
[3][3] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.
[4] Lippard, Lucy R. "Curating By Numbers." Tate Papers 12 (2009): Art Source. Web. 8 Apr. 2015
[5] Lippard, Lucy R. "Curating by Numbers." Tate Papers 12 (2009): n. pag. Rpt. in Tate Papers. Vol. 12. London: Tate Modern, 2009. 1+. Web.
[6] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.
[7] Lippard, Lucy R. "Curating By Numbers." Tate Papers 12 (2009): Art Source. Web. 8 Apr. 2015
[8] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.
[9] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.
[10] Lippard, Lucy R. "Curating By Numbers." Tate Papers 12 (2009): Art Source. Web. 8 Apr. 2015
[11] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.p24
[12] Lippard, Lucy R. Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America. New York: Pantheon, 1990. Print. P4
[13] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.
[14] Lippard, Lucy R. From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women's Art. New York: Dutton, 1976. Print.
[15] "Lucy Lippard - Dictionary of Art Historians." Lucy Lippard - Dictionary of Art Historians. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2015. https://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/lippardl.htm
[16] "Lucy Lippard." The Creative Time Summit. N.p., 2015. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.
[17] Butler, Cornelia H. From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows, 1969-74. London: Afterall, 2012. Print.
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