at/around/beyond: Fluxus at Rutgers
Eisenberg Gallery
Sep 24, 2011 – Apr 01, 2012
Fluxus celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2012. A radical, experimental, and multimedia art movement of the mid-twentieth century that continues to influence contemporary art, Fluxus focuses on the unpredictable, ordinary, and ephemeral moments of everyday life. Rutgers University was an important center of Fluxus activity in the early 1960s and 1970s and key members of the Fluxus group worked at Rutgers and lived in and around New Brunswick. This exhibition focuses on the university’s legacy as a center of experimental art. The works on view include publications, games, and objects by the Fluxus Collective under the leadership of George Maciunas, as well as concentrations of works by Fluxus artists at Rutgers, including Geoffrey Hendricks and Robert Watts who were long-time faculty members, Larry Miller, who was a student of Watts, and George Brecht, who although not affiliated directly with the art department was an important presence at Rutgers and a key early figure in Fluxus.
Because performance was and remains an essential aspect of Fluxus attitudes to life and art, the exhibition includes photographs, films, recordings of music, and documents of Fluxus events that occurred on campus in the 1960s to 1970s. The exhibition also includes an interactive game room open at specified times to allow visitors to the exhibition to participate directly in Fluxus games and performances inside the gallery. A Fluxus concert organized by Larry Miller and Rutgers students is scheduled for November of 2011.
Fluxus at Rutgers runs concurrently with a nationally touring exhibition titled, Fluxus: The Essential Questions of Life, on view at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University in the fall of 2011. In conjunction with the exhibition at the Zimmerli Art Museum, the University is offering a Byrne Seminar titled Artists, Musicians, and Poets in the Museum taught by Donna Gustafson and Gerry Beegan, Undergraduate Director for Mason Gross School of the Arts.
The exhibition is organized by Donna Gustafson, Andrew W. Mellon Liaison for Academic Programs and Curator and Eveline Baseggio Omiccioli, Graduate Assistant, Zimmerli Art Museum, with assistance from Heather Cammarata-Seale, Museum Intern.
The exhibition and related programs are supported by an endowment established by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Class of 1937 Publications Fund, and the Dorothy Dehner Foundation for the Visual Arts.