Robert Rauschenberg creating the combine 'Gold Standard in Twenty Questions to Bob Rauschenberg,' Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo, November 28, 1964. Photograph by Masaaki Sekiya. ©2011 Masaaki Sekiya. All rights reserved. Courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY.

Please join us for a panel discussion exploring the emerging role of artist-endowed foundations as a force in cultural philanthropy and in the stewardship of contemporary art and design.

Research conducted by the Aspen Institute's National Study of Artist-Endowed Foundations, the first effort to examine the field of private foundations endowed by visual artists in the U.S., has documented more than 355 foundations, many created in the past two decades, holding $3.5 billion in assets, $2 billion of this in the form of art and intellectual property. With higher profile foundations bearing names such as Lichtenstein, Warhol, and Rauschenberg, these organizations make grants to nonprofits and to artists and scholars. They steward art collections and archives, contribute artwork to museums, operate artist residency centers, care for architecturally significant properties, and conduct cultural and educational programs. In 2010, members of the field made $70 million in aggregate grants. Among key trends documented by the Study is a rise in the number of foundations associated with architects and designers. The Study’s report may be viewed online at www.aspeninstitute.org/psi/a-ef-report.

Panelists include Sarah Herda, Director of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and former director/curator of the Storefront for Art and Architecture; Christy MacLear, Executive Director of Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and former inaugural director of the Philip Johnson Glass House, a property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation; Stephen K. Urice, Professor of Law, University of Miami School of Law, and co-author of the standard art law casebook, Law, Ethics and the Visual Arts, Kluwer Law International (5th Ed. 2007); and Christine J. Vincent, Study Director, The Aspen Institute’s National Study of Artist-Endowed Foundations and former deputy director for media, arts and culture at the Ford Foundation. The panel will be moderated by Angelique Power, Senior Program Officer, Culture, the Joyce Foundation.

The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts was created in 1956 by a bequest from architect Ernest R. Graham (1866–1936). The Foundation makes project-based grants to individuals and organizations and produces public programs to foster the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. The Foundation’s programs can be viewed online at www.grahamfoundation.org.

Robert Rauschenberg Foundation was formed by Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) in 1990 to promote awareness of the causes and groups close to his heart. Activities of the Foundation include managing the artwork, exhibition and scholarship of Robert Rauschenberg as well as the growth of the philanthropy programs that intersect art and issues central to the artist’s concerns during his lifetime. The Foundation’s programs are detailed online at www.rauschenbergfoundation.org

The Aspen Institute’s National Study of Artist-Endowed Foundations has been supported by a consortium of national and regional donors whose members include the Joyce Foundation.

Institute of Contemporary Art Boston by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Photograph by Nic Lehoux.

Architecture and film scholar Edward Dimendberg discusses his Graham-funded book Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Architecture after Images (University of Chicago Press, 2013), the first full-length critical chronological monograph on the work of the New York-based architecture studio known for its integration of visual art, multimedia, and performance into its buildings and urban projects.  Book signing and reception to follow the presentation.

Edward Dimendberg is professor of film and media studies, visual studies, and European languages and studies at the University of California, Irvine and the principal of Dimendberg Consulting LLC.  He is the author of Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity (2004), also supported by the Graham Foundation,  and the co-editor of The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (1994).

On March 30, Berlin-based composer and sound installation artist Valerio Tricoli offers a special program for Lampo to mark the 100th anniversary of Luigi Russolo's Futurist manifesto, The Art of Noises (March, 1913). Russolo’s manifesto introduced the idea of noise-sound into musical discourse, creating the conditions for radical advancements in sonic art and informing movements in musique concrète, electronic music, and the practices of American experimental composers such as John Cage. In the essay, Russolo lays the foundation for a new music based on what he calls ‘Futurist noise-sound,’ claiming that all sounds of life—whether natural or derived from man-made devices or machines—should be incorporated into music. He also strongly encourages the development and design of new instruments capable of producing new kinds of noises suitable to the mise en être of the expanded acoustic imagination of the composer. Russolo himself, some months after the publication of the manifesto, would present his own Intonarumori (Noise-tuners).

This Lampo program will be divided in two parts: first, An Homage to Luigi Russolo, a live electro-acoustic improvisation for electronic devices, self-built instruments, found sounds, and voice, to be followed by La Solidità Della Nebbia, a multi-channel diffusion of the tape composition.

Valerio Tricoli (b. 1977, Palermo, Italy) is a Berlin-based composer, improviser, producer, sound installation artist, sound engineer, and curator bridging musique concrète and conceptual forms of sound with a radical interest in how reality, virtuality, and memory relate to each other during the acoustic event. He mostly uses analogue electronic devices including reel-to-reel tape recorders, synthesizers, microphones, light effects, and ultrasonic speakers. However, the structure of the setup is ever-changing,  seeking multiple relations between the performers, the device, and the space in which the event takes place. Tricoli is one of the founders of 3/4HadBeenEliminated and the Bowindo label / collective. In 2012, he presented a new interpretation of the seminal 1952 John Cage electro-acoustic tape piece Williams Mix with Werner Dafeldecker, which premiered at Maerz Musik, Berlin. He is currently working on two compositions for piano and electronic sounds (with Anthony Pateras) and on a concrete music cycle inspired by the Book of Qohelet. Tricoli made his U.S. debut at Lampo in March 2008, when he performed Take Thy Horoscope and Walk, a multi-sensorial set of live concrete music in quad sound with strobe lights.

Thomas Demand, Beyer #34, 2011, Pigment Print, 41.9” x 63.0”© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / DACS, New York. Courtesy Esther Schipper, Berlin / Matthew Marks Gallery, New York / Sprüth Magers Berlin London.

Please join us to celebrate the opening of Model Studies: Thomas Demand with Fernand Léger, Francis Bruguière, Thomas Scheibitz, and the VKhUTEMAS School. The exhibition will open with remarks from Thomas Demand and Graham Foundation director Sarah Herda followed by a reception.

6PM Opening remarks with Thomas Demand and Sarah Herda
6-8PM Opening Reception

For more information on the exhibition, Model Studies, click here.

Photo: Oto Gillen.

Establishing a plant-animal-people trilogy with the Edible Estates (est. 2005) series of front yard food gardens and the Animal Estates (est. 2008) initiatives for urban wildlife architecture, Domestic Integrities (est. 2012) turns its attention inward to local patterns and rituals of interior domestic landscapes and the way we use what we resourcefully find around us to artfully make ourselves at home. “Domestic Integrity Fields” are charged sites—on crocheted rugs of discarded textiles—to  test, perform, and present how we want to live. One rug in each continent gradually expands as it travels from city to city. In the United States, the series began during fall 2012 at the Museum of Modern Art and the new Broad Museum of Art at Michigan State University, followed by The Hammer Museum of Art in spring 2013, the deCordova Museum in the summer, and at the Walker Art Center in the fall. In Europe the project is taking place at Pollinaria in Abruzzo, Italy in 2012-2013.

In 2012, Haeg received a Graham Foundation grant for Edible Estate #12: Budapest, Hungary, produced with Blood Mountain Foundation. More about the project here.

On February 19, Haeg will speak on Architecture is Activism…FOOD!, a panel discussion hosted by the Chicago Architecture Foundation and supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation. More about the project here.

Fritz Haeg's work has included edible gardens, public dances, educational environments, animal architecture, domestic gatherings, urban parades, temporary encampments, documentary videos, publications, exhibitions, websites, and occasionally buildings for people. Recent projects include Sundown Schoolhouse,  an itinerant educational program; Edible Estates, an international series of domestic edible landscapes; and Animal Estates, a housing initiative for native animals in cities around the world which debuted at the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Haeg is a 2010-2011 Rome Prize Fellow and has taught in architecture, design, and fine art programs at Princeton University, Cal Arts, Art Center College of Design, Parsons School of Design, and the University of Southern California. Haeg has produced projects and exhibited work at MoMA; Tate Modern; the Hayward Gallery; the Liverpool Biennial; the Whitney Museum of American Art; SFMoMA; SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul; Casco, Utrecht; Stroom, Den Haag; Arup Phase 2, London; Blood Mountain Foundation, Budapest; The Indianapolis Museum of Art; Mass MoCA; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; among others. Recent books include The Sundown Salon Unfolding Archive (Evil Twin Publications, 2009), Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn (Metropolis Books, 2nd ed., 2010), and Roma Mangia Roma (Nero, expected Spring 2013).

Related Links
Edible Estate #12
http://grahamfoundation.org/grantees/4831-edible-estate-12-budapest-hungary

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