Colleagues: we are pleased to post this announcement on behalf of
Franklin Furnace Archive and ARTstor

***

ARTstor and Franklin Furnace announce collaboration agreement, ARTstor's
first with an "alternative space"

About Franklin Furnace and ARTstor

Since its inception in 1976, Franklin Furnace has presented what has
come to be known as "variable media" art work -- works that take on new
dimensions in each iteration.  These works challenge the bounds of
genre, varying in the meanings they take on contextually as well as in
their physical deployment.
 
ARTstor (www.artstor.org) was created in 2001 as a nonprofit initiative
of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and is now an independent non-profit
organization dedicated to serving education and scholarship in the arts
and the humanities. Currently, more than 650 non-profit institutions in
the U.S. and Canada are participating in ARTstor. ARTstor is also now
available in the UK and Australia/New Zealand, and further international
availability is being actively explored. 

About the collaboration:

Digital images are fast replacing slides and slide projectors in the
teaching of art and art history.  To respond to these changes, Franklin
Furnace will work with ARTstor to digitize and distribute images and
documentation of events presented and produced by Franklin Furnace, with
the goal of embedding the value of ephemeral practice into art and
cultural history.

The records of Franklin Furnace present an unparalleled resource in that
they are the only artifacts of live, ephemeral, variable media works.
While scholars still debate the locus of art in time-based, variable
media, the physical history held in Franklin Furnace's institutional
archives offers a rare and valuable resource that captures the moment,
the concept of the artist, and the historical context in which the work
was created through the prism of its documentary parts. 

Artists working in the late 70s and early 80s broached topics of
personal, social and political relevance, and artworks produced at
Franklin Furnace reflect their historical context. Artists who got their
start in alternative spaces crossed genres to address issues of identity
and politics from the perspective of the marginalized "outsider" in the
realms of gender, ethnicity/nationality and other subjects at the core
of cultural conflict.  

Artists presented by Franklin Furnace include: Eric Bogosian, monologist
and star of stage and screen; Jenny Holzer and Ann Hamilton, who
represented the United States in the Venice Biennale; Guillermo
Gomez-Pena and Liza Lou, winners of the MacArthur "genius" award; Mona
Hatoum, the first artist to ever win the prestigious Sonning prize;
Shirin Neshat, world renowned Iranian artist and filmmaker; and Ana
Mendieta, Cuban-born artist whose retrospective was on view in 2004 at
the Whitney Museum of American Art.  The individual and collective
impact of artists such as these upon larger culture is documented in the
materials contained within the archives of Franklin Furnace:

*	In 1985, Franklin Furnace presented one of the first performance
artworks to address the AIDS crisis; "Pink Triangle, Not Forgotten," by
S. K. Duff.   About the identification and extermination of gays in Nazi
Germany, this performance helped to kindle the public discourse that
ultimately resulted in mainstream acceptance of AIDS victims;
*	Mona Hatoum's "Variation on Discord and Division" made a silent,
eloquent statement on the bloodshed in the Middle East in 1984;
*	Robbie McCauley's 1985 "My Father and the Wars" explored the
embedded nature of racism in American military and social institutions.
*	Teh-Ching Hsieh's 1983 "One-Year Performance (Living Outside)"
installation at Franklin Furnace was comprised of 365 maps of Lower
Manhattan showing where he slept, ate, walked and slept each day; photos
of the artist during the four seasons; and his clothes worn while living
outside for one year, a silent treatise on what it means to be homeless.

Franklin Furnace has a history of actively making its collections and
archives available for research.  From pioneering storefront art space
in TriBeCa to "going virtual" on the Internet, Franklin Furnace has
explored new venues to reach the public.  On May 11, 2006, the
organization received notification that its proposal to the National
Endowment for the Humanities--to digitize and publish on its website,
www.franklinfurnace.org,
records of performances, installations, exhibits and other events
produced by the organization during its first ten years-had been funded.
This project will create electronic access to what are now the only
remaining artifacts of these singular works of social, political and
cultural expression.  

Commenting on the value of Franklin Furnace's event archives to
scholars, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Professor of Performance
Studies, New York University writes, "The Franklin Furnace archive is of
interest to a wide range of humanities fields because of the opportunity
it affords to explore the role of art and the artist in American society
in the post-World War II period.  ...this work was particularly
responsive to the historic era in which it was made.  As a result,
scholars in such fields as American Studies, art history, visual
cultural studies, theater history, performance studies, cinema studies,
cultural studies, critical studies and museum studies will find rich
research possibilities here."

Says Martha Wilson, Founding Director of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.,
"The Board of Directors made the wrenching decision to sell the loft at
112 Franklin Street and 'go virtual' during our 20th anniversary season
in 1996-97.  At that time, in the wake of the Culture Wars, our primary
concern was to choose a venue and art medium in the Internet that would
provide the same freedom of expression artists had enjoyed in the loft
in the 70s.  Ten years later, the decision to make our website our
public face has resulted in Franklin Furnace's successful transition
from physical art space to online research resource.  I am truly
thrilled to be embarking on Franklin Furnace's 30th year with ARTstor's
collaboration agreement and a major grant from the NEH.  The confluence
of these events will help fulfill our mission to make the world safe for
avant-garde art."

Franklin Furnace press contact:  
Martha Wilson, Founding Director, 718-398-7255
[log in to unmask]

ARTstor press contact:  
Lisa Schermerhorn, Communications Coordinator, 212-500-2415
[log in to unmask]

__________________________________________________________________
Mail submissions to [log in to unmask]
For information about joining ARLIS/NA see:
        http://www.arlisna.org/join.html
Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc)
        to [log in to unmask]
ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance:
       http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/arlis-l.html
Questions may be addressed to list owner (Judy Dyki) at: [log in to unmask]