Where Art Might Happen

This group exhibition presents the legendary founding years (1970–1980) of the American art university ‘California Institute of the Arts’ (CalArts), which gathered numerous well-known teachers and personalities such as Allan Kaprow, Judy Chicago, John Baldessari or Alison Knowles and brought forth such artists as Mike Kelly, Stephen Prina or Suzanne Lacy.

The exhibition with the title Where Art Might Happen. The Early Years of CalArts opens up a multi-perspectival view of the college: trends existing in parallel that came from Concept Art, feminism and Fluxus, as well as the school’s radical pedagogical concepts, were unified for the first time. Besides artworks and archive material prepared by experts, oral history interviews with 13 artists were filmed for the exhibition, offering insights into the situation at the time. The exhibition was curated by Philipp Kaiser (independent curator, Los Angeles) and Christina Végh (Director of the Kestner Gesellschaft). The exhibition was a research project in cooperation with the Freie Universität Berlin (Annette Jael Lehmann, Verena Kittel) and metaLAB (at) Harvard, Boston (Jeffrey Schnapp, Kim Albrecht) and was on show in the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover from August 30 to November 10, 2019. From July to September 2020 the group show will be on display in the Kunsthaus Graz, where Barbara Steiner and Karin Bucher Trantow will strengthen the curatorial team and point out links to Austrian developments in a lavish accompanying programme.