Pioneers

“What’s past is prologue.” William Shakespeare, The Tempest

San Francisco, Calif., July 13, 2007 The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts presents Pioneers, an exhibition organized by Wattis Institute director Jens Hoffmann, which will draw an analogy between the achievements of a number of pioneering artists from the last 100 years and the defining character of the California pioneers of the nineteenth century. Pioneers will take the form of both a cultural history display and an exhibition of artworks by pioneering figures from the San Francisco Bay Area, with the two strands interrelated, overlapping, and interwoven, the common theme being the idea of traveling to new frontiers and breaking new ground. Pioneers is on view from September 5 through November 10, 2007, in the lower-level Logan Galleries on the San Francisco campus of California College of the Arts. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Beginning with a selection of artifacts that document San Francisco’s Gold Rush–era origins, Pioneers expresses the founding impulses that continue to resonate with the city’s social and cultural climate—its particular independence, tolerance, progressiveness, and internationalism. The twentieth century marked a period of intense creative activity and political resistance, during which a large number of radically innovative practices were established in the city. San Francisco became home to several artists who were equally pioneering and helped establish the city as a center of artistic experimentation that reflected in microcosm larger social and political actions and initiatives. Pioneers seeks to identify some of these artistic figures who developed their own unique, pioneering practices in choreography, performance art, film, photography, painting, craft, and political graphics.

The presentation will include works by Ant Farm, Robert Bechtle, Wallace Berman, the Cockettes, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, Emory Douglas, Yun Gee, Anna Halprin, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jess, Paul Kos, Dorothea Lange, José Montoya, Diego Rivera, Achilles Rizzoli, Ed Rossbach, Mario Savio, Rosie Lee Tompkins, and Katherine Westphal as well as a selection of artifacts from the collection of the Society of California Pioneers.

Lead sponsorship for Pioneers is provided by the Fleishhacker Foundation.

Founding support for CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts programs has been provided by Phyllis C. Wattis and Judy and Bill Timken. Generous support provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, Ann Hatch and Paul Discoe, and the CCA Curator’s Forum.

Pioneers
Kurator: Jens Hoffmann

mit Ant Farm , Robert Bechtle, Wallace Berman, The Cockettes , Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, Emory Douglas, Yun Gee, Anna Halprin, Lynn Hershman, Jess , Paul Kos, Dorothea Lange, Jose Montoya, Diego Rivera, Achilles Rizzoli, Ed Rossbach, Mario Savio, Rosie Lee Tompkins, Katherine Westphal ...