BUSCH-REISINGER TO PRESENT THE FIRST SPECIAL EXHIBITION DRAWN FROM THE RECENTLY ACQUIRED COLLECTION OF JOSEPH BEUYS' MULTIPLES

For Immediate Release
September 11, 1997

The special exhibition In/Tuition: A Seminar's Engagement with Joseph Beuys will be on display at the Busch-Reisinger Museum from September 20 through December 7, 1997. The exhibition is a result of a seminar on Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) offered last spring in Harvard's Fine Arts Department and led by the exhibition organizer, Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator, Busch-Reisinger Museum. The works in the exhibition were drawn from a virtually complete set of the artist's multiples (editioned objects and prints) recently acquired by the Busch-Reisinger as part of the Willy and Charlotte Reber collection. Over the two decades before his death, Beuys produced some 600 multiples, which reflect, reference, or revisit most of the artist's manifold activities, procedures, and concerns in some way. Thirty-seven works have been selected for the exhibition which will concentrate on the perception and experience of the exhibited object, its problematic status as a work of art presented in a museum, and on the process of coming to terms with the interrelations of grouped pieces. Thus In/Tuition is not intended as a survey of Beuys' extensive and multifarious career, but is conceived as one part of the Busch-Reisinger's long-term engagement with the artist's work.

Joseph Beuys was one of this century's most intense, inventive, and indefatigable artists. Through his varied, challenging, and often controversial activity as a draftsman, sculptor, artist, political activist, and ecological campaigner, Beuys became the leading German, if not European artist of the postwar period. After service in the German air force as a radio-operator, dive-bomber pilot, and paratrooper during World War II, Beuys studied sculpture at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, producing not only various religious sculptures but also a very large number of drawings exploring natural, mythological, and figurative themes. Following a personal crisis in the mid-1950s, Beuys resumed drawing, and also immersed himself in scientific, political, and literary writings. With his appointment to the Academy as professor in 1961, Beuys was able to broaden the public forum for his developing ideas about an "expanded role for art" and "social sculpture," in which art was seen as creative activity in all spheres of life.

During the 1960s, Beuys became widely known for his enigmatic, almost hermetic actions and performances which deployed, as did his drawings and sculptures, lowly but evocative materials such as honey, fat, and felt. The 1970s saw an increasing politicization of his work, as he confronted the German educational, parliamentary, and economic systems. He founded a number of radical organizations, such as the Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research. He also became deeply involved in the nascent environmental movement.

In/Tuition was developed by four pairs of students who were assigned one of Beuys' multiples, around which they were to choose eight or nine additional objects, related in some way by theme, form, concept, or material. The multiples, works of art published in editions, incorporate a vast range of techniques in printmaking, drawing, and sculpture, as well as the innovative use of ready-made objects and unconventional materials (such as fat, felt, gelatin, audio tape). The four thematic sections address in different ways viewer response to the work, exploring the notion that Beuys' key aim is the stimulation of that kind of thinking which can sense, search out, and live through the connections, transformations, and metamorphoses which may link the many manifestations of the artist's creativity. "A mind liberated to the task, set in motion by the experience of trying to combine and reconcile two or more aspects of Beuys' work," states Peter Nisbet, "is a mind exercising its individual creative freedom."

In/Tuition is made possible by the Harvard University Art Museums' Ernst A. Teves and Jose Soriano Funds. With the help of the Friends of the Busch-Reisinger, the Art Museums have co-published with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis the first English translation of the eighth edition of Joseph Beuys Multiples, the German catalogue raisonné edited by Jörg Schellmann. The English edition will contain essays by Joan Rothfuss, associate curator, Walker Art Center, and Peter Nisbet and an afterword by James Cuno, director of the Harvard University Art Museums, and Kathy Halbreich, director of the Walker Art Center. This revised edition contains lists of the multiples by Beuys in the collections of the Busch-Reisinger, the Walker, and the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the three largest repositories of Beuys' multiples in the world. Clothbound, 12 x 8.5 inches, 544 pages, 320 color and 540 black and white, ISBN 0-935640-57-6, $85.00.

RELATED EVENTS

Gallery Talks

Gallery talks are free with the price of admission to the Art Museums. Admission is free on Saturday mornings, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

Saturday, September 27, 11:30 a.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum with Shivani Grover, fine arts concentrator and seminar participant, Harvard class of 1999

Sunday, October 5, 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum with Matt Saunders, visual and environmental studies concentrator and seminar participant, Harvard class of 1997

Sunday, October 19, 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum with Scott Rothkopf, fine arts concentrator and seminar participant, Harvard class of 1999

Sunday, November 2, 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum with Sinne Lundgaard Rasmussen, doctoral candidate, University of Aarhus, Denmark, and seminar participant, Fine Arts Department, Harvard University

Saturday, November 22, 11:30 a.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum with Jacqueline van Rhyn, Werner and Maren Otto Curatorial Intern, Busch-Reisinger Museum

Saturday, December 6, 11:30 a.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum with Jacqueline van Rhyn, Werner and Maren Otto Curatorial Intern, Busch-Reisinger Museum

Sunday, December 7, 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum with Nikola Simunovic, social studies concentrator and seminar participant, Harvard class of 1998.

Seminar

Joseph Beuys and His Contemporaries

Monday, September 22, Tuesday, September 23, Wednesday, September 24, 6:00-7:30 p.m.

Busch-Reisinger Museum

$75; advance registration is required, call (617) 495-4544.

With Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator, Busch-Reisinger Museum

This three-part seminar will use the exhibition In/Tuition: A Seminar's Engagement with Joseph Beuys as the occasion to explore key themes in the artist's work. The seminars will focus less on the biography or the myth of the artist and more on the status of his objects and the modes of perception adequate to their complexity. Studying a wide variety of original works, both in the exhibition and in the Busch-Reisinger's study room, participants will have the opportunity to experience Beuys' radically diverse and still challenging oeuvre. Comparisons with the work of some of Beuys' contemporaries will provide better understanding of the historicity and specificity of his achievements.

Concert

Sunday, November 30, 5:30 p.m., Fogg Art Museum

Concert admission is $7; $5 students, Harvard staff, and senior citizens. Doors open one-half hour before concert begins. For more information, call (617) 495-4544.

Conducted by Benjamin Loeb, the Benjamin Loeb Ensemble will present German composer Alban Berg's Chamber Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Thirteen Winds. The program will include a prelude by the Zephyros Woodwind Quintet.

For general information on the Harvard University Art Museums, please call (617) 495-9400. For press information or photographs, please contact Kate McShea at (617) 495-2397. For more information on events, please contact the Friends, Fellows, and Special Programs Office at (617) 495-4544. World Wide Web: www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.

The Harvard University Art Museums comprise three museums (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum), all located on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, MA, at the intersection of Quincy Street and Broadway, adjacent to Harvard Yard. The Art Museums are open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., and Sunday 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Closed holidays. Admission is $5.00; $4.00 for senior citizens; $3.00 for students; free under 18 and on Saturday mornings. The Art Museums' facilities are wheelchair accessible. For special tour reservations, please call (617) 496-8576. General tours are offered Monday through Friday from September through June. The Fogg tour is at 11:00 a.m.; the Busch-Reisinger tour is at 1:00 p.m.; and the Sackler is at 2:00 p.m.