February 9–May 12, 2018
The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation
The 8th Floor
17 West 17th Street
New York, NY 10011
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11am–6pm
Opening: February 9, 6–8pm
RSVP is required to media [at] sdrubin.org
The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation is pleased to present The Schoolhouse and the Bus, an exhibition that pairs, for the first time, work by two leading artists of the social practice movement, Pablo Helguera and Suzanne Lacy. On view at The 8th Floor from February 9 through May 12, 2018, the exhibition will coincide with the publication of The Schoolhouse and the Bus: Mobility, Pedagogy and Engagement (Black Dog Press), which serves as documentation of the artists’ two intersecting projects, with essays by Elyse A. Gonzales, Shannon Jackson, and Sara Reisman.
Suzanne Lacy is among the first generation of artists who began making art founded on public participation, with the goals of empowerment and transformation within a community. Pablo Helguera represents the next generation of social practice artists influenced by Lacy’s works, writings, and teachings. The Schoolhouse and the Bus presents a touchstone work by each of the artists (with cultural anthropologist Pilar Riaño-Alcalá in collaboration with Lacy), executed in the Americas but never shown in their entirety in the US. Comprised of installation, collage, sculpture, ephemera, photography, video, as well as archival documentation, this exhibition serves to highlight overlapping themes in their works, which include immigration, pedagogy, violence, memory, and social organizing. This traveling exhibition was co-curated by Sara Reisman, Executive and Artistic Director, The 8th Floor/The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and Elyse A. Gonzales, Assistant Director/Curator of Exhibitions, Art Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California Santa Barbara. The first presentation of The Schoolhouse and the Bus at the AD&A Museum was part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA where it was an official participant in the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative.
The Schoolhouse and the Bus has been generously funded by Marcia and John Mike Cohen, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and Eva and Yoel Haller. In-kind support has been provided by Neil Sherman, Industrial Metal Supply.
Suzanne Lacy (b. 1945, Wasco, CA) graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a major in Zoology in 1968, and became a founding member of Judy Chicago’s Feminist Art Program at Fresno State College, moving with the Program when it relocated to CalArts. Lacy’s work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, London; the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, LA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; the New Museum, NY; MoMA PS1, NY; and the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, Bilbao. She has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, Henry Moore Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and a Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art from A Blade of Grass. Lacy was founding chair of the MFA program in Public Practice at Otis College of Art and Design in California. In 2013, she received a Ph.D. from Gray’s School of Art at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland, and is currently a professor at the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California.
Pablo Helguera (b. 1971, Mexico City) attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, both an art school and a museum, working in the museum education department while earning his BFA. He has since held positions in education at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Guggenheim New York, and is currently the Director of Adult and Academic Programs at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Helguera has performed and exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the Americas. His works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; and the Guggenheim, NY; among others. He is the recipient of awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation/Fideicomiso para la Cultura Mexico, Creative Capital, Franklin Furnace, and a Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art from A Blade of Grass.
About The 8th Floor
The 8th Floor is an exhibition and events space established in 2010 by Shelley and Donald Rubin, dedicated to promoting cultural and philanthropic initiatives, and to expanding artistic and cultural accessibility in New York City. The 8th Floor is located at 17 West 17th Street and is free and open to the public. Schools groups are encouraged. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. the8thfloor.org
About The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation
The Foundation believes in art as a cornerstone of cohesive, resilient communities and greater participation in civic life. In its mission to make art available to the broader public, in particular to underserved communities, the Foundation provides direct support to, and facilitates partnerships between, cultural organizations and advocates of social justice across the public and private sectors. Through grantmaking, the Foundation supports cross-disciplinary work connecting art with social justice via experimental collaborations, as well as extending cultural resources to organizations and areas of New York City in need. www.sdrubin.org
Join the conversation with the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with the hashtags #The8thFloor, #RubinFoundation, #ArtandSocialJustice, #TheSchoolhouseandtheBus, and #LaEscuelayElAutobus
For further information, members of the media may contact:
Sarah Simpson, Blue Medium Inc.: T 1 212 675 1800 / sarah [at] bluemedium.com
George Bolster, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation: T 1 646 738 3971 / gbolster [at] sdrubin.org