In Collaboration: by Alison Knowles: A Retrospective (1960–2022)

How does one “make a retrospective” for an artist like Alison Knowles whose production involves ephemeral, nontraditional materials and live, durational works that do not fit seamlessly into standard museum strictures? How can one research a prolific practice that is dispersed across the globe––from a New York studio to international archives, foundations, and museums? How does one codify, organize, and develop a framework for such a multifaceted body of work? How does one communicate the significance of an artist who has been duly acknowledged and appreciated by avant-garde peers and contemporary artists, but has been underrepresented in mainstream institutions and scholarship? How does one present a retrospective in wildly different exhibition contexts from traditional museums to kunsthalles, with many different partners? The answer is for the curator to engage in multiple collaborative processes.

In this presentation, by Alison Knowles: A Retrospective,1962-2022, the artist’s largest exhibition and most comprehensive publication to date, is viewed through the lens of collaboration: convening a group of Fluxus scholars as advisors and authors; designing and producing the publication with the artist, graphic designer and team of printers; installing the exhibition in different museums from Berkeley to Europe, and most crucially, discussing some of Knowles's intermedia collaborations with artists and architects, composers and musicians, dancers and performers, sculptors and paper-makers across six decades––from her first artist’s book made in 1956, to the most recent iterations of her ground-breaking computer poem/monumental sculpture, The House of Dust, produced during the tour of the retrospective, 2024-2026.