Franklin Furnace and the Spirit of the Avant-Garde

A History of the Future

Toni Sant

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781841503714
• eBook ISBN: 9781841504438
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Monographs

Franklin Furnace is a renowned New York–based arts organization whose mission is to preserve, document and present works of avant-garde art by emerging artists – particularly those whose works may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect or politically unpopular content. Over more than thirty years, Franklin Furnace has exhibited works by hundreds of avant-garde artists, some of whom – Laurie Anderson, Vito Acconci, Karen Finley, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Jenny Holzer and the Blue Man Group, to name a few – are now established names in contemporary art.

Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive history of this remarkable organization from its conception to the present. Organized around the major art genres that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century, this book intersperses first-person narratives with readings by artists and scholars on issues critical to the organization's success as well as Franklin Furnace's many contributions to avant-garde art.

Part I

Chapter 1

Franklin Furnace: A Timeline

April 1976

The Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc., is founded to serve artists who choose publishing as a democratic artistic medium and who were not being supported by existing artistic organizations.

September 1976

Franklin Furnace receives initial funding of its programs from both the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

June 1979

Exhibition of In the Shadow of Duchamp: The Photomechanical Revolution and the Artist’s Book at the Grolier Club, New York City. Works selected by Weston J. Naef and Martha Wilson.

September 1979–June 1980

Exhibition of The Page as Alternative Space (1909–1980) with curators Clive Phillpot, Charles Henri Ford, Jon Hendricks, Barbara Moore, and Ingrid Sischy. This exhibition inaugurates Franklin Furnace’s commitment to presenting the historical antecedents of the contemporary artists’ book-publishing movement.

February 1981

Eric Bogosian’s Men Inside premieres at the Franklin Furnace performance space at 112 Franklin Street.

August 1983

Franklin Furnace wins an Advancement Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to promote institutional stability through development and publicity plans.

October 1983

Exhibition of Cubist Prints/Cubist Books begins national tour at Franklin Furnace, making stops at the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Center for the Fine Arts, Miami; and the Marian Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas. The tour ends at the Galerie Berggruen, Paris, France.

February 1984

Franklin Furnace is reprimanded by the NEA and dropped by several corporate sources for presenting Carnival Knowledge, an exhibition and performance extravaganza that questioned whether there can be such a thing as “feminist pornography.” Annie Sprinkle makes her debut as an artist during the performance of Deep Inside Porn Stars.

May 1985

Franklin Furnace creates its Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, which allows emerging artists to produce major work in New York. The panel selects three of the “NEA Four” artists before they were so identified (Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck) along with many others who have gone on to make their mark: Papo Colo, Kaylynn Sullivan Two Trees, William Pope. L, Jennifer Miller, Andrea Fraser, Peggy Pettitt, Kim Irwin, Keith Antar Mason, Murray Hill, Pamela Sneed, Tanya Barfield, Deborah Edmeades, Patty Chang, Stanya Kahn, and others. The fund has been supported by the Jerome Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation.

September 1985

Franklin Furnace initiates its Sequential Art for Kids education program, which places professional artist bookmakers, performers, photographers, filmmakers, animators, and videographers in New York City public schools.

June 1986

With Lily Tomlin presiding, Franklin Furnace celebrates its tenth birthday with the Arties Awards to avant-garde achievers: Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Eric Bogosian, Richard Foreman, Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano, Allan Kaprow, the Kipper Kids, Lydia Lunch, Lisa Lyon, the Mastfor II Co, Leo Lionni, F. T. Marinetti, Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman, Pat Oleszko, Yoko Ono, Robert Rauschenberg, Michael Smith, Redy Story, William Wegman and Man Ray, and Paul Zaloom.

February 1987

Andy Warhol dies after serving on Franklin Furnace’s board of directors for 21 days.

October 1987

Celebration of Marcel Duchamp’s 100th birthday with a performance art extravaganza, The Avant-Garde Breaks into Midtown, inaugurating the Equitable Center’s new state-of-the-art auditorium on Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue.

February 1988

Franklin Furnace and Thought Music produce Teenytown, a multimedia performance by Jessica Hagedorn, Laurie Carlos, and Robbie McCauley with film by John Woo and choreography by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, which examines how racism is embedded in popular culture and entertainment.

February 1989

Exhibition of The Avant-Garde Book: 1900–1945 opens, containing rare Eastern European examples of avant-garde works. John Wilson’s troupe reenacts a Dada performance for a benefit evening.

April 1990

Governor Mario Cuomo of New York halves the budget of NYSCA. Franklin Furnace’s NYSCA funding drops from $144,000 to $40,000 in one year.

May 1990

The New York City Fire Department closes Franklin Furnace’s performance space in response to a call claiming Franklin Furnace was an “illegal social club.”

June 1990

Franklin Furnace is demonized for presenting Karen Finley’s installation, A Woman’s Life Isn’t Worth Much. During the Summer of 1990, inquiries and audits are conducted by the Internal Revenue Service, the New York State Comptroller, and, at the request of Republican U.S. Senator Jesse Helms, the U.S. government General Accounting Office.

July 1990

Franklin Furnace refuses to limit the expression of artists it presents and funds, holding Franklin Furnace Fights for First Amendment Rights at the Joseph Papp Public Theater. It features an all-star cast, including Eric Bogosian, Cee Scott Brown, Karen Finley, Allen Ginsburg, Leon Golub and Nancy Spero, the Guerrilla Girls, Frank Maya, Pauline Oliveros and Ione, Nicky Paraiso and Jessica Hagedorn, RENO, Annie Sprinkle, Lynne Tillman, Diane Torr, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.

September 1990–June 1991

First performance season of Franklin Furnace in Exile mounted at Judson Memorial Church in Washington Square Park.

October 1991

The board of directors makes the decision to transfer Franklin Furnace’s collecting, cataloging, and conservation responsibilities to another public institution in order to “do the right thing” for the care of the field it helped to create.

January 1992

Franklin Furnace’s Visual Artists’ Organizations grant from the NEA is rescinded by the National Council on the Arts because of the sexually explicit content of a 1991 performance by Scarlet O. The Peter Norton Family Foundation replaces this $25,000 grant. Eric Bogosian’s benefit concert for Franklin Furnace fills every seat in Cooper Union’s Great Hall.

May 1992

Franklin Furnace purchases its historic Italianate loft in TriBeCa with the proceeds of a Fifteenth Anniversary Art Sale mounted at the Marian Goodman Gallery.

June 1992

Franklin Furnace presents Too Shocking to Show at the Brooklyn Museum with performances by Holly Hughes, Tim Miller, Sapphire, and Scarlet O, with introductory remarks by Robert T. Buck and Carole S. Vance.

October 1993

Fluxus: A Conceptual Country, organized by curator Estera Milman, begins an international tour at Franklin Furnace.

November 1993

The Museum of Modern Art acquires Franklin Furnace’s collection of artists’ books published internationally after 1960, the largest in the U.S., to form the Museum of Modern Art/Franklin Furnace Artist Book Collection.

September 1995

Challenge Grant awarded by the NEA. While planning to transform 112 Franklin Street into a downtown arts emporium, Martha Wilson realizes that Franklin Furnace will never be remembered for its renovated real estate, but for the importance of its programs, and that the capital campaign is raising money for the wrong reasons.

October 1996

In the Flow: Alternate Authoring Strategies, the final exhibition in the Franklin Street gallery, brings together a selection of work that treats content as flowing information rather than property.

February 1997

Franklin Furnace launches its website at www.franklinfurnace.org as the board determines that access to freedom of expression and a broader audience for emerging artists through new media will be a prime program focus.

September 1997

Sale of the 112 Franklin Street loft; a cash-reserve account is established with the proceeds, matching the NEA Challenge Grant.

January 1998

Franklin Furnace’s first netcasting season, featuring ten artists, is mounted in collaboration with Pseudo.com and is documented with the eventual publication of Franklin Furnace’s first CD-ROM in collaboration with the Parsons School of Design.

March 1998

Franklin Furnace moves to 45 John Street, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan.

August 1998

Franklin Furnace is invited to join the Conceptual and Intermedia Arts Online (CIAO) consortium to help develop electronic and vocabulary standards for the cataloging and accessibility of contemporary avant-garde works. CIAO is a collaborative project designed to create networked access to educational and scholarly material on the broad theme of conceptual and intermedia art. Members include: The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley; the Getty Research Institute; The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; the National Gallery of Canada; Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts, University of Iowa; and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

September 1998–July 1999

Franklin Furnace’s second netcasting season with Pseudo.com, The Future of the Present, presents twenty-two artists.

January–December 2000

The Future of the Present 2000 is redesigned as a residency program in collaboration with the Parsons School of Design in order to give artists access to the full range of digital tools. Franklin Furnace’s website receives 79,000 hits per month.

January–November 2001

Franklin Furnace’s Twenty-fifth Anniversary Season is saluted by a MoMA library exhibition, the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Artport site, a special issue of TDR: The Drama Review (Spring 2005), and Rhizome Remix at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Franklin Furnace makes its $25,000, twenty-fifth anniversary McMartha award to artist/architect Kyong Park for his Adamah project in Detroit, a vision of a new society built upon the xeric urban space left as the afflu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Epigraph
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Franklin Furnace Publications
• References
• Index