March 1, 2018 – August 26, 2018
The Fine Arts Museums are rethinking how we engage contemporary artists across both museums, experimenting with ways that their contributions can resonate even more strongly among museum audiences, in more immediate dialogue with the architecture, operations, and collections. Rather than presenting traditional exhibitions of artworks, we are inviting some artists to think about the museums more experientially, beginning with artist Ana Prvački, who has been visiting the de Young since summer 2017 to research all areas of its activities and imagine new ways of seeing and experiencing the museum. Still in development, Prvacki’s project will result in multiple components in the spring and summer of 2018, including performance, an alternative tour of the facilities, and interventions into the building and collections.
Prvački is a cross-disciplinary artist whose works take the form of diverse projects that draw on performance, daily practices, consumer aesthetics, and popular concerns. Most often her projects are participatory, using humor as a means for disarming traditional museum activities and behaviors, and ephemeral elements as a nod to an environmentally conscious artistic practice. She has realized solo exhibitions and projects at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; and the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin. Her work has also been included in many international exhibitions, including the 14th Istanbul Biennial and dOCUMENTA 13. Her performances have been commissioned by the LA Philharmonic and the Chicago Architecture Biennial, among others.