The Northwestern University Music Library has held musician John Cage’s archives since 1973 so when the archive of Cage’s regular collaborator, performance artist and cellist Charlotte Moorman, went up for auction decades later, special collections library curator Scott Krafft thought it would be a nice complement and bid on it.
“I don’t think that anyone fully could know at that time just how important it would turn out to be,” said Lisa Corrin, director of the Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University. “Charlotte Moorman was the ultimate pack rat. She had thousands and thousands of objects. She saved everything. It’s kind of a time capsule. This is one of the most complete archives in terms of telling the story of experimental art in the ’60s and ’70s.”
The collection arrived at Northwestern in 2001 and Krafft spent a decade sorting through the 209 boxes, all of which were filled to capacity and many of which were only labeled “unsorted” or “miscellaneous.” Inspired by the archive, Corrin began working on an exhibition focused on Moorman in 2012.
“For three years a group of us worked together to think through how to tell Charlotte’s story,” she said. “It meant contacting artists all over the world who knew Charlotte Moorman and some of whom had material that hadn’t been looked at in years. It also meant talking to museums and other potential lenders that were willing to lend us artwork that would complement what was in the Northwestern library. It’s been an incredible odyssey.”
The result is “A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s,” which will be on display in the Evanston gallery from Jan. 16 to July 17 before traveling to museums in New York and Austria. Visitors will see photographs, television clips, video, sculpture, costumes and musical instruments chronicling Moorman’s career in the inherently ephemeral world of performance art and music festivals. Moorman was the founder of the Avant Garde Festival of New York and became known as the “topless cellist,” after a 1967 topless performance that led to her arrest, and later experiments with performance art where she played with a TV strapped to her chest and while suspended from balloons.
“Some of [these items] haven’t really been looked at since the time that the performances occurred,” Corrin said of the archives. “You can put together exactly what it was like to experience that work when it happened and put back the history of these important performances that haven’t been thought about in a very long time. We feel this exhibit is really filling in a missing piece of that story. It’s given us the opportunity to speak to composers and literary artists as well as visual artists and photographers. Charlotte’s web of contact really crossed over many media. You really get a sense of the richness of these festivals that she organized.”
Moorman launched the New York Avant Garde Festival in 1963 and helped run it until 1980, working through the pain of breast cancer after she was diagnosed in 1979. The events provided a place for many artists to premiere their work and find collaborators. Moorman herself frequently collaborated with Korean artist Nam June Paik.
“She really could create a web in which everyone was connected to one another,” Corrin said. “Charlotte was quite earnest in her desire to bring experimental art to the attention of the broad public. She appeared on Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin and would perform these pieces and she didn’t care if they made fun of her. She really believed she should use the popular medium of television to get the word out about these artists. She thought they were the artistic geniuses of their time.”
Along with bringing attention to specific artists, Corrin said Moorman, who died in 1991, was important to expanding the reach of an entire genre.
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“Charlotte Moorman was of a generation of impresarios who wanted to see art taken out of concert halls and museums and put in places where everyone gathered,” Corrin said. “Her festivals took place in Grand Central Station and Shea Stadium and Central Park. Doing something that defies the constraints that institutions often impose on artists was a very, very important part of her work. She wanted experimental art to be accessible to everyone, not just insiders.”
A concurrent companion exhibit, “Don’t Throw Anything Out,” which will only be on display at the Block Museum, offers a snapshot of Moorman’s personal life through objects from the Northwestern archives such as her Rolodex and diaries where she wrote her day’s activities which ranged from eating fish sticks for dinner to being photographed by Andy Warhol. Visitors can also hear voicemail messages left for her by her mother alongside one from John Lennon.
“She was just a wellspring of enthusiasm and loyalty and had such a diverse range of friends,” Corrin said. “She’s an extraordinary woman.”
‘A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s’
When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday and 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday Jan. 16 to July 17
Where: The Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston
Admission: Free
Contact: 847-491-4000; blockmuseum.northwestern.edu