A Protest Against Forgetting

Lucy Lippard (1937-)

“I decided I wanted to chronicle all of this stuff that was going on; it was hard to keep track of, because it was happening in such dematerialized ways and in unexpected venues. It wasn’t like you could go to a museum andsee these things, so because I am an historian and archivist when it comes right down to it, I wanted to be sure this stuff didn’t all vanish.“

-Lucy Lippard

An internationally known writer, activist and curator, Lucy Lippard was among the first writers to recognize the de-materialization at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. She is the author of eighteen books on contemporary art, and the recipient of a 1968 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Frank Mather Award for Criticism from the College Art Association, and two National Endowment for the Arts grants in criticism. She has written art criticism for Art in America, The Village Voice, In These Times, and Z Magazine.

Lucy Lippard was born in New York City and lived in New Orleans and Charlottesville, Virginia, before enrolling at Abbot Academy in 1952. After earning a B.A. degree from Smith College, she worked with the American Friends Service Committee in a Mexican village —- a first and crucial experience of a foreign nation. Later, she earned an M.A. degree in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.
In 1968, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Since 1966, Lippard has published 20 books on feminism, art, politics and place and has received numerous awards and accolades from literary critics and art associations.

Co-founder of Printed Matter, the Heresies Collective, Political Art Documentation/Distribution, Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America, and other artists’ organizations, she has also curated over 50 exhibitions, done performances, comics, guerrilla theater, and edited several independent publications the latest of which is the decidedly local La Puente de Galisteo in her home community in Galisteo, New Mexico. She has infused aesthetics with politics, and disdained disinterestedness for ethical activism.

In 2007 Lippard was awarded an honorary degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD University), Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa.*

*Quote and text from A Brief History of Curating (JRP|Ringier)