The Schoolhouse and the Bus
February 9 through May 12, 2018
Left: Suzanne Lacy and Pilar Riaño-Alcalá, Skin of Memory Revisited, 2011. Courtesy of the artist. [Image Description: A partial view of an aluminum shelf that features screw in lights on its edge. Behind the lights are objects: a clear plexiglass rectangle with a note etched into its surface, a stylized picture of a woman with a white lace scarf, and a framed photograph of an older woman wearing a purple top.]
Right: Pablo Helguera, The School of Panamerican Unrest, 2006. Courtesy of the artist. [Image Description: An open town square, three people walk through the foreground. At the center is a triangular structure covered in yellow fabric with scaffolding that holds a bell at its entrance. In the background is a pale-yellow Spanish-style government building with a bell tower.]
The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation is pleased to present The Schoolhouse and the Bus: Mobility, Pedagogy and Engagement, an exhibition pairing, for the first time, work by two leading artists of the social practice movement, Pablo Helguera and Suzanne Lacy. On view at The 8th Floor from February 9 through May 12, 2018, The Schoolhouse and the Bus highlights a touchstone work by each of the artists executed in the Americas but never shown in their entirety in the United States – Helguera’s School of Panamerican Unrest (2006) and Lacy’s Skin of Memory (1999), a collaboration with Pilar Riaño-Alcalá. Comprised of installation, collage, sculpture, ephemera, photography, video, as well as archival documentation, this exhibition serves to highlight overlapping themes in their works, which include immigration, pedagogy, violence, memory, and community organizing. The forthcoming publication The Schoolhouse and the Bus: Mobility, Pedagogy and Engagement, to be released later this spring, will feature interviews with the artists and key collaborators, as well as essays by Shannon Jackson, and the exhibition’s co-curators Elyse A. Gonzales and Sara Reisman.
Lacy, based in Los Angeles, is among the first generation of artists who began making art founded on public participation, with the goal of empowerment or change in a community. Helguera, a Mexican artist based in New York City, represents the next generation of social practice artists influenced by Lacy’s works, writings, and teachings. This traveling exhibition was co-curated by Sara Reisman, Executive and Artistic Director of The 8th Floor/The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and Elyse A. Gonzales, Assistant Director/Curator of Exhibitions, Art Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California Santa Barbara. The first presentation of The Schoolhouse and the Bus at the AD&A Museum was part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA where it was an official participant in the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative.
The Schoolhouse and the Bus: Mobility, Pedagogy and Engagement has been generously funded by Marcia and John Mike Cohen, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and Eva and Yoel Haller. In-kind support has been provided by Neil Sherman, Industrial Metal Supply.
Installation views of “The Schoolhouse and the Bus: Mobility, Pedagogy and Engagement” at The 8th Floor, February 2018. Photos by Julia Gillard. Courtesy of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation.