Yale Bulletin and Calendar

August 26, 2005|Volume 34, Number 1

"Cadillac Ranch" is one of many images
featured in the School of Architecture's
exhibition "Ant Farm: 1968-1978."

Architecture gallery to feature
traveling art show 'Ant Farm'

A multi-media tribute to Ant Farm, the iconoclastic arts group that exemplified the revolutionary decade between 1968 and 1978, will inaugurate this year's series of exhibitions at the School of Architecture.

"Ant Farm 1968-1978" will be on display in the gallery of the Art & Architecture Building, 180 York St., from Aug. 29 through Nov. 4.

Founded by architects Chip Lord and Doug Michels (B.Arch. '67), Ant Farm was a loosely defined collaborative of architects, performance and installation artists, designers, sculptors and video-makers who turned many of the most recognizable symbols of American culture on their head -- literally so in the installation "Cadillac Ranch," for example, which featured 10 Cadillacs buried nose down in a Texas wheat field with their tail fins jutting skyward.

The group was equally known for the massive inflatable structures they created and introduced, on at least one occasion, as the core of a traveling art show. Ant Farm also made a major contribution to the burgeoning genre of video art with "The Eternal Frame," a spoof re-enactment of the Zapruder film of the John F. Kennedy assassination. The group's signature work as performance artists was "Media Burn," in which Michels and fellow Ant Farm member Curtis Schreier drove a Cadillac -- which they named "The Phantom Dream Car" -- through a wall of flaming televisions.

"The Phantom Dream Car" and one of Ant Farm's inflatables will be among the artifacts, photographs, drawings, videotapes and other memorabilia displayed in the exhibition. A catalog with essays by noted critics and a discussion among Ant Farm members will accompany the show.

"Ant Farm 1968-1978" was organized by the University of California (UC), Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and is co-sponsored by UC-Berkeley's College of Environmental Design and Department of Architecture. First mounted in Berkeley in 2004, the exhibition has traveled to Santa Monica, Philadelphia and Germany. Yale will be the last stop on its tour.

The catalogue for the exhibit was supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The catalogue and exhibition were also made possible by the Judith Rothschild Foundation in recognition of Michels; the National Endowment for the Arts; Rena Bransten; Marilyn Oshman; the Consortium for the Arts at UC-Berkeley; the Windall Foundation; and Joan Roebuck. Robert and Caroline Michels have also supported the endeavor.

Gallery hours are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. For more information, call (203) 432-2288 or visit the School of Architecture website at http://www.architecture.yale.edu.

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