Simone Forti and Peter van Riper, PROJECT PERFORMANCE, Summergarden, MoMA, New York, 1976
Events: August 18–19, 1976, 8 p.m.
Dimensions: 40.6 x 14 cm
Further Information: The eighth Summergarden at the Museum of Modern Art’s Sculpture Garden in New York was opened on June 2, 1978. Since 1971, MoMA has organized free concerts and performances by emerging artists, with events taking place on weekend evenings throughout the summers.
The choreographer and avant-garde dancer Simone Forti has frequently collaborated with the artist and composer Peter van Riper. On both evenings of August 18 and 19, announced as “Movement by Simone Forti” and “Sound by Peter van Riper”, they performed individual and collaborative pieces. On the back of the invitation, Forti and van Riper give personal statements describing all presented pieces, such as Huddle, Garden, and Phoenix by Forti, and Binaural Music, Circle Song, and Double Sound by van Riper.
In 1975, Lillian Gerard, former Special Projects Coordinator of MoMA’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, described the Summergarden in The New York Times “as a meeting place for young lovers, senior citizens, jumping children, foreign travelers, and out-of-towners” and in particular singled out “… its evenings with performers as ardent and free as the trees and the sculpture that thrive in this oasis of fountains and pools, with the sky above and cement below.”
HR
Further Links: Read more about the history of the Summergarden in an article by Michelle Harvey: https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2016/07/27/take-a-breather-summergarden-at-moma/
You can read the official announcement of the performance in MoMA’s archive, here: https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/5647/releases/MOMA_1978_0083_77.pdf
Image: Images of this invitation are part of the online collection of Archiv der Avantgarden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.
