“This fall the Pulitzer Arts Foundation examines the legacy of Scott Burton (1939–1989), an American original whose wide-ranging practice anticipated many of the strategies of today’s art.
As the most comprehensive exhibition of Burton’s work ever mounted in the United States, Scott Burton: Shape Shift underscores the breadth of the artist’s vision. By the time of his death at the age of 50 from an AIDS-related illness, Burton had functioned as sculptor, public artist, performance artist, choreographer, art critic, and exhibition curator.
The survey spans Burton’s career, featuring nearly 40 sculptures, more than 70 photographs, drawings, and ephemera, and the only known extant video of the artist’s performance work. Almost all of the archival photographs, diagrams, drawings, and ephemera are generously on loan from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Archives, which maintains the Scott Burton Papers, its largest single-artist holding.” — Pulitzer Arts Foundation
© 2024 Estate of Scott Burton/ Artist Rights. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY
Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY
Gelatin silver print, 8 × 10 inches (20.3 × 25.4 cm). Scott Burton Papers, V.37. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photo: Jonathan E. Jareb. The Museum of Modern Art/New York, NY/U.S.A. © 2024 Estate of Scott Burton/ Artist Rights. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY
“During Scott Burton’s lifetime, the intentionality behind his expansive practice and the connecting thread of gay identity in his work were infrequently discussed. And, nowadays, many know him only from his public art,” says Cara Starke, executive director, Pulitzer Arts Foundation. “We aim to present a fuller picture of an artist who developed an original and ever-more-relevant body of artwork over the course of a career that hardly lasted more than 20 years.”
The exhibition is organized by independent curator Jess Wilcox, with Heather Alexis Smith, Assistant Curator, Pulitzer Arts Foundation. “The making of Shape Shift has been an exciting process of historical recovery. We’ve been able to unpack aspects of Burton’s work that are still too little known because of the relative anonymity of his public sculpture,” says Wilcox.
Title image: Scott Burton. Five-Part Storage Cubes, 1982. Painted wood, 53 x 57 x 43 1/2 inches (134.6 x 144.8 x 110.5 cm). Number 1 from the edition of 2. © 2024 Estate of Scott Burton/ Artist Rights Society (ARS), NY © 2022 Phillips Auctioneers LLC, All Rights Reserved, Collection of Ugo Rondinone.
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