The Artpark Archives at the Burchfield Penney Art Center
Between 1990 and 1997, Artpark arts administrators David Katzive and David Midland donated hundreds of items to the Burchfield Penney Art Center to create the Artpark Archives. At Artpark, Midland was the Executive Director in the 1970's and 1980's, and then came back as President in the 1990's. Katzive served as Visual Arts Director from 1974 to 1976, Visual Arts Consultant in 1979, and Visual Arts Curator from 1990 to 1992.
In 2010 the University at Buffalo Art Gallery, Center for the Arts organized and presented a comprehensive survey exhibition about the first eleven years of Artpark’s Visual Artist Program. The museum lent nineteen items for the exhibition. Following this exhibition, in 2013, the Earl W. Brydges Artpark State Park donated all archival materials related to Artpark to the Burchfield Penney Art Center. In 2020, the Burchfield Penney Art Center announced the completion of the 403-page finding aid for the Artpark Archival Collection donated by the Earl W. Brydges Artpark State Park. This extensive archive of over 118 linear feet of textual, photographic, and audio-visual material documents one of the most impactful publicly-funded arts initiatives of the late 20th century.
Sandra Q. Firmin, Curator of the UB exhibition “Artpark: 1974 - 1984” writes of this archival collection:
“The Artpark Archives is an essential resource for researchers interested in the significant changes occurring in the arts, in economics, and in politics in the United States during the 1970s and 80s. Artpark represented a somewhat quixotic ideal to bring all the arts together. The rich audiovisual, marketing, and contractual materials provide a rare glimpse of spirited artist-public interactions, artists at work, and ephemeral site-specific artworks and performances. The full scope of contemporary scholarship must include institutions like Artpark that were unique in providing vital financial and professional support. Its legacy endures with numerous art organizations across the country committed to funding experimental site-specific and community-based work.”
This collection will provide illumination and further contextualization of many facets of American Art History. Artpark is currently a 154-acre State Park along the Niagara River Gorge, located on the American side of the American-Canadian border in Lewiston, NY. It was initially created to develop tourism around local historic attractions and revitalize the area following late 1950s development of the New York State Power Authority power plant in Niagara Falls. The Artist-in-Residence or Visual Arts program (1974-1991) was a major part of this park revitalization, dedicated in its first year to the memory of Robert Smithson and requiring artists to practice art in a public laboratory setting. Original artist residencies in the Program in Visual Arts in 1974 included nearly thirty groups or individuals participating in periods from one to ten weeks in various media, including film, video, poetry, music, performance, land art, and sculpture. Artists such as Nancy Holt, Charles Simmons, Dale Chihuly, Sam Gilliam, Chris Burden, and Gordon Matta-Clark are just a few of the artists who conducted artist residencies at Artpark.
From 2013 - 2020, Archivist Heather Gring led the team of processing staff and interns on the monumental task of rehousing, appraisal, arrangement and description of the 220 box collection, which is comprised of over 180 boxes of textual records, approximately 70,000 images, and hundreds of legacy AV objects and oversized materials. In 2021, the 400+ page finding aid to the collection was completed, which includes item-level identification of participating artists in over 75% of the image collection.
Archivist Heather Gring states,
“it is difficult to put into words what a monumental undertaking the processing of this archival collection has been. If not for the herculean efforts of all the interns and staff who rehoused tens of thousands of slides and negatives, conducted detailed description on countless files, and moved hundreds of boxes all over WNY to get this collection here, this incredible part of American Art History would have been lost to obscurity. I am grateful beyond measure for their collective efforts.”
This project was made possible in part by a grant from the Documentary Heritage Program of the New York State Archives, a program of the State Education Department.
Watch a video about the scope of the Artpark Archival collection here: https://vimeo.com/577296211
About Artpark
Artpark: 1974–1984chronicled the seminal years of this innovative residency program located in Lewiston, New York, just north of Niagara Falls, in which artists spent summers creating temporary artworks outdoors. This exhibition featured documentation of more than 200 artists’ projects, photographs, drawings, maquettes, video and film, ephemera, multimedia installations, and original and re-fabricated sculpture and installations.
Founded in 1974 as a seasonal outdoor cultural park, Artpark was a radical experiment in artist-public interaction and site-specificity that successfully balanced a populist mission with the creation of experimental art. Situated alongside the Niagara Gorge on the U.S.-Canadian border seven miles downriver from Niagara Falls, Artpark provided artists with a spectacular setting in which to work, live, and draw inspiration. The 172-acre site featured theatres, open land for artist projects, wooded areas, trails to the Niagara River, and a communal elevated boardwalk known as the ArtEl. Mindful of the land’s varied histories, artists often developed projects in response to its mythical and geological pasts, as well as traces of human presence evidenced by a landfill known as the spoils pile, a chemical disposal site, fragments of an earlier railroad and bridge, a portage trail, and an ancient Native American burial ground. Brock’s Monument in Canada (commemorating an 1812 battle) and the arc of the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge—with the Niagara Power Plant just beyond—provided dramatic markers of Artpark’s place in a community characterized by trans-nationalism and an anomalous mix of tourism and the plumes of industry powered by hydro-electricity.
During the summer months, Artpark buzzed with an eclectic array of activity that brought together rarely intersecting communities. It featured a full Broadway theatre schedule, Shakespeare productions, opera, symphonies, modern dance and music, and folk concerts; cooking demonstrations; fireworks; storytelling; local craftspeople conducting workshops (often related to programmed theme weeks like earth, air, and water weeks); and nationally renowned and emerging artists. At the height of its 1975 season, 15,000 visitors per week visited Artpark and were able to watch the artist-at-work, ask questions, and sometimes invited to participate directly in the creative process. Stipulated in their contract, artists were required to be at their site working during specified hours each day and remove their work at the end of each summer.
Critic Lucy Lippard recognized Artpark as “the first in the area of artist-public interaction.” She further asserted that: “If more artists had the opportunity to work in such close contact with their audience, this could be the birthplace of a genuinely public art—neither equestrian statues nor their abstract counterparts but an art that belongs where it is and to the people there, illuminating the history and development of the area and becoming a heightened part of the experience of the place.” The initial director Dale McConathy’s vision for Artpark embraced the now popular conception of the institution-as-laboratory, commissioning works that focused on research, process, creative collaboration, social interaction, and impermanence. The ephemeral nature of the work produced at Artpark encouraged experimentation, allowing room for trial and error and making the extensive documentation of the work indispensable.
After visiting the site, most artists proposed projects that responded to specific social, environmental, geographic, and geological conditions unique to Artpark and its environs, prompting visitors to think anew about their surroundings. Artists in the first year of Artpark’s existence skillfully integrated the gorge, wind, water, and the effects of the sun and starlight into their work. A pioneer in electronic media and sound art, Liz Phillips broadcasted interactive compositions throughout the park made from recordings of the wind and the Niagara River; and Nancy Holt, inspired by local Seneca Indian lore that “pools of water are the eyes of the earth,” transferred the constellation Hydra onto the land in the form of circular, concrete pools that reflected the changing sky along the river’s edge.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, artists associated with earthworks developed projects on private and public land in far-flung places often inaccessible to the public. The next generation of artists tended to create large-scale works that were more sensitive to human scale and could be integrated into populated environments. Many of these artists produced seminal works at Artpark, including Mary Miss, who has noted that “as much interest as they have, it is very difficult in this culture to have an access route to public situations.” The first of its kind, Artpark was an institutional risk taker, the likes of which have rarely been seen since, encouraging artists to engage the public and experiment with ways in which the built environment and social networks could be integrated into their artwork.
An abbreviated list illustrating the diversity of artists and collectives that realized seminal pieces at Artpark, includes: Vito Acconci, Alice Adams, Laurie Anderson, Ant Farm, Alice Aycock, Mowry Baden, Anthony Bannon, Lynda Benglis, James Benning, Chris Burden, Scott Burton, James Casebere, Dale Chihuly, Gene Davis, Agnes Denes, Richard Fleischner, Sam Gilliam, Suzanne Harris, Newton and Helen Harrison, Doug Hollis, Nancy Holt, Allan Kaprow, Gordon Matta-Clark, Antoni Miralda, Mary Miss, Ree Morton, Dennis Oppenheim, John Pfahl, Liz Phillips, Jody Pinto, Martin Puryear, Robert Rohm, Alan Saret, Paul Sharits, Judith Shea, Charles Simonds, Alan Sonfist, Robert Stackhouse, Michelle Stuart, James Surls, George Trakas, Anne Waldman, and Elyn Zimmerman. The sheer number of prominent and less-known artists who participated in Artpark will mark Artpark: 1974-1984 as a primary source on this period of American art.