A UChicago Arts initiative, Concrete Happenings invites art-lovers and carlovers, artists and scholars, drivers and pedestrians to confront the power of public art—the strange power of a massive sculpture produced by Fluxus artist Wolf Vostell. In 1970, in Chicago, Vostell encased a Cadillac in concrete.
From Fall 2016 to Spring 2017, a range of free, interdisciplinary programs across campus will engage both scholarly and general audiences in the rich themes surrounding Concrete Happenings.
Concrete Happenings is organized by UChicago Arts in partnership with the University of Chicago’s Department of Art History, Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, Smart Museum of Art, University Library: Special Collections Research Center, and Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. The initiative is directed by Christine Mehring, Chair and Professor in the Department of Art History. Additional UChicago program partners include Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory; Film Studies Center; Franke Institute for the Humanities; Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry; Humanities Division; Institute for Molecular Engineering; Rockefeller Chapel; UChicago Urban; and the Departments of Cinema and Media Studies, Germanic Studies, and Music. Other partners include the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Arts Club of Chicago; and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Fri, Sep 30, 2016, 11am–4pm Methods and Materials to Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (220 E Chicago Ave) to Arts Club of Chicago (201 E Ontario St) to University of Chicago Campus North Parking Garage (5525 S Ellis Ave) Vostell’s Concrete Traffic makes several stops on its return to the University of Chicago campus. First, outside of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Concrete Traffic will be joined by a number of classic Cadillacs and cement trucks as a backdrop for a free public discussion with Michael Darling, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator at the MCA, and Christine Mehring, faculty director of Concrete Happenings and Professor and Chair, Department of Art History at UChicago. Afterward, a “happening” will take place at the sculpture’s original downtown site now across from the present-day Arts Club of Chicago. Finally, the sculpture will make its way past Midway Studios and the Logan Center for the Arts, site of its original location at the University of Chicago, before arriving at its new location in the Campus North Parking Garage.
Free.
Presented by the Arts Club of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Smart Museum of Art, and UChicago Arts.
Concrete Happenings has been made possible by each of the programming partners above, as well as the Goethe-Institut, the Smart Museum’s Pamela and R. Christopher Hoehn-Saric Exhibitions Fund, and the Wolf Vostell Estate. Support for the conservation of Concrete Traffic has been graciously provided by Reva and David Logan Foundation; Maja Oeri; Christian Scheidemann and Contemporary Conservation, New York; Friends of Heritage Preservation; JP Brown, Conservator, The Field Museum, Chicago, IL; UChicago Arts Campus and Public Art Fund; Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society; and Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry. IMAGE CREDIT: David Katzive, view of Wolf Vostell’s Concrete Traffic as it moves down, I-90 to the University of Chicago, June 1970. Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Photo © MCA Chicago.
arts.uchicago.edu | 9
The product of that “happening,” Concrete Traffic, will be installed in a University of Chicago campus parking garage this fall. It will serve as the provocation for a comprehensive suite of exhibitions and interactive public programs—performances, screenings, talks, art workshops, happenings—that offer unique opportunities to engage with a crucial art historical moment and movement, and to explore the intensities with which an artwork can form and transform its publics.
Concrete Traffic Procession to the University of Chicago
