Overview

The Live Museum uncovers the surprising history of live performances in US museums during the 1970s, exploring how and why both art and museums came alive in this era. It reframes this period as a pivotal moment when museums and artists co-created new possibilities for art in motion—an experiment that continues to shape the museum experience today. Drawing on meticulous archival research and in-depth case studies, this book examines landmark events across a range of institutions by figures such as Merce Cunningham, Laurie Anderson, Chris Burden, and even a cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger, revealing a period of experimental energy as artists and museums negotiated, challenged, and inspired one another. Rejecting the notion that performance art is inherently anti-institutional, The Live Museum situates these developments within the broader cultural and political landscape, including the distribution of performance and public art funding. It shows how frictions between artists and museums spurred innovation: artists developed new formats and inventive modes of documentation, while institutions expanded programming, adapted to funding structures, and became more dynamic, responsive, and diverse. Iconoclastic yet rigorously historical, this book speaks to scholars and students of art history, performance studies, museum studies, and cultural history, as well as artists, curators, and cultural producers.

Full Product Details

9781032637693

Table of Contents

Reviews

“Drawing the curtain aside, The Live Museum offers a fresh look at the history of performance, from Merce Cunningham’s ground breaking dance performances at the Walker Art Center to Arnold Schwarzenegger flexing his muscles in the Whitney Museum. Beißwanger presents a panoply of perspectives around questions of exclusion and inclusion in the socio-cultural context of performance art, within the walls of the museum in new, enlightening, and challenging ways. This publication is nothing less than a deconstruction of the complex narratives and dense historical fields of research, that to this day inform our understanding of performance as a hybrid medium.” Barbara Clausen, professor and rector at Städelschule and director of Portikus Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Germany “Based on archival material, this groundbreaking study undertakes a thorough revision of the relation between performance art and the museum. Introducing an institutional perspective into the study of performance, the book is an archaeology of how live art from the very beginning was included in the market economy of the art world.” Gerald Siegmund, professor of Theatre and Performance Studies, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany “In The Live Museum: Performance and Art Institutions in 1970s America Beißwanger challenges the widespread assumption that performance art only recently entered the museum space. With archival depth and an attention to the economic infrastructure that supported early performance, she traces the complex, overlooked entanglements of performers and art spaces with brilliance and intellectual clarity, revealing a rich history of negotiation, collaboration, and co-dependence.” Mechtild Widrich, professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA

Author Information

Lisa Beißwanger is an art historian specializing in 20th- and 21st-century art and architecture. Her research interests include performance art; discourses of the body, space, and movement; choreographies of architecture; museum and exhibition studies; and educational architecture. She is currently Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Koblenz, Germany. Before her academic career, she worked as a curator of contemporary art.

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