Sound in sight: audio and sound-focused art exhibitions in New York between 1978 and 1984

ABSTRACT

Throughout the 1970s, a drive towards the diversification of mediums available to artists led to artists working across numerous mediums not usually associated with visual art. While some came to work with sound as a central focus in their practice, most used sound as a medium to be employed in particular artworks for conceptual purposes. The paper is focused on five audio and sound exhibitions presented in New York City between 1978 and 1984. These large group exhibitions were held in alternative art spaces and not-for-profit art galleries and have received little critical attention beyond reviews published in local newspapers and art magazines. As such, these exhibitions have all but disappeared from the history of sound in art and from art history in general. I will argue that this cluster of group shows signal to an emergent practice that was moving past the post-medium condition and conceptual art towards the postmodernism of the 1980s. These exhibitions point to an understanding of sound as a medium of visual art that is at odds with contemporary scholarship in the sonic arts, which favours a music-based understanding of approaches to sound within the art gallery.

KEYWORDS:

• Sound in art
• audio art
• sound exhibitions
• visual art

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. These New York exhibitions were not the only audio and sound-focused exhibitions at the time. Others include Audio Scene 79 (Vienna, 1979), Écouter par les yeux – objets et environnements sonores (Paris, 1980), Soundings (Neuberger, NY, 1981), Audio (Stockholm, 1983) and Audio Eyes (Sydney, 1983).

2. The remaining five exhibitions not focused on in this paper were Sound Art (Museum of Modern Art, 1979), Musical Manuscripts (The Drawing Center, 1979), Soundworks II (Franklin Furnace, 1981), Sound Corridor (P.S.1, 1982), and Earworks (Grommet Gallery, 1983).

3. It is understood that the term “visual art” does not fully describe the non-visual art practices that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Still, curators and critics at the time continued to use the term to describe the practices discussed in this paper.

4. See Alan Licht, Sound Art, Revisited (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019); Brandon LaBelle, Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (New York: Continuum, 2006;) Peter Weibel (ed.), Sound Art: Sound as a Medium of Art (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2019); Salomé Voegelin, Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art (New York: Continuum, 2010); Marcel Cobussen, Vincent Meelberg, and Barry Truax (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Sounding Art (London: Routledge 2017); and Sanne Krogh Groth and Holger Schulze (eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

5. See Kelly (2017) for a discussion of Nauman’s sound works.

6. Sound Art was not included in the case studies as it exhibited only three artists, and displayed in such a fashion that it resembled a series of solo shows rather than a group exhibition. While Sound Art was staged at MoMA it was a minor exhibition of sound works compared to the group exhibitions under investigation in this paper.

7. Institute for Art and Urban Resources, “Information Sheet”, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, NY; MOMA PS1, I.A. 298.

8. See Vito Hannibal Acconci Studio (Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2005), 275–303, 322–356.

9. See Michael Brewster’s artist website, http://www.michaelbrewsterart.com/articles-reviews-and-publications.html (accessed 7 March 2024).

10. It is unclear how the exhibition was curated. I can find no mention of how artworks were chosen or by whom.

11. The term sound year was coined by Jill Kurtzer during a meeting at P.S.1, given that, in 1979, it would be possible to visit a sound-related art show in New York almost any time between April and December, from The Record as Artwork at The Kitchen (13 April–19 May) to Sound Art at MoMA (25 June–5 August) to Sound at P.S.1 (30 Sept–18 November) and Musical Manuscripts at The Drawing Center (8 November–26 January 1980) (Sound Festival Meeting, 1978).

12. The exhibition initially included twenty-one artists, but early in the tour, Beth B’s House Calls was removed. Her name is crossed out in the loan agreements. I cannot find any explanation for the work’s removal in the archives.

13. In the same statement, Winer oddly claimed, “Artists Space presented a large audio exhibition in New York in 1977”. She surely means Audio Works, which was presented in 1978. Her statement went through several edits and was included in numerous published information sheets and press releases.

14. According to Linnea Semmerling, the playback device was built by Robert Smith. She states, “Since Smith had built the elaborate construction himself, it could not travel on to PS1 with the rest of the exhibition, so the New York show was considerably quieter”. Linnea Semmerling, Listening on display: exhibiting sounding artworks 1960s-now (Maastricht : Maastricht University, 2020), 167.

15. The New York-based art critic and curator Peter Frank wrote a meandering catalogue essay for Sound at LAICA that sought to historicise sound practices across art and music and, in doing so, provided a bridge between Sound at LAICA and its inclusion in Sound at P.S.1.

16. Excerpt from Nancy Holt, Visual Sound Zone: Washroom, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (1979). © Holt/Smithson Foundation. Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation, published in Holt (2022, 98).

17. “Applications Received P.S. 1 Sound Show”, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, NY, MoMA PS1, I.A.298.

18. The following artists featured in the Special Project Rooms: Vito Acconci, Bill Anastasi, Michael Brewster, Bruce Fier, Jack Goldstein, William Hellermann, Nancy Holt, David Jacobs, Hiroshi Kariya, Bernard Leitner, Gary Lloyd, Annea Lockwood, Dennis Oppenheim, Mimi Smith, Norman Tuck, and Norman Tripplett White.

19. In a later version of Sound Performance (Jack Goldstein x 10,000, the Orange County Museum of Art, California 2012), four speakers were placed on the gallery floor. This would have added an additional spatialisation to the work not achieved from the two mono cassette players in the P.S.1 version.

20. While many commentators get the exhibition year wrong, incorrectly stating it was held in 1983, it is also often wrongly attributed as the first use of the term sound art. The catalogue was printed in 1983, and uses the term sound art, but this was by no means the first usage. There were numerous uses of the term in 1979, for example, as the title of the exhibition Sound Art at MoMA, and in a Village Voice review of Sound at P.S.1. I do not claim these instances are the term’s first use, however they appear some four years earlier than Sound/Art.

21. These spaces did receive public attention through exhibition reviews and audience attendance at the time Records of attendance numbers are non-existent, but in photographic documentation, sizeable audiences can often be seen, especially in the live performances held in conjunction with exhibitions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Caleb Kelly

Caleb Kelly is Associate Professor of Media Art Theory at the University of New South Wales, Australia. His research examines the role of sound within media art, installation, and experimental music. He is the author of Gallery Sound (2017) and co-editor of Imperfections: Studies in Mistakes, Flaws, and Failures (2021).