Merce Cunningham’s <em>Event #32</em>. A Modularized Contribution to the History of Dance in Museums

Lisa Beisswanger

doi:10.6092/issn.2036-1599/11857

Authors

Lisa Beisswanger Technical University of Darmstadt, Department of Architecture Theory and Science

Lisa Beisswanger is an art historian and postdoctoral research assistant at the chair of Architecture Theory and Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. After graduating from the University of Freiburg, she worked as a curatorial trainee and research assistant in the field of modern and contemporary art, at Villa Merkel, Esslingen and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. She was a research assistant at the Institute for Art Education at Giessen University and member of the interdisciplinary graduate center GCSC. In 2020 she completed her doctorate “Performance on Display” on the history of performance in museums with distinction. The respective book publication is scheduled for summer 2021.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2036-1599/11857

Abstract

This article contributes to the history of dance in museums. Offering a multilevel (or: modularized) analysis of Merce Cunningham’s Event #32 at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 1972, the article sheds light on questions such as: What led to the approximation of dance and museums in the 1970s? What were the implications for the arts, artists, institutions, and audiences? What may be its lasting legacies? Instead of highlighting the ontological differences between dance and museums, the article focuses on their productive intersections, thus offering a fresh perspective. In working from original archive material, it reveals the remarkable roles Merce Cunningham and the Walker Art Center played in paving the way for the staging of dance in museums as we see it today.