Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. is an arts organization-in-residence at

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was ...

in Brooklyn, New York. Since its inception in 1976, Franklin Furnace has been identifying, presenting, archiving, and making

avant-garde art The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or 'vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical D ...

available to the public. Franklin Furnace focuses on time-based art forms that may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect, cultural bias, politically unpopular content or their ephemeral or experimental nature. Franklin Furnace is dedicated to serving emerging artists by providing both physical and virtual venues for the presentation of time-based art, including but not limited to

artists' books Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works of art that utilize the form of the book. They are often published in small editions, though they are sometimes produced as one-of-a-kind objects. Overview Artists' books have employed a ...

and periodicals, site-specific installations,

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

, and live art on the internet.

History

Franklin Furnace was founded in 1976 by

Martha Wilson Martha Wilson (born 1947 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American feminist performance artist and the founding director of Franklin Furnace Archive art organization. Over the past four decades she has developed and "created innovative photo ...

to serve artists who chose publishing as a primary, "democratic" artistic medium who were not being supported by existing arts organizations. From its inception, Franklin Furnace's energies have focused on three aspects of "time-based" art: its collection of

; its

program for emerging artists; and its exhibitions of time-based arts, both site-specific installations by contemporary artists, and historical and contemporary exhibitions of artists' books and other ephemeral arts. In 1985, Franklin Furnace established the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, an annual grant program for early career artists chosen by a peer panel review, to help artists produce major performance art works in New York City. The same year, the Franklin Furnace inaugurated Sequential Art for Kids, an arts-in-education program that places professional artists in New York City public school classrooms. Since its establishment, SEQART has grown into an award-winning arts education program that is fully integrated with public school curriculum, having by 2021 sent a total of 41 artists into 58 NYC public elementary schools to serve over 8,550 children. Starting in 2016, SEQART has also been providing arts education services for adults in senior citizen and wellness centers. In 1990, Franklin Furnace's basement performance space was closed by the New York City Fire Department in response to an anonymous caller. Since that time, Franklin Furnace has been presenting performance art to new audiences throughout New York City by developing strategic partnerships with institutions large and small, from The Brooklyn Museum and

The New School for Social Research The New School for Social Research (NSSR) is a graduate-level educational institution that is one of the divisions of The New School in New York City, United States. The university was founded in 1919 as a home for progressive era thinkers. NSSR ...

Dixon Place Dixon Place is a theater organization in New York City dedicated to the development of works-in-progress from a broad range of performers and artists. It exists to serve the creative needs of artists—emerging, mid-career and established—who a ...

, The Knitting Factory, and public spaces across the 5 boroughs. In 1993, Franklin Furnace and the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

signed an agreement to merge Franklin Furnace's collection of artists' books published internationally after 1960—the largest repository of this nature in the United States—with that of MOMA, forming a permanent resource of unparalleled value. During its 20th anniversary season in 1996 and 1997, Franklin Furnace sold its original loft and reinvented itself as a "virtual institution," not identified with its real estate but rather with its resources, made accessible by electronic and other means. No longer providing a venue for performance art projects, the organization continues to provide grants and other support to performance artists via the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art. From 1998 to 2004, Franklin Furnace's headquarters were at 45 John Street in lower Manhattan. Between 1998 and 1999, in the early days of the internet, Franklin Furnace presented new time-based art by 32+ artists to worldwide audiences through ''The Future of the Present'', its pioneering online collaboration with Pseudo Programs, Inc. In 2008, The Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art and the Future of the Present grant programs were combined to institute the Franklin Furnace Fund. With the continued support of

Jerome Foundation James Jerome Hill II (March 2, 1905 – November 21, 1972) was an American filmmaker and artist known for his award-winning documentary and experimental films. Career Hill was the child of railroad executive Louis W. Hill. He was educated at Y ...

, the

NYC Department of Cultural Affairs The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) is the department of the government of New York City dedicated to supporting New York City's cultural life. Among its primary missions is ensuring adequate public funding for non-profit cultur ...

and others, as of 2021, Franklin Furnace has awarded grants ranging between $2,000 and $10,000 to a total of 382 artists. On October 1, 2004, Franklin Furnace moved from the Financial District to 80 Arts - The James E. Davis Arts Building in the BAM cultural district at 80 Hanson Place in Brooklyn where it remained until Fall, 2014 when Franklin Furnace relocated to

's Brooklyn campus under an organization-in-residence agreement. The decision to "nest" within Pratt Institute coincided with the announcement of Pratt's new Master of Fine Arts program in Performance + Performance Studies. In mid-2020 in response to the global pandemic, Franklin Furnace pivoted to continue offering services for avant-garde artists and their aficionados by launching the LOFT, an online digital presenting platform. By March 2022, the LOFT had presented the work of 300+ Franklin Furnace artist alumnsIn 2001, Franklin Furnace created and began using the gender neutral terms alumn (sing.) and alumns (pl.). in 24 free public programs. During its 46-year history, Franklin Furnace has gained a national and international reputation for identifying artists who have changed the terms by which contemporary avant-garde art is discussed; mounted scholarly exhibitions that have embodied the history of 20th-century avant-garde activity; and stood up for the right of artists to freedom of expression as guaranteed under the

First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

to the United States Constitution.

Notable artist alumns

Among hundreds of artists who Franklin Furnace gave the opportunity to mount their first New York shows are

Ida Applebroog Ida Applebroog (born November 11, 1929) is an American multi-media artist who is best-known for her paintings and sculptures that explore the themes of gender, sexual identity, violence and politics. Applebroog has been the recipient of multiple ...

Guillaume Bijl Guillaume Bijl (born 1946 in Antwerp) is a Belgian conceptual and an installation artist. He lives and works in Antwerp. Early life and education Bijl was born in 1946 to a working-class family in Antwerp. The artist's father worked at the loc ...

Dara Birnbaum Dara Birnbaum (born 1946) is an American video and installation artist. Birnbaum entered the nascent field of video art in the mid-to-late 1970s challenging the gendered biases of the period and television’s ever-growing presence within the Amer ...

Willie Cole Willie Cole (born 1955 in Somerville, New Jersey) is a contemporary American sculptor, printer, and conceptual and visual artist. His work uses contexts of postmodern eclecticism, and combines references and appropriation from African and Afr ...

Jenny Holzer Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950) is an American neo-conceptual artist, based in Hoosick, New York. The main focus of her work is the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces and includes large-scale installations, advertising billboards, ...

Tehching Hsieh Tehching (Sam) Hsieh (謝德慶; born 31 December 1950; Nan-Chou, Pingtung County, Taiwan) is a US performance artist of Taiwanese background. He has been called a "master" by fellow performance artist Marina Abramović. Early life Hsieh was one ...

Barbara Kruger Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945) is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captio ...

Matt Mullican Matt Mullican (born September 18, 1951) is an American artist and educator. He is the child of artists Lee Mullican and Luchita Hurtado. Mullican lives and works in both Berlin and New York City. Early life and education Matt Mullican was b ...

Shirin Neshat Shirin Neshat ( fa, شیرین نشاط; born March 26, 1957 in Qazvin) is an Iranian visual artist who lives in New York City, known primarily for her work in film, video and photography. Her artwork centers on the contrasts between Islam and th ...

, and

Krzysztof Wodiczko Krzysztof Wodiczko (born April 16, 1943) is a Polish artist known for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments. He has realized more than 80 such public projections in Australia, Austria, Canada, England ...

. Among the many performance artists who got their start at Franklin Furnace are

Eric Bogosian Eric Bogosian ( hy, Էրիկ Բոգոսյան; ; born April 24, 1953) is an American actor, playwright, monologuist, novelist, and historian. Descended from Armenian American immigrants, he grew up in Watertown and Woburn, Massachusetts, and ...

David Cale David Cale (born David Egleton) is an English-American playwright, actor, and songwriter, best known for his solo performance works. Early life Cale was born in England in 1958 or 1959 and grew up in the town of Luton, Bedfordshire. He faile ...

Guillermo Gómez-Peña Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a Mexican/Chicano performance artist, writer, activist, and educator. Gómez-Peña has created work in multiple media, including performance art, experimental radio, video, photography and installation art. His fifteen b ...

, Karen Finley,

Robbie McCauley Robbie Doris McCauley (July 14, 1942 – May 20, 2021) was an American playwright, director, performer, and professor. McCauley is best known for her plays ''Sugar'' and ''Sally's Rape,'' among other works that addressed racism in the United St ...

Theodora Skipitares Theodora Skipitares is a New York–based interdisciplinary artist. Trained as a sculptor and theater designer, she began creating autobiographical solo performances in the late 1970s. She moved on to examine diverse social and political themes u ...

, Michael Smith, and

Paul Zaloom Paul Finley Zaloom (born December 14, 1951) is an American actor and puppeteer, best known for his role as the character Beakman on the television show ''Beakman's World''. Career Born in Garden City, Paul Zaloom was educated at The Choate S ...

. Additionally, Franklin Furnace's programs have enabled more established artists like

Vito Acconci Vito Acconci (, ; January 24, 1940 – April 27, 2017) was an influential American performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His foundational p ...

Laurie Anderson Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...

Jennifer Bartlett Jennifer Bartlett ( Losch; March 14, 1941 – July 25, 2022) was an American artist. She was known for paintings and prints that combine the system-based aesthetic of conceptual art with the painterly approach of Neo-Expressionism. Many of her ...

Lee Breuer Esser Leopold Breuer (February 6, 1937 – January 3, 2021) was an American playwright, theater director, academic, educator, filmmaker, poet, and lyricist. Breuer taught and directed on six continents. Career Breuer was a founding co-artistic ...

Richard Foreman Richard Foreman (born June 10, 1937 in New York City) is an American avant-garde playwright and the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Achievements and awards Foreman has written, directed and designed over fifty of his own plays, b ...

Joan Jonas Joan Jonas (born July 13, 1936) is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, and one of the most important artists to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s.Pope.L, and William Wegman to experiment in ways that would be inappropriate for mainstream venues. Franklin Furnace's exhibition program has presented many historically notable exhibitions of time-based art of an ephemeral nature, including critically celebrated exhibitions on

Cubist Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

books and prints,

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

, and Hungarian and Russian

Samizdat Samizdat (russian: самиздат, lit=self-publishing, links=no) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the document ...

art, contributing to international art history scholarship.

Current projects

The Franklin Furnace Fund

Granted annually, the Franklin Furnace Fund aims to help artists produce major performance art works in New York City. Rather than having a curator, the Fund relies on a peer review panel to select grant recipients. Each year, a new panel of artists reviews all applications and determines the allocation of funding. Eligible artists are early-career, non-student, vocational artists who create innovative, imaginative, and authentic performance art. Although artists from everywhere in the world can apply, grant recipients are expected to showcase their Fund projects in New York City.

Artists' Book Collection

Franklin Furnace's Artists' Books Collection has been a core program since the organization's 1976 inception as an

artists' book Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works of art that utilize the form of the book. They are often published in small editions, though they are sometimes produced as one-of-a-kind objects. Overview Artists' books have employed a ...

store. By 1977,

Printed Matter Printed matter is a term, mostly used by mailing systems, normally used to describe mechanically printed materials for which reduced fees are paid which are lower than first-class mail. Each postal administration has it own rules for what may be p ...

bookstore had opened a few blocks away, leaving Franklin Furnace to continue its work as an artists' book archives and exhibition center. When the

(MoMA) acquired the Franklin Furnace collection of artists' books in 1993, the collection consisted of over 13,500 artists' books, magazines, and audiotapes, forming the largest collection of artists' books in the United States: the Museum of Modern Art/Franklin Furnace/Artist Book Collection. To this day, Franklin Furnace continues to maintain and build its own artists' books collection at the

campus in Brooklyn, and to give duplicate donations to the Museum of Modern Art/Franklin Furnace/Artist Book Collection.

Event Archives and Moving Image Archives

Franklin Furnace's virtual Event Archives is a searchable database with information about performance art works, temporary installations, exhibitions, and special events hosted by Franklin Furnace. Franklin Furnace's Moving Image Archives is a burgeoning research collection consisting in 2021 of 140 videos originally recorded as VHS tapes which document art events, particularly performance art, presented or supported by Franklin Furnace during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Franklin Furnace's archives have received important support from the

Council on Library and Information Resources The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is an American independent, nonprofit organization. It works with libraries, cultural institutions, and higher learning communities on developing strategies to improve research, teaching, an ...

, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Pine Tree Foundation of New York, and the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

. Documentation of Franklin Furnace's artists and artworks are also available on the

Artstor Artstor is a nonprofit organization that builds and distributes the Digital Library, an online resource of more than 2.5 million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences, and Shared Shelf, a Web-based cataloging and image manageme ...

website. The public is invited to make appointments to conduct research in Franklin Furnace's physical archives at its Brooklyn offices.

The Sketchbooks of Ree Morton archives

The Sketchbooks of

Ree Morton Ree Morton (August 3, 1936 – April 30, 1977) was an American visual artist who was closely associated with the postminimalist and feminist art movements of the 1970s. Life and career Ree Morton was born on August 3, 1936, in Ossining, New Yo ...

, an American visual artist from the

postminimalist Postminimalism is an art term coined (as post-minimalism) by Robert Pincus-Witten in 1971Chilvers, Ian and Glaves-Smith, John, ''A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art'', second edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. ...

period, are also available as an online research resource offered by Franklin Furnace. Importantly, this collection provides the only evidence of many of her ephemeral, yet important pieces. The estate of Ree Morton donated 22 sketchbooks, 16 notebooks, and more to Franklin Furnace in 1988, all of which is accessible online.

''The Flue'' archives

Conceived and instituted in 1980 by artist and printer Conrad Gleber
''The Flue''
was a periodical totalling sixteen issues published by Franklin Furnace between 1980 and 1989. The idea for an artist-driven publication was inspired by the tabloid-format catalog of Chicago Books' 1980 Franklin Furnace installation, "Chicago". The in-house periodical spanned a range of formats, including tabloids and posters, organizational newsletters, exhibition supplements and catalogs, and scholarly surveys of contemporary and historical artists book movements. The range in media formats reflect the multitude of editors and designers who worked on the periodical, including

Richard McGuire Richard McGuire (born 1957) is an American illustrator, graphic novelist, children's book author, and musician. His illustrations have been published in ''The New York Times'', ''The New Yorker'', and ''Le Monde''. His short story ''Here'' is a ...

Linda Montano Linda Mary Montano (born January 18, 1942, Saugerties (town), New York, Saugerties, New York (state), New York) is an American performance artist. Early life Montano was raised in a devoutly Roman Catholic household, partly Irish and partly Itali ...

, and Buzz Spector. In a collaboration with Primary Information, the entire run o
''The Flue''
has been digitized and made available online.

Exhibitions

In the Shadow of Duchamp: The Photomechanical Revolution

In June 1976, Franklin Furnace held the exhibition ''In the Shadow of Duchamp: The Photomechanical Revolution'' at The Grolier Club in New York City. The works showcased were selected by Weston J. Naef and Martha Wilson.

Action Theater: The Happenings of Ken Dewey

In 1987, Barbara Moore curated the retrospective exhibition ''Action Theater: The Happenings of Ken Dewey'', including rarely-seen performance videos, diagrams, instructions, and photographs of Ken Dewey and peers. Moore also edited the accompanying catalog, which features a color Xerox cover by Carolee Schneemann, artists' pages by Alison Knowles, Robert Wilson, and others, and a portfolio of Peter Moore's photographs of performances and installations by Suki Dewey, Geoff Hendricks, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Les Levine, Charlotte Moorman, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, and others, all friends and colleagues of Ken Dewey. In 2019, the Ken Dewey directorship of Franklin Furnace was established in honor of artist and arts administrator Ken Dewey.

The Page as Alternative Space 1909-1929

Curators of this 1976 exhibition ''The Page as Alternative Space 1909-1929'' included Clive Phillpot, 1909–1929; Charles Henri Ford, 1930–1949; Jon Hendricks and Barbara Moore, 1950–1969; Ingrid Sischy and Richard Flood, 1970–1980. This exhibition inaugurated Franklin Furnace's commitment to presenting the historical antecedents of the contemporary artists' book publishing movement.

Cubist Prints/Cubist Books

Curated by Donna Stein, the exhibition ''Cubist Prints/Cubist Books'' began its national tour at Franklin Furnace in 1983, and made additional stops at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Center for the Fine Arts, Miami; The Marian Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; and Galerie Berggruen, Paris, France.

The Avant-Garde Book: 1900-1945

Held February 24 through May 6, 1989, ''The Avant-Garde Book: 1910-1945'' exhibition showcased artists' books selected by Jaroslav Andel, a freelance curator and art historian. The exhibition began with a first edition of Alfred Jarry's "

Ubu Roi ''Ubu Roi'' (; "Ubu the King" or "King Ubu") is a play by French writer Alfred Jarry, then 23 years old. It was first performed in Paris in 1896, by Aurélien Lugné-Poe's Théâtre de l'Œuvre at the Nouveau-Théâtre (today, the Théâtre de P ...

" (1896) and ranged through Russian

Constructivism Constructivism may refer to: Art and architecture * Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes * Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in Russia in the 1920s a ...

Futurism Futurism ( it, Futurismo, link=no) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such ...

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...

, and

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

. It featured original editions of artists' books by Guillaume Appollinaire, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara and others.

In the Flow: Alternate Authoring Strategies

The 1996 exhibition ''In the Flow: Alternate Authoring Strategies'', curated by Daniel O. Goerges showcased the evolution of the nature of artistic authorship across the age of information and focused on art as a flow of information rather than as finished, physical product.

The C-Series: Artists' Books and Collection Action

''The C-Series: Artists' Books and Collective Action'' was curated by Courtney J. Martin and presented from November 2004 through January 2005 at the Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York. Works presented were selected from the third set ("C" copies) of artists' books returned to Franklin Furnace after the Museum of Modern Art acquired the Franklin Furnace collection of artists' books in 1993.

The History of Disappearance

''The History of Disappearance'', curated by Nicole Hood and Martha Wilson, was held at the BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK, from June 18 through September 4, 2005. The exhibition featured video and photographic documentation of 1,300 publications or performance artworks from the Franklin Furnace archive. Artists whose works were featured include

Patty Chang Patty Chang (born February 3, 1972 in San Leandro, California)"About." ''Patty Chang.'' Accessed March 10, 2018. http://www.pattychang.com/about/ is an American performance artist and film director living and working in Los Angeles, California. ...

Andrea Fraser Andrea Rose Fraser (born 1965) is a performance artist, mainly known for her work in the area of Institutional Critique. Fraser is based in New York and Los Angeles and is currently Department Head and Professor of Interdisciplinary Studio of th ...

Coco Fusco Coco Fusco (born Juliana Emilia Fusco Miyares; June 18, 1960) is a Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator whose work has been exhibited and published internationally. Fusco's work explores gender, identity, race, and power th ...

, Susan Mogul,

, Pope.L.,

and William Wegman.

Historias

The bilingual Spanish-English exhibition ''Historias'' features multi-media works from the late 1970s through 2020, by Argentine artists, most of whom are Franklin Furnace alumns. The exhibition focuses on the

military dictatorship A military dictatorship is a dictatorship in which the military exerts complete or substantial control over political authority, and the dictator is often a high-ranked military officer. The reverse situation is to have civilian control of the m ...

that took over the Argentine government in 1976, the human rights violations that occurred under its rule, and the subsequent return to a democratic government. The exhibition includes works by Bedevo et al., C.A.PA.TA.CO/GAS-TAR (Fernando Amengual, Mercedes Idoyaga "Emei", Fernando "Coco" Bedoya, Diego Fontanet, Joan Prim, Carlos N. Tirabassi, and Daniel Sanjurjo), Jaime Davidovich,

León Ferrari León Ferrari (September 3, 1920 – July 25, 2013) was an Argentine contemporary conceptual artist. During his extended art career (1954-2013), his artworks often protested the Argentinian government, the imperialist west, and the Church. Fe ...

, Por El Ojo (Julia Balmaceda, Federico Gonzalez, Daniel Sanjurjo, and Ignacio Sourrouille), Liliana Porter, and Dolores Zorreguieta. Presented online in 2020 as Franklin Furnace's first virtual exhibition, Historias include essays by Ruth Benitez, Agustina Bullrich, and Fernando Noy, with translations by Rossy Ramos and Agustina Bullrich, and interviews by Ruth Benitez with Federico Gonzalez, Liliana Porter, Ignacio Sourrouille, and Dolores Zorreguieta.

Key staff, 2022

* Arantxa Araujo, Program Director * Tsubasa Berg, Photographic Digitization Specialist * Michael Katchen, Senior Archivist * Fang-Yu Liu, Archives Assistant * Nicole Rosengurt, Archives Technician * Harley Spiller, Ken Dewey Director * Mary Suk, Financial Manager * Martha Wilson, Founding Director Emerita

Controversy

Culture wars

Franklin Furnace was on the frontlines of the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, a period when censorship and discrimination cast shadows across the U.S. art scene. Notably, in January 1984, Franklin Furnace presented the artists' collective Carnival Knowledge's ''Second Coming'', a performance series that questioned the possibility of a more " feminist porn". Performances included mud-wrestling artists and monologues by sex workers. In response, the Morality Action Committee picketed outside of the performances and coordinated a postcard campaign where church groups complained to Franklin Furnace's funders. In addition, the United States'

requested that the agency not be credited where it was not fully responsible for the programming.

NEA four

In May 1990, Franklin Furnace's basement performance space was closed by the NYC Fire Department in response to an anonymous call. Following the closure, Franklin Furnace was demonized by Republican Senator Jesse Helms for presenting Karen Finley's ''A Woman's Life Isn't Worth Much'' (1990), which led to a U.S. General Accounting Office review and audits by the Internal Revenue Service. Franklin Furnace had previously supported performance artists Karen Finley, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes. On June 21, 1992, at the invitation of Director Robert T. Buck, with introductory remarks by Carole S. Vance, The Brooklyn Museum hosted Franklin Furnace's afternoon performance event, "Too Shocking To Show," with live performances by Tim Miller (an excerpt from ''My Queer Body''), Holly Hughes (an excerpt from ''Snatches''), Scarlet O (an excerpt from ''Appearances Can Be Deceiving''), and Sapphire, who read her poem ''Wild Thing''. An excerpt from a letter written by Martha Wilson explains: "The year was 1989 when Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck and Tim Miller's Fellowship applications were brought up before the National Council, the body of Presidential appointees which oversees the grants made by the National Endowment for the Arts. Segments of tapes of performances were shown. Someone said it was 'politically impossible' to award grants to these artists, all of whom take sexuality as one of their subjects. The artists, with the assistance of the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, joined by the National Association of Artists' Organizations and numerous other groups such as The New School and the Rockefeller Foundation, argued successfully that their grants could not be rescinded just because they were politically unpopular. The grants were eventually restored." In 1993 the NEA settled with the four artists out of court and gave them the grants they had been denied. Still, they decided to litigate against the NEA's congressionally approved "decency clause," but on June 25, 1998, The Supreme Court upheld the decency clause while declaring the language "advisory" and meaningless.Dubin, Steven C. (1994). ''Arresting Images: Impolitic Art and Uncivil Actions''. Routledge (first published October 1992).

NEA grant rescinded

In January, 1992, the Visual Artists Organizations grant Franklin Furnace had been awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts was rescinded by the National Council because of the sexually explicit content of a 1991 performance by Scarlet O. The Peter Norton Family Foundation stepped in to replace this $25,000 grant.