This fall the Pulitzer Arts Foundation examines the legacy of Scott Burton (1939–1989), an American original whose wide-ranging practice anticipated many of the strategies of today’s art.
As the most comprehensive exhibition of Burton’s work ever mounted in the United States, Scott Burton: Shape Shift underscores the breadth of the artist’s vision. By the time of his death at the age of 50 from an AIDS-related illness, Burton had functioned as sculptor, public artist, performance artist, choreographer, art critic, and exhibition curator.
The survey spans Burton’s career, featuring nearly 40 sculptures, more than 70 photographs, drawings, and ephemera, and the only known extant video of the artist’s performance work. Almost all of the archival photographs, diagrams, drawings, and ephemera are generously on loan from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Archives, which maintains the Scott Burton Papers, its largest single-artist holding.
The exhibition is organized by independent curator Jess Wilcox, with Heather Alexis Smith, Assistant Curator, Pulitzer Arts Foundation. “The making of Shape Shift has been an exciting process of historical recovery. We’ve been able to unpack aspects of Burton’s work that are still too little known because of the relative anonymity of his public sculpture,” says Wilcox.
Having once described his art as “sculpture in love with furniture,” Scott Burton is remembered as an artist, critic, and curator. He was born in 1939 in Greensboro, Alabama, spent his formative years in Washington, DC, and received a B.A. degree from Columbia University (1962) and an M.F.A. from New York University (1963). His critical writing appeared regularly in ARTnews and Art in America and in exhibition catalogues, including that for Harald Szeeman’s landmark Post minimalist exhibition, Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (1969). By the early 1970s, Burton was exhibiting in New York City, first with like-minded artists on the street, then in galleries and museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim, P.S. 1, and, in a solo exhibition, Artists Space. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Burton created an array of performances, furniture as sculpture, and public art environments that were inspired by his studies of body language, art history, and design. He also curated the inaugural exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art’s now-lauded Artist’s Choice series. Burton died of an AIDS-related illness in 1989. His work is in dozens of collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Princeton University Art Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Tate, and the Walker Art Center.
The Pulitzer Arts Foundation is an art museum devoted to presenting the art of today and works from the past within a global context. Located in the heart of St. Louis for more than 20 years, its home is an architectural landmark designed by celebrated architect Tadao Ando. Open and free to all, the Pulitzer is a cultural and civic asset to the St. Louis community and a popular destination for visitors from around the world.
The Pulitzer campus is located in the Grand Center Arts District of St. Louis, Missouri, and includes the museum, the Park-Like garden, a tree grove, and the Spring Church. The museum is open Thursday through Sunday, 10am–5pm, with evening hours until 8pm on Friday. Admission is free. For more information, visit pulitzerarts.org
