LOS ANGELES — Performance art arguably exists on the fringes of contemporary art, characterized by an ephemerality seemingly at direct odds with the object-based connoisseurship and commercialism of the institutional art world. A forthcoming Performance Art Museum aims to bridge this gap, asking what would it look like to collect, historicize, and honor performance art as institutions do painting, sculpture, and other art forms.
“Performance art has been an orphan of the art world, and we’re humbled to be able to create a home for it to exist and thrive into the future,” Samuel Vasquez, the museum’s founder, told Hyperallergic. He said that the museum, which was established in 2023 and is currently looking for a physical space in LA, plans to launch its inaugural series of performances, exhibitions, and publications next year.
Vasquez began working with performance in 2005, when he co-founded Echo Park performance art space Eighteen-Thirty with Suzy Halajian, now director of the nonprofit JOAN Los Angeles; musician Alex Black; and curator and scholar Shoghig Halajian. They collaborated with a diverse array of artists, performers, and musicians, including Dawn Kasper, Rachel Mason, Ryan Heffington, William Basinski, Geneva Jacuzzi, and Julia Holter. “It was really an exciting time for performance in LA, a time I’d imagine felt like the early days of LACE, Highways Performance Space, F-Space Gallery, and Crazy Space,” Vasquez added.
In 2009, Vasquez pivoted into the world of museum development, beginning at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), where he worked with curators Paul Schimmel, Ann Goldstein, Alma Ruiz, and Connie Butler. He then moved to the Hammer Museum during a period that saw the inaugural Made in LA biennial and the launch of their Free Admission program. From there, he assisted Elsa Longhauser in transforming the Santa Monica Museum of Art into the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA). After Longhauser retired from her role as the museum’s executive director in 2019, Vasquez returned to work in development at MOCA, where Klaus Biesenbach had become director the previous year.
Then, months later, COVID-19 hit. “The pandemic discouraged many artists from performing,” Vasquez explained. “We lost independent spaces that were programming performance, along with curators and organizers who left LA or moved on to more financially fruitful endeavors. I knew I needed to get back to performance.”
Working alongside artist liaison John Burtel, Vasquez imagines the Performance Art Museum as built around three main programmatic elements: major artist presentations, including commissioned performances, exhibitions, and publications; an annual performance art series and symposium; and a collection featuring performance artifacts, archival material, photography, and video works. He cites recent exhibitions on Ron Athey at the ICA LA, Barbara T. Smith at the Getty Museum, and Simone Forti at MOCA as examples of successful performance art exhibitions that convey the vitality of the original performances.
Beyond the collection and programming, Vasquez envisions a broader mission for the museum based on creative exchange, education, and community. He explained that although he and Burtel are grounding the project in the museum itself, “equally, if not more importantly, we are creating a network of support and encouragement for artists working in performance.” Part of this network involves commissioning a series of reviews of performance art.
Earlier this year, the museum hosted a discussion series at the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre bringing together pairs of artists who represent the breadth of performance: rafa esparza and Asher Hartman; Andrea Fraser and Simon Leung; and Nancy Buchanan and Ulysses Jenkins. “Performance holds the power to resist being commodified,” esparza said at the first talk in April, underscoring the museum’s mission and the challenges it will face.
Given his background in fundraising, Vasquez is keenly aware of the need for a sustainable funding model. “For a museum dedicated to performance to exist, we must create an audience that values and supports the practice,” he said. To this end, the museum created a donor group called the Performance Art Council in March and has received financial support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Teiger Foundation, as well as arts patrons including Karen Hillenburg.
Although the museum may be breaking new ground, Vasquez sees a precedent in LA’s history as a center for genre-defying experimentation in art and performance.
“There’s an openness in space and minds that allows for modern-day big thinking,” he added. “We’re building on the generations before us that have grown from the fertile grounds of California.”
