Artists Studio: Juliana Huxtable

ABOUT THE ARTISTS STUDIO “Sitting in a chair in the Veterans Room and slowly panning side to side and up and down (which you will do when you go there), you encounter a kind of visual music: the energy in that design and those colors, the shades of brown and blue and black and pale yellow, alive and roaring at you.”

— The New York Times When the Veterans Room reopened in 2016 after an extensive revitalization, it was lauded as “a riot of color, visual rhythm and contrasting details,” and “if walls could speak, these would alternately whisper of refinement and roar with audacity” (Wall Street Journal). Designed by Louis C. Tiffany & Co., Associated Artists, the room is a monument to the American Aesthetic Movement and represents the innovation of exceptional young artisans approaching the decorative arts with a bold new vision. This season, the series adds to the exuberance of the space with interventions by some of today’s most creative voices who have a distinct relationship to sound with a visual aesthetic that blurs the boundaries between installation and performance. These interventions utilize the newly restored space as visual material, while allowing these imaginative innovators to explore exciting new directions in their practice.

The series is curated by jazz pianist, composer, and MacArthur fellow Jason Moran.

2018 ARTISTS STUDIO

IN THE NEWLY RESTORED VETERANS ROOM

Wednesday, October 10 at 7:00pm and 9:00pm Veterans Room, Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory

JULIANA HUXTABLE Juliana Huxtable, vocals & effects Ahya Simone, vocals & harp Joseph Heffernan, drums & keyboard This performance is approximately 45 minutes with no intermission.

SEASON SPONSORS

SERIES SPONSORS

The Artists Studio is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the city council, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been generously provided by the Charina Endowment Fund, the Altman Foundation, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, The Kaplen Brothers Fund, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, the Richenthal Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation.

ABOUT THE WORK AND ARTIST It was then and there ... writhing in the terror of an impending violence that my skin, my bones, the humanism I held onto so dearly failed to serve as a limit.

In flesh, in fields and vibrations I came back to myself ... understood that everything had already been dissolved ... absolute resplendence.

—Juliana Huxtable Juliana Huxtable is a New York City based artist, writer, performer, fashion muse, and musician. Her multidisciplinary creative practice explores the intersections of race, gender, queerness, and sexuality through a fluid mix of media including self-portraiture, text-based prints, club music and parties, poetry, and social media in a process she calls “conditioning.”

She has been featured in several group exhibitions and performances, including: MoMA PS1, New York (2014); White Columns Annual, White Columns, New York (2014); Take Ecstasy with Me, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2014); Frieze Projects, London (2014); and the 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2015), among others. Huxtable is the author of two published books, Mucus in My Pineal Gland and Life.

She is a member of the New York City–based collective House of Ladosha.

Production Acknowledgements: Michael Potvin, Nitemind, Lighting Designer Sascha von Oertzen, Sound Designer John Chrils, Audio Technician

ABOUT THE VETERANS ROOM “...the Armory, a once-crumbling landmark, has transformed itself into one of the world’s most sought-after venues for performance, music, and supersized art projects. And in a sense, the Veterans Room, of all the Armory’s opulent reception rooms, has the deepest spiritual kinship with a work of contemporary art, the feel of an installation by a young collective whose members were reacting to one another and making it all up as they went along.”

— The New York Times The Veterans Room is among the most significant surviving interiors of the American Aesthetic Movement, and the most significant remaining intact interior in the world by Louis C. Tiffany and Co., Associated Artists. This newly formed collective led by Tiffany included some of the most significant American designers of the 19th century at early stages of their very distinguished careers: Stanford White, Samuel Colman, and Candace Wheeler among them. The design of the room by these artisans was exotic, eclectic, and full of experimentation, as noted by Decorator and Furnisher in 1885 that “the prepondering styles appear to be the Greek, Moresque and Celtic, with a dash of Egyptian, the Persian and the Japanese in the appropriate places.”

A monument of late 19th-century decorative arts, the Veterans Room is the fourth period room at the Armory completed (out of 18). The revitalization of the room responds to the original exuberant vision for the room’s design, bringing into dialogue some of the most talented designers of the 19th and 21st centuries – Associated Artists with Herzog & de Meuron, Platt Byard Dovell White Architects, and a team of world-renowned artisans and experts in Tiffany glass, fine woodworking, and decorative arts.

The revitalization of the Veterans Room follows Herzog & de Meuron’s design approach for the Armory building, which seeks to highlight the distinct qualities and existing character of each individual room while interweaving contemporary elements to improve its function. Even more so than in other rooms at the Armory, Herzog & de Meuron’s approach to the Veterans Room is to amplify the beauty of the room’s original vision through adding contemporary reconstructions of lost historic material and subtle additions with the same ethos and creative passion as the original artisans to infuse a modern energy into a harmonious, holistic design.

The room’s restoration is part of an ongoing $215-million transformation, which is guided by the understanding that the Armory’s rich history and the patina of time are essential to its character, with a design process for the period rooms that emphasizes close collaboration between architect and artisan.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________ The restoration and renovation of the Veterans Room was made possible by The Thompson Family Foundation, Inc., Susan and Elihu Rose, Charina Endowment Fund, Lisa and Sanford B. Ehrenkranz, Almudena and Pablo Legorreta, Assemblymember Dan Quart and the New York State Assembly, Liz and Emanuel Stern, Adam R. Flatto, Olivia Tournay Flatto, Kenneth S. Kuchin, R. Mark and Wendy Adams, American Express, Rebecca Robertson and Byron Knief, Amy and Jeffrey Silverman, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Anonymous (2).

Cover photo: courtesy of the artist