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Fountain, 1959 in the Whitney exhibition Singular Vision 2012
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The Whitney Museum of American Art will open in its new Renzo Piano designed building in New York next month with an ambitious exhibition, America is hard to See with more than 600 works by some 400 artists.
Film and video art is represented in a section of the exhibition titled, ‘Free Radicals’ that takes its name from Len Lye’s experimental ‘direct’ film that he made in 1958 and which will be screened as part of the exhibition. Last year the Whitney bought a copy of Free Radicals for its collection. The museum now owns two of Lye’s works – his film, Free Radicals and his sculpture, Fountain that he built in 1959.
In 2007 the Whitney commissioned the Len Lye Foundation to restore Fountain. The restored work was first exhibited at the Govett Brewster Art Gallery in 2008 in the exhibition Five Fountains and a Fire Bush, curated by Tyler Cann, before it was returned to the Whitney. The Whiney exhibited the restored fountain for the first time in its 2010 exhibition, Singular Visions which highlighted works from its collection that ‘conveyed a distinct impression and a specific sense of the maker’s vision’.
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