From: Keith Sanborn (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Jan 05 2004 - 09:26:48 PST
>X-From_: email suppressed Mon Jan 5 10:41:32 2004
>X-Original-To: email suppressed
>From: "J. Hoberman" <email suppressed>
>
>Subject: PF press release
>Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 10:41:15 -0500
>X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
>Importance: Normal
>
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
> January 6, 2004
>
>Fourteen Years After Artist Dies in Squalor, Estranged Sister $ues
>for Control of Once "Worthless" Work
>
>Jack Smith was estranged from his family in life, rejected by them
>in sickness, and abandoned by them in death. Now, after the artist's
>friends and admirers have spent years struggling to restore Smith's
>films, preserve his papers and artistic output, and create his
>burgeoning posthumous reputation, Smith's sister Mary Sue Slater has
>petitioned the Public Administrator to take possession of the legacy
>she once found abhorrent.
>
>Smith died in September 1989 of HIV-AIDS. Although his underground
>film Flaming Creatures was recalled as a cause celebré of the 1960s
>and his performances influenced several generations of avant-garde
>artists, Smith-who spend his last years in a squalid sixth-floor
>walk-up in New York's East Village-was a cult figure at best. The
>performance artist Penny Arcade, one of a handful of friends who
>nursed Smith during his final illness, took the responsibility of
>contacting the artist's sister after his death and turning over to
>Slater's lawyer some $50,000 in negotiable bonds, found in Smith's
>apartment.
>
>"One month later," Arcade remembers. "Mrs. Slater and her son
>Michael came to New York to see for themselves how Jack lived. They
>hadn't even paid for a funeral. They seemed horrified by his life."
>Regarding her brother's work, Arcade recalls that Mrs. Slater told
>her "no one should be allowed to see it and they shouldn't want to
>see it." In her recent affidavit, Mrs. Slater blames her husband for
>estranging her from her brother and his artistic production: "My
>husband did not approve of Jack's homosexual lifestyle and did not
>want our sons to be tainted by it." (Mr. Slater passed away in 1992,
>a decade before Mrs. Slater rediscovered her interest in her
>brother's work.)
>
>Arcade, who had arranged for Smith's cremation, organized and
>underwrote a memorial service at Performance Space 122; meanwhile,
>the family removed what they wished from Smith's apartment.
>According to Arcade, "Michael Slater returned again to take more
>things. His mother wanted Jack's costume jewelry-she thought she
>could sell it at a flea market." As the Slaters declined to file for
>probate, create an estate, or settle Smith's debts, Arcade was left
>to pay rent on the apartment and fight eviction, to protect the
>disorganized mass of material the artist left behind. She enlisted a
>group of artists, architects, writers and filmmakers including
>Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman.
>
>Arcade and Hoberman met with Michael Slater to explain the
>importance of Smith's work and outline steps to save it. "He wanted
>to know if this junk was really valuable," Hoberman recalls. "I told
>him that it was both worthless and priceless. Worthless in that
>there was no market for it, and that the films would all need to be
>repaired and restored; priceless in that it was of tremendous
>aesthetic and historical importance. He seemed surprised that I
>though his uncle was one of the most influential and significant
>artists of his period."
>
>(over)
>Arcade and Hoberman were determined to preserve Smith's films,
>drawings, papers, photographs, costumes, theatrical props, and other
>artistic effects. Although Mr. Slater expressed initial interest in
>helping on this project, he and his mother never responded to
>Hoberman's letters detailing the work being undertaken to preserve
>Smith's work. Arcade took charge of packing and moving Smith's
>artistic effects to a secure storage location. Hoberman enlisted
>assistance of Anthology Film Archives, a New York based institution
>devoted to the preservation and presentation of avant-garde cinema,
>and working with the filmmaker Jerry Tartaglia began a program to
>restore Smith's extent films and place them in distribution. This
>project, which involved fund-raising as well as the painstakingly
>repair of severely damaged films, took seven years.
>
>At the same time, Arcade and Hoberman undertook a search for
>institutions interested in archiving Smith's photographs, papers,
>costumes, props, and drawings. Thanks to Arcade's persistence, the
>experimental art center P.S.1 agreed to store and help catalogue
>this material in preparation for a show and publication devoted to
>Smith's work. Sifting through and organizing the material proved
>another massive undertaking. The exhibition, curated by Edward J.
>Leffingwell, required five years to come to fruition; before the
>show opened in late 1997, it was necessary to create a legal entity
>to protect Smith's material. "As the Slaters ignored our letters for
>seven years and the Public Administrator disregarded repeated
>appeals to address the situation, Penny and I created the Plaster
>Foundation, with our lawyer Mary D. Dorman," Hoberman says. "Its
>sole purpose was safeguard, promote, and distribute Smith's work."
>
>The P.S.1 exhibit, along with an accompanying catalogue and a
>parallel film series at the American Museum of the Moving Image
>attracted local, national and international attention; the show
>(Smith's first) was prominently reviewed in the New York Times and
>featured on the cover of Artforum magazine. Since then, two more
>books have been published on Smith and his work has been shown in a
>number of museums and galleries both in the US and abroad.
>Administered by volunteers and surviving on modest revenues, the
>Plaster Foundation has continued to take responsibility for the
>preservation and dissemination of Jack Smith's art-work for which
>its directors have neither asked nor taken recompense.
>
>In November 2002, five years after the P.S.1 exhibit raised Jack
>Smith's profile, Mary Sue Slater wrote to Hoberman. She expressed no
>appreciation for the considerable labor that had gone into saving
>her brother's artistic legacy. Rather, she accused Hoberman of
>profiting from Smith's art and demanded her "share" of the money.
>Since then the Public Administrator has filed a claim on Slater's
>behalf in Surrogate's Court. Arcade and Hoberman believe that
>Slater's belated interest in her brother's art, coming after nearly
>13 years of silence, was inspired by a private collector who is
>underwriting her suit.
>
>Contact: Mary D. Dorman, 646-230-7444
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.