From: Jerry Tartaglia (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Jan 06 2004 - 05:43:44 PST
What is the Plaster Foundation?
When Jack Smith died in 1989 he left no provision for preserving his work.
Were it not for the few friends and admirers who took responsibility for
saving his entire artistic production would now be a memory.
How the work began.
Soon after Smith's death, his estranged sister Mary Sue Slater came to New
York to collect his effects. She showed no interest in her brother's
creative life. For others, however, the crucial question was how to protect
and preserve that legacy. Penny Arcade, a friend of Smith's for 20 years who
had helped care for him during his illness, and J. Hoberman, one of the few
to write on Smith's work during the '70s and '80s, met with Mrs. Slater and
her son Michael, to persuade them of the importance of the disordered mass
of films, papers, photographs, drawings, costumes, and props that filled
Smith's apartment.
Told that Michael Slater would be administrating his uncle's estate, Arcade
and Hoberman requested permission to begin moving the material to a secure
storage location. The Slaters agreed and disappeared. They took no steps to
declare probate and create a legal estate; nor did they respond to the
registered letters sent them by Hoberman over the years. Arcade continued to
pay rent on Smith's apartment (and even battle the landlord in court) until
Smith's work could be removed. The next question-how was this work to be
preserved?
.and how it continued
Arcade organized the first exhibit of Smith's work at Lincoln Center and was
instrumental in providing material for Ron Vawter's Roy Cohen/Jack Smith;
Hoberman enlisted Anthology Film Archives to get Flaming Creatures restored
and included in the 1991 New York Film Festival. The following year, Flaming
Creatures was placed in distribution with several film cooperatives and
filmmaker Jerry Tartaglia, who a decade before found the lost original of
Flaming Creatures and returned it to Smith, began a painstaking process of
restoring Smith's unfinished films-a project which would take years.
This restoration was funded, under the auspices of Anthology Film Archives,
through the rental and sales of prints, small grants, and benefits at the
Millennium and elsewhere. Soon Smith's reputation as an avant-garde
filmmaker began to revive. Finally, in 1993, P.S. 1 agreed to organize a
retrospective and-just as importantly-to provide space to sort through the
artist's papers and graphics. This project took nearly five years and
involved many people, among them Alanna Heiss, the late Tony Vasconcellos,
Ed Leffingwell, the late Carol Kismaric, Larry Rinder, and Lisa Bateman.
Why was the Plaster Foundation necessary (and what has it done)?
The Jack Smith exhibit required that a legal entity represent the artist's
work. The family never filed probate and, despite their letters, Arcade and
Hoberman had not heard from them since December 1989. The New York Public
Administrator ignored repeated requests made by lawyer Mary D. Dorman to
address this matter. Finally, Dorman, Arcade and Hoberman created an entity
to loan the material to P.S. 1 exhibition. Named for Smith's old performing
venue at 36 Greene Street, the Plaster Foundation took as its mission, the
protection, preservation and promotion of Smith's work. At the same time,
Jerry Tartaglia undertook to distribute VHS copies of Smith's films-and a
restored video document-under his business name, Franklin Media.
Since the Plaster Foundation was incorporated in 1997, Jack Smith has
enjoyed greater visibility than at any time since the mid '60s-as well as a
reputation that continues to grow. A program of these films toured the US
and Canada, and individual films have been shown at festivals in Berlin,
Milan, and Buenos Aires. The PS 1 Show traveled to the Andy Warhol Museum in
Pittsburgh; the PF has subsequently made available photographs, collages,
and drawings to museums, galleries, and cultural institutions in the US and
abroad, including the Centre Pompidou. The PF has also organized
presentations of Smith's slide shows and provided material for three books,
one a collection of Smith's writings. In late 2001, as part of an ongoing
project to catalogue and publish Smith's photographs, the PF collaborated
with Granary Press on a facsimile edition of his legendary collection, The
Beautiful Book.
Every year, the Plaster Foundation is contacted by scholars researching
Smith's life. Accordingly, the PF had begun archiving Smith's papers to
place them with an appropriate institution. It was at this point, in
December 2002, that after 13 years of silence, Mary Sue Slater contacted J.
Hoberman to demand her money.
What Money?
The Plaster Foundation derives most of its revenue from the sale, rental,
and leasing of Smith's films, particularly Flaming Creatures, as well as the
licensing of photographs. Galleries and museums that have borrowed work for
exhibit are asked to pay for the time of an archivist to locate and ship the
material. The PF directors-Penny Arcade, J. Hoberman, and Mary D.
Dorman-have taken no money. All PF income derived goes for lab and
professional fees-including the minimal recompense given Jerry Tartaglia
during his years of restoration work-and storage space. (In view of Smith's
critique of "landlordism" it is ironic that rent would be the PF's largest
single expense.)
As lawyers for the Public Administrator, acting on behalf of the Slaters,
have obtained a restraining order, numerous projects and requests have been
shelved, including completion of the PF's 501(c)(3), placement of Smith's
papers, placement of one or more of his graphics in a New York museum,
organization of an exhibition and catalogue raisonne of photographs,
inclusion of a slide-show in an upcoming, ground-breaking exhibition at the
Baltimore Museum of Art, and exhibition of costumes in a Vienna gallery.
People all over the world are interested in Jack Smith's work. The Slater
family has shown a complete lack of concern in any aspect of this work other
than a belated interest its presumed monetary value. Their affidavits
declare that, despite a silence lasting well over a decade, they assumed the
Plaster Foundation to be preserving Smith's material-for them. Rather, the
PF has preserved Smith's work for a larger entity: history.
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