Announcing Forever de Young: A Judy Chicago Atmosphere Performance \ Oct 16, de Young museum, San Francisco

Sep 28, 2021

Photograph of orange and yellow smoke

Judy Chicago in collaboration with Pyro Spectaculars by Souza, Diamonds in the Sky detail, 2021, Fireworks performance, Belen, NM. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo © Donald Woodman/ARS, New York, Image provided courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Forever de Young: A Judy Chicago Performance
Saturday, October 16, 2021

in front of the de Young Museum, San Francisco
5.30 pm (Pacific Time)

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco invite you to experience Judy Chicago’s Forever de Young on Saturday Oct 16 in Golden Gate Park. Forever de Young -- the artist’s largest public performance to date -- is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Judy Chicago: A Retrospective at the de Young museum.

Forever de Young is a newly created, complex, multicolored performance that will take place on a 27-foot-high scaffold directly in front of the de Young museum. The performance employs non-toxic pigments that mix with the wind and the light to create spectacular color effects. Forever de Young will be free and open to the public.

Program + Event Information:
5 pm \ Arrivals
5:30 pm \ Welcome Remarks
6 pm \ Performance Begins

RSVP to press@famsf.org

deyoungmuseum.org \ @deyoungmuseum \ #JudyChicago

About Forever de Young
Forever de Young is a multicolored, site-specific Atmospheres performance created by the artist Judy Chicago in celebration of her exhibition Judy Chicago: A Retrospective, now on view at the de Young museum. Conceptually this work harks back to the artist’s innovative Atmospheres, a series of performances staged in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Distinguished by their controlled choreography and distinct reformulation of land art, these live sculptures nonetheless escaped the annals of art history for decades. In the early 2000s, a new generation of scholars surfaced and celebrated these works as feminist responses to the Light and Space movement and situated them in the context of late 1960s Conceptualism. These unobtrusive and ephemeral environments—which opposed the permanent interventions into and transformation of landscape by her male peers—were finally understood as a form of sustainable earth art that freed color from the rigid structures of painting and sculpture and allowed it to gush into the air as orchestrated clouds of chroma. Since her early explorations, Chicago has greatly expanded the artistic vision that underlies these works in order to “mix color in the air,” an extension of her longtime interest in the emotive capacity of color.

Forever de Young is made possible by the generous support of Jordan D. Schnitzer in memory of his late mother Arlene Schnitzer (1929-2020), who served on the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Board of Trustees and Acquisitions Committee, 2006-2015.

Event Information
The performance will take place in front of the main entrance to the de Young museum, at 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA 94118. In preparation for the performance, on Oct 16 the de Young museum will close at 4 pm. Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive will be closed to vehicular traffic from 4 pm to 8 pm.

We ask that all attendees wear a mask and adhere to COVID-19 protocols as prescribed by the City and County of San Francisco. Please note this event is subject to change or cancellation in accordance with city, county, and state health guidelines.

This is an open-air performance, which is subject to agreeable weather conditions. The most up-to-date information regarding this event will be posted the day of on our social media channels (@deyoungmuseum) and on our website.

For audiences not able to attend in person, the performance will be live streamed. More details and a link will be shared the week before the event.

Please note JFK Drive is currently closed to vehicular traffic. Paid parking is available in the Music Concourse Garage, which can be accessed from Fulton St. at 10th Avenue, or from the Concourse Drive off or Martin Luther King Dr., within the park. We strongly recommend traveling by MUNI or ride sharing options to the park. Please see more details on this page.

The materials employed in the performance are used in film, photography, and theatre productions, and contain non-toxic color pigments that will be released into the air temporarily and will then disappear.

We are working closely with the City of San Francisco, San Francisco Fire Department, and San Francisco Recreation and Parks, following safety measures and best practices for the protection of our park and all attendees. Our goal is to create an enjoyable and positive experience for the public and our neighborhood.

About Judy Chicago
Judy Chicago is an artist, author, educator and humanist whose work and life are models for an enlarged definition of art, an expanded role for the artist and women’s rights to freedom of expression. Chicago is a passionate advocate for the environment and animal rights, as explored in her retrospective at the de Young. Born in Chicago, Illinois, she attended the University of California, Los Angeles. Chicago’s work is in numerous private and institutional collections, including The British Museum, London, UK, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, The Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, National Gallery, Washington, DC, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, and Tate, London, UK. Chicago lives and works in Belen, NM.

About Judy Chicago: A Retrospective
Judy Chicago: A Retrospective—the first exhibition to offer a comprehensive overview of the artist’s astonishing career—is on view at the de Young museum until January 9, 2022. Spanning from her early engagement with the Californian Light and Space Movement in the 1960s to her most current body of work—a searing investigation of mortality and environmental devastation—the exhibition includes more than 125 paintings, drawings, ceramic sculptures, and prints, as well as ephemera, several films, and a documentary that chart the boundary-pushing path of the artist. The exhibition is organized by Claudia Schmuckli, Curator in Charge of Contemporary Art and Programming at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Media Contact: press@famsf.org