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Alice Hutchins Papers

 Collection
Identifier: MsC0758

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  • Please navigate to collection organization to place requests.

Scope and Contents

In addition to a significant number of works by Hutchins, the Alice Hutchins Collection consists 13 linear feet plus 4 oversize boxes of audio tapes, videotapes, exhibition catalogues, photographs, articles, poster and show announcements, and various documents and correspondence concerning the artist and her work, dating from 1962-2003. Original works by Henri Chopin and Bernard Heidsieck are also included in this collection. This is an Alternative Traditions in Contemporary Art collection.

Dates

  • Creation: 1961-2003

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright restrictions may apply; please consult Special Collections staff for further information.

Biographical / Historical

Alice Hutchins was born in 1916, in Van Nuys, California. After studying history and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, she spent the late nineteen-thirties through the forties living in California, Virginia, Michigan, Washington, D.C. and Cairo, Egypt, with her husband and two children. Hutchins and her family settled in France in 1950, two years prior to the appearance in print of Harold Rosenberg's unabashedly anti-formalist celebration of the liberation of American art from othe hegemony of School of Paris modernism. She returned to the United States and spend her last years, very active, in Southern California, and died there October 25, 2009.

Hutchins' interactive magnetic assemblages re-describe the spectator's role in the artistic process by inviting the receiver to alter her sculptural elements of ball bearings, screws, nuts, bolts, coils, cubes, and cylinders at will. The artist's works and papers are housed under the auspices of Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary arts and provide important evidence abou the inter-relationship among participants in the Paris avant-garde of the late 1960s and the New York Fluxus collective. A web site at which a number of Hutchins' art works can be viewed is maintained at www.alicehutchins.com (note that the site requires Macromedia Flash Player to view it).

Extent

18.75 Linear Feet

Language of Materials

English

Abstract

Fluxus artist. Art works, audiotapes, videotapes, exhibition catalogues, photographs, articles, poster and show announcements, and various documents and correspondence.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged as follows: Audio Material: Box 1 Film/Vido: Box 1 Electronic Media: Box 1 Ephemera: Boxes 4-9 Photographs: Boxes 6, 10, 11

Method of Acquisition

The Alice Hutchins Collection was donated to the University of Iowa by the artist from 1992-2009.

Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Language of description note
eng

Repository Details

Part of the University of Iowa Special Collections Repository

Contact:
Special Collections Department
University of Iowa Libraries
Iowa City IA 52242 IaU
319-335-5921
319-335-5900 (Fax)