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 media that mixes with the wind and the light to create spectacular color effects. Forever de Young will be free and open to the public.
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.
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.
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.
Judy Chicago is a passionate advocate for the environment and animal rights, as explored in her retrospective.
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 in our neighborhood.