AMHERST, MA — The online opening for the University of Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition, Artifacts at the End of a Decade took place Thursday, February 25th, at 6:00pm. Co-curated from the UMCA collection by Jill Hughes, 2021 MA Art History candidate, and Jessica Scott, 2021 MFA Studio Arts candidate, the exhibition presents the artists’ book Artifacts at the End of a Decade in its entirety for the first time since 1989.
In August of 1979, Steven Watson and Carol Huebner mailed 200 invitations to artists they had never met, asking if they would like to contribute to a project about the previous decade.
More than fifty artists replied, “Yes,” and two years later the project was completed. Artifacts at the End of a Decade is the result — an unbound artists’ book whose “pages” consist of 44 unique pieces of photography, ceramics, fiber, print, clothing, painting and glass, contributed by Dan Dailey and many other artists, including Martha Rosler, Fab 5 Freddy, Laurie Anderson, Sol LeWitt, Michelle Stuart, John Ashbery, Robert Wilson, Lucinda Childs, and Robert Kushner.
Artifacts at the End of a Decade 1981 by Dan Dailey. Etched and polished glass.
Photo by Stephen Petegorsky
“The forced perspective of this shape recalls the many steps of an upside-down temple or ziggurat, bringing the viewer to an imagined sense of the far past. The light passing through the transparent etched glass skyline simultaneously allows us a vision beyond the plate towards a possible destination.
"The combination of the image, font and materiality of the piece suggests a science fiction of a fabled or failed utopia. Artifacts was being published in 1981 at the same time as the original Blade Runner was being filmed. Many of us ask ourselves if the world is even more unreal now than Philip K. Dick and Ridley Scott imagined it.”
— Jessica Scott
To view the digital exhibition, including virtual tours and audio guides by Jill Hughes and Jessica Scott, visit the exhibition page here.