The SOLO Foundation is pleased to support the New Museum’s Artist Run Spaces In The 1970s and 1980s and Hunter College’s Times Square Show Revisited in presenting COLAB SOLO WEEKENDS, a series of public gatherings and discussions about the momentum of New York City’s 1970s and 1980s. SOLO emerged in 1981, into the fray of near-frantic artistic productivity in the wake of a new youth culture, and has since aided artists at the margins and centers of recognition sustain their varied practices.
The SOLO Foundation has served as an adviser, supporter and friend to ABC No Rio, BOMB Magazine, Center for New Art Activities, among others. We presently manage the remaining archives of Collaborative Projects, both physical and intangible, as well.
Formed in 1978, Collaborative Projects, Inc. – aka Colab – was initially created as a means to seek new venues for the creation and exhibition of work made through collaborative artists’ efforts. With a membership drawn mainly from New York City’s downtown artist community, Colab was able to harness recently established funding for the arts from federal and state agencies to support a myriad of artists’ projects from and for that extended community. Part collective, part platform and part agency, Colab did not have a fixed identity or function. Indeed what set it apart from most of the other art nonprofits of the time was that instead of duplicating the bureaucratic structure of corporations, Colab’s inclusiveness (meetings and memberships were open, and officers rotated annually) and nomadism (they were not tied to a specific space) engendered a decidedly anti-bureaucratic mode of operation and experience.
– Coleen Fitzgibbon
It is with a personal pride and some nostalgia that SOLO now contributes to the revival of a rich local history in two generous and coincidentally perfect venues. COLAB SOLO WEEKENDS will be an anticipated reunion with old accomplices as well as conversations for present curiosity. We look forward to having you join us.
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