Shaker Museum Presents Suzanne Bocanegra's FARMHOUSE/WHOREHOUSE: AN ARTIST LECTURE BY SUZANNE BOCANEGRA STARRING LILI TAYLOR
The performance is scheduled for Sunday, October 6, at 7:30 pm at the Crandell Theatre.
Shaker Museum, Suzanne Bocanegra, and Lili Taylor will present a one-night-only performance of Bocanegra's Farmhouse/Whorehouse: AN ARTIST LECTURE BY SUZANNE BOCANEGRA STARRING Lili Taylor.
The performance is scheduled for Sunday, October 6, at 7:30 pm at the Crandell Theatre, 48 Main Street, Chatham, NY. Tickets ranging from $25-$35 are available on Eventbrite.
Part artist lecture, part memoir, part cultural essay, Farmhouse/Whorehouse was created by Suzanne Bocanegra and stars Lili Taylor. The performance considers the lives of Bocanegra's grandparents on their small farm in La Grange, Texas, which was located across the road from the Chicken Ranch, the inspiration for the Broadway musical and film, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Using text, song, film, and projections, Bocanegra and Taylor tell a rambling story that examines the idyllic place the rural world occupies in our urban imagination, with occasional detours to explore the pastoral in art, homesteading, French painting in the 19th century, Star Trek, and various utopian communities throughout history, including the Shakers.
Bocanegra says, "Every time Lili and I perform this piece, it's a little different. This performance includes the premiere of a section inspired by my time spent in the Shaker Museum archives with Frances McDormand in preparation for our installation at the Knitting Mill in Kinderhook."
Suzanne Bocanegra employs theater to interrogate the history and practice of visual art, using large-scale video, performance and installation, as well as collage, sculpture, and painting. Solo shows include Wardrobe Test (Art Cake, Brooklyn), Poorly Watched Girls (The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia), and I Write the Songs (Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs). She is the recipient of the Robert Rauschenberg Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, a Danish Arts Council Fellowship, the Rome Prize and grants from New York Foundation for the Arts, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, Tiffany Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Sharpe Art Foundation.
Lili Taylor is acclaimed for her film roles in Say Anything..., Mystic Pizza, I Shot Andy Warhol, The Conjuring, Dogfight, Born on the Fourth of July, and High Fidelity. Her television credits include Six Feet Under, The X-Files, Outer Range, American Crime, Hemlock Grove, and Almost Human. On Broadway, Taylor has starred in The Three Sisters and Marvin's Room. She is the recipient of the Screen Actors Guild Award, three Emmy Award nominations, four Independent Spirit Award nominations (and one award), and a special Golden Globe Award presented to the cast of Robert Altman's Short Cuts.
Farmhouse/Whorehouse has previously been performed at venues including BAM, NYU Skirball, UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance, Wexner Center for the Arts, SITE SANTE FE, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, and the Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston.
This one-night-only performance is presented as part of Cradled, a thought-provoking exhibition and program curated by Suzanne Bocanegra and Frances McDormand for Shaker Museum.
Cradled explores the transcendent impact of the Shakers' communal embrace from cradle to grave through objects, values, and inspired modern-day artistic expression. With Cradled, Frances McDormand and Suzanne Bocanegra have curated an experiential exhibition that illuminates the core Shaker values of compassionate care and support provided to all members of their community at all stages of their lives. Shakers built adult-size cradles to provide the nurturing care and respect at the end of life as well as the beginning. This exhibition showcases the craftsmanship of both adult and child-sized Shaker cradles and re-creates the environment in which they were used.
The exhibition is open to the public through Sunday, December 1. Exhibition hours are Friday and Saturday: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm; Sunday: 11:00 am - 4:00 pm. No tickets or advance reservations are required. For more information on the exhibition, visit shakermuseum.us. For more information on the Kinderhook Knitting Mill (located at 8 Hudson Street, 2nd Floor in Kinderhook, NY) visit www.kinderhookknittingmill.com.
Shaker Museum's programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Shaker Museum purchased a 19th-century industrial building in Chatham, NY, and is in the process of renovating and building an expansive addition to the facility designed by Selldorf Architects. The physical building will embody Shaker values of inclusion, innovation, and equality to create a museum that both tells the Shaker story and is responsive to the needs of the community in Chatham, Columbia County, and the surrounding Hudson Valley. The museum will also retain and maintain the historic Shaker site in Mount Lebanon. The new campus located at 5 Austerlitz Street will provide ample space for exhibitions and respond to the need for inclusive community gathering spaces through its exhibitions and robust programming.
About Shaker Museum
With more than 18,000 objects, Shaker Museum stewards the most comprehensive collection of Shaker material culture and archives. It is the leader nationwide among organizations devoted to Shaker history. Its permanent new facility in Chatham, NY, which is in development, was designed by Selldorf Architects. The museum also stewards the historic site in New Lebanon, NY, and will soon be moving its administrative offices, library, and archives to 29 Jones Ave. in Chatham. The museum's collection can be viewed online at shakermuseum.us.
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