FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 2, 2017
Lyman Allyn Art Museum
Press Contact: Rebecca Marsie, Communications Associate
860.443.2545 x2112 / [email protected]
WORKS BY PATI HILL ON VIEW AT THE LYMAN ALLYN ART MUSEUM
Pati Hill: Photocopier, A Survey of Prints and Books (1974-83)
New London – The Lyman Allyn Art Museum is proud to announce the opening of Pati Hill: Photocopier, A Survey of Prints and Books (1974-83), an exhibition featuring 120 works on paper that considers the first phase of the cross-disciplinary art of Pati Hill (1921-2014). The exhibition will be on view November 4, 2017 through March 4, 2018.
Pati Hill, an American novelist and poet, was one of the first to explore the copier as an artistic tool, or as she called it a “found instrument – a saxophone without directions.” Although her study of the copier did not begin until the early 1970’s, she is regarded as a pioneer due to her singular approach, commitment, and celebration of the medium’s instantaneity and accessibility. In a 1980 profile in The New Yorker, Hill remarked: “Copies are an international visual language, which talks to people in Los Angeles and people in Prague the same way. Making copies is very near to speaking.”
A resident of Stonington, Connecticut from 1957 to 1989, Hill developed ways to use the machine that were shaped by her experience as a published writer. Employing the copier to record items as common as a gum wrapper or as unexpected as a dead swan, she applied the process to transform appropriated photographs for her experiments with narrative. Hill published and exhibited her copier prints, often alongside her own texts, some of which addressed her application of the machine with an uncanny wit, lucidity, and prescience.
Pati Hill: Photocopier features twelve different projects, including Hill’s attempt to photocopy the palace and grounds of Versailles, and is accompanied by a generously illustrated catalog with texts by 14 authors.
The opening reception will be on Saturday, November 4th from 4:00 – 6:30 pm. Museum members are $5 and non-members are $10. Please RSVP to 860.443.2545 ext. 2129.
Pati Hill: Photocopier is a traveling exhibition organized by Arcadia University Art Gallery. Original support for Pati Hill: Photocopier was provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia. Additional assistance has been contributed by Dorothy Lichtenstein; Kaja Silverman, through her distinguished Achievement Award from the Mellon Foundation; and the Estate of Pati Hill.
Check the museum website at www.lymanallyn.org and the Museum’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram page for updates and additional programming.
Tours of the exhibition are available for groups. To schedule tours, call Director of Education, Caitlin Healy at 860.443.2545 ext. 2110 or e-mail [email protected].
For more information or to request images, please contact Rebecca Marsie at 860.443.2545, ext. 2112 or at [email protected].
About the Lyman Allyn Art Museum
The Lyman Allyn Art Museum welcomes visitors from New London, southeastern Connecticut and all over the world. Established in 1926 by a gift from Harriet Allyn in memory of her seafaring father, the Museum opened the doors of its beautiful neo-classical building surrounded by 12 acres of green space in 1932. Today it presents a number of changing exhibitions each year and houses a fascinating collection of over 17,000 objects from ancient times to the present; artworks from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe, with particularly strong collections of American paintings, decorative arts and Victorian toys and doll houses.
The museum is located at 625 Williams Street, New London, Connecticut, exit 83 off I-95. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm, Sundays 1:00 – 5:00 pm; closed Mondays and major holidays. For more information call 860.443.2545, ext. 2129 or visit us on Facebook or the web at: www.lymanallyn.org.