Installation view of Out of Action: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979, February 8 – May 10, 1998 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, photo by Brian Forrest
Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949–1979 is the first major museum exhibition to examine the complex relationship linking the creative process, action or performance, and works of art in the postwar period. Featuring nearly one hundred and fifty artists and collaboratives from approximately twenty countries in Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Japan, and North and South America—including figures associated with the New York School, Nouveaux Realistes, Fluxus, Viennese Actionists, Hi Red Center, Arte Povera, the Gutai group, happenings, process art, and performance art—the exhibition centers on how the possibilities and implications of using time and process as elements of art were realized by a number of international movements during this influential thirty-year period.
Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949–1979 was organized by Paul Schimmel, Chief Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in consultation with an international advisory team consisting of: Guy Brett, independent curator and writer, London; Hubert Klocker, critic, independent curator and curator of Collection Friedrichshof, Vienna; Shinichiro Osaki, Curator, National Museum of Art, Osaka; and Kristine Stiles, professor of art history, Duke University.