FOR THE PUBLIC
Established in 1886 and located adjacent to downtown Los Angeles, Elysian Park is the oldest park in the city with the least open space per capita of any major American city. Taking its cue from the 2006 Elysian Park Master Plan as outlined by the City of Los Angeles, the Museum seeks to "re-weave" the fabric of the park through temporary, low-impact site-specific installations and performances that focus on the broad ecological and social boundaries that run throughout the park's 600-plus acres. Realizing projects at various sites around the park on a rotating basis, EPMoA operates as an open, flexible, and transparent exercise in expanding the function of a museum as a public institution. Activities are publicly announced, and the exhibitions are viewable during park hours (5 am until 10 pm, seven days a week) with the aid of maps available from this website. Due to the very public and uncontrolled nature of the Museum, exhibitions are subject to vandalism, removal, or decay during the course of their installation. Visitors are expected, as members of the public, to accept accountability for the state of the Museum.
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FOR ARTISTS / INSTITUTIONS
The Elysian Park Museum of Art is actively soliciting proposals for projects in the following categories:
• proposals for site-specific pieces to be realized by the artist(s) and/or with assistance from museum volunteers, including temporary installations, performances, research-based projects, etc.
• proposals for site-specific pieces to be realized by the public, including instructional pieces, participatory projects, etc.
• proposals for site-specific pieces that may not be realized, or that challenge the site's capacity for realization, including architectural or urban planning projects, large-scale installations, etc.
As the Park itself is both geographically and socially fractured, the Museum's focus is on creating pathways between different areas of the park, and the different communities that use them every day. There is a wide range of site categories, from parking lots to dense forest, from manicured lawns to native ecology, human and natural, trashed and intact, used and not used. Those interested in submitting a proposal are encouraged to visit the Park--guided tours can easily be arranged.
The Elysian Park Museum of Art is organized to facilitate as wide a range of proposals as possible, with a minimum of ethical guidelines:
• projects should tend towards being light-weight--rather than forcefully occupying the park, the museum should be as a scaffolding on the park as it already exists. funding, publicity, and ecology are all parts of a delicate system.
• projects should tend towards being self-organized--the museum has no governing body, and no chief curators. help is available when needed, but the ideal scale is one of peer-to-peer dialogue.
• projects should consider the park's posted rules.
EPMoA seeks to collaborate with other parks, museums, and park-museums in an ongoing dialogue around what we have in front of us and how best to use it together. |
