your inbox
Sign up for the High Line newsletter for the latest updates, stories, events & more.
Benjamin Patterson
A Penny for Your Thoughts
14th Street Passage, On the High Line at West 14th Street
Saturday, November 16, 2013
2:45 PM
Benjamin Patterson’s new work A Penny for Your Thoughts promotes an exchange between artist and viewer in which the artist offers participants hats constructed from newspapers in exchange for an idea, imbuing the performance with a type of humor common to many Fluxus projects.
Patterson’s performance is a part of Three Duets, Seven Variations, a special series for the Performa 13 biennial, pairing six inter-generational artists for seven programs. This program is organized by Adrienne Edwards, Performa, and Thomas J. Lax, The Studio Museum in Harlem.
Photos by Liz Ligon.
Artist bio
Benjamin Patterson (b. 1934, Pittsburgh, PA) lives and works in Wiesbaden, Germany. Patterson is a canonical figure in the genesis and history of black performance art. He is a classically trained musician and composer who is best known as a founding member of Fluxus, an avant-garde and experimental group born out of the innovation and creative expression of the early 1960s. Fluxus began with a loose-knit, cross-pollination of artists based in New York, Los Angeles, and Western Europe. Patterson embodies the ideologies and artistic practices of the collective which combines music, visual arts and performance. His iconic works include Paper Piece (1960) and Variations on Double Bass (1961).
Support
High Line Art is presented by Friends of the High Line and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. High Line Art is made possible by Donald R. Mullen, Jr. and The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston, with additional support from David Zwirner Gallery, and Vital Projects Fund, Inc. High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
