School of Visual Arts Collection. Detail of poster illustrated by Phil Hays and designed by Ivan Chermayeff, 1960s.

SVA’s early subway posters helped raise the school to a new plane of artistic and intellectual pursuits.

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Another lovely artifact appeared in the Archive unexpectedly last week: Allan Kaprow’s Words, from 1962.

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School of Visual Arts Collection: Poster for Robert Weaver: Retrospective 1956-1977.

Pioneering illustrator Robert Weaver was a major figure at SVA beginning in 1950s.

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School of Visual Arts Collection: SVA Exhibitions: Josef Presser: Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, late 1950s.

Bob Gill lets Josef Presser’s words speak for themselves in this visually simple but verbally playful announcement for Presser’s exhibition at SVA.

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School of Visual Arts Archives, RG 9.4 Student Galleries. Exhibition 726. Exhibition announcement for the SVA Gallery’s “Performance Spaces.”

Many of the artists and critics who were invited to guest curate the SVA Gallery in the 60s and 70s were emerging figures in the avant-garde, including Lucy Lippard, Phyllis Tuchman, and Mel Bochner. In May, 1972 they invited Vito Acconci.

This striking invitation features an image of the artist cupping the interior curve of two mounds of earth. The washed-out monochrome palette makes it all blend together, giving the sense of the artist as an organic component of the environment: which aptly reflects this exhibition’s emphasis on the intersection between installation and performance art. Featured in Performance Spaces: a series of printed scores (“songs written for specific birds and athletes”) and the documentation for “Silent Ping Pong” by Bill Beckley, a performance installation by Terry Fox, a confrontational sculpture by Howard Fried, and Dennis Oppenheim’s “Gingerbread Man.”

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