Alison Knowles

Alison Knowles. A Retrospective is the first comprehensive exhibition of this pioneering American artist, who has produced a significant body of work over the past sixty years. The only female founding member of the group behind the Fluxus movement, a network of experimental avant-garde artists established in 1962, Alison Knowles first gained recognition for her event scores performed at Fluxus festivals, later published as by Alison Knowles by the edition Something Else Press in 1965. While Knowles’s works have been shown in major museums (MoMA, Guggenheim, Tate…), she has never before been the subject of a major exhibition examining the full depth of her practice.

In the 1960s, Alison Knowles became one of the first artists to use food as a medium, particularly in her Fluxus event scores. The Identical Lunch (1969), a score involving eating the same meal every day for an entire year, stands as an early example of long-duration performance art. Her work The Big Book (1967) expanded the small format of artist publications into a monumental installation, while her score for The House of Dust (1967) resulted in the first computer-generated poem, as well as a public sculpture and related performances. In addition to these works, Knowles’s every day and poetic creations reflect her long-standing engagement with ordinary materials, found objects, chance, and collaboration.

Traveling exhibition presented at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) from July 20, 2022, to February 12, 2023, at the Museum Wiesbaden from September 20, 2024, to January 26, 2025, and at Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen from April 23 to July 26, 2026.

The exhibition was made possible with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art, Dr. Rosalyn M. Laudati, and Dr. James Pick. It is also sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The presentation at MAMC+ is supported by the Étant donnés grant, a program of the Albertine Foundation and Villa Albertine.