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Performance

Dove Bradshaw American
1976
Not on view
Bradshaw, a disciple of the avant-garde composer John Cage, began her interventions at the Metropolitan in the mid-1970s. In 1976 she affixed a label near a fire hose in the Museum, claiming it as her work and calling it Fire Extinguisher. As the label was periodically removed, she replaced it. She also made postcards of her "work," which she quietly placed in the Museum's Gift Shop. The Museum acquired the original photograph in 1980 and in 1992 began selling official postcards of it in the shop. The original work—that is, the label produced by the artist as well as the conceptual act of claiming this object—formally entered the collection in 2007 with a generous gift from two of Bradshaw's patrons.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Performance
  • Artist: Dove Bradshaw (American, born New York, 1949)
  • Date: 1976
  • Medium: Inkjet ink on paper on matboard float-mounted in a window mat
  • Dimensions: Label: 4 1/4 × 5 3/8 in. (10.8 × 13.7 cm)
    Label with matboard: 11 1/8 × 10 3/4 in. (28.3 × 27.3 cm)
  • Classification: Sculpture-Conceptual Art
  • Credit Line: Gift of Rosalind and Melvin Jacobs, 2007
  • Object Number: 2007.530a, b
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

More Artwork

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Performance Burned, Dove Bradshaw American, Photomechanical print
Performance Burned
Dove Bradshaw
2004
Spent Bullets
Dove Bradshaw
1999
Fire Extinguisher, Dove Bradshaw American, Gelatin silver print
Fire Extinguisher
Dove Bradshaw
Arnold Rosenberg
1978
Fire Extinguisher, Dove Bradshaw American, Gelatin silver print
Fire Extinguisher
Dove Bradshaw
Arnold Rosenberg
1978
Nothing, Dove Bradshaw American, Electrostatic prints
Nothing
Dove Bradshaw
1960s–80s

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