The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Con te Partiro (2009), via Brooklyn Museum

Shrouded in anonymity, the Bruce High Quality Foundation has made a career for themselves out of playful irreverence.  Rising out of the post-9/11 New York art scene, the anonymous collective has launched a campaign of physical aggression against public installations (Public Art Tackle), initiated their own free education classes, staged socio-politically charged morality plays on gentrification, all under the guise of a production of the Broadway musical Cats, all alongside a number of pieces and installations that embrace the juxtaposition of art history, pop culture and contemporary society to “invest the experience of public space with wonder.”

The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Ode to Joy (2001–2013) (Installation View), via Brooklyn Museum (more…)

The Bruce High Quality Foundation, which opens its first ever museum retrospective tonight at the Brooklyn Museum, is profiled in the most recent issue of the Village Voice.  Speaking with two members of the amorphous collective, the interview covers the group’s history of art world subversions, their efforts towards a more populist art world, and their take on the economic value of art.  “Art’s most radical quality is that it’s useless,” says one member. “People have used art for lots of purposes throughout history, but artists have to protect its uselessness—it serves as a shield against corruption.”  (more…)

The Brooklyn Museum announced today that it will hold an ambitious retrospective for the secretive art collective Bruce High Quality Foundation this summer.  The show, titled Ode To Joy: 2001-2013, will include a broad number of works (“under 17,000” according to a BHQF representative) from the collective’s decade of creative activity, and will document their ongoing practice of satire, political commentary, and exploration of contemporary America. (more…)