Ann Messner

Ann Messner (born 1952) is an artist, activist, and a professor of fine arts at the Pratt Institute. Messner received her B.F.A. from the Pratt Institute in 1973.[1]

Ann Messner

Activism

Messner was a member of Artists Against the War (AAW), The Critical Voice, and the Activist Response Team (A.R.T.), political action coalitions dedicated to non-hierarchical collective response to political events, specifically the American involvement in Iraq.[2]

Messner is also known for her activism bringing attention to real estate inequalities in New York, especially as a participant in The Real Estate Show, an extra-legal artist occupation of a vacant New York City building (125 Delancey St) beginning on December 30, 1979, in order to mount an exhibition.[3][4] The show was reconstructed at James Fuentes gallery in 2014 in order to highlight the city's ongoing housing issues; Messner's work for the show consisted of a printed multiple with a souvenir image of a woman in front of the original show marquee board.[5]

Ann Messner, in collaboration with Carole Ashley, Elaine Angelopoulos, Debra Werblud and Larilyn Sanchez created and directed the documentary, Disarming Images, produced by Artists Against the War. The documentation, covering the years 2001-2005, focused on protest groups who inventively spread their word against the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.[6][7]

Career

Messner's work centers on issues of publicness, transference, and the dynamics of the crowd. In the Subway Series (shown for the first time in 2007 at Dorsky Gallery),[8] works performed on the New York City subway in 1977-79, Messner made a series of interventions into the motion and space of the city. In Frogman, she donned a diving suit, mask, and oxygen tank to make her way through the length of a train. In Balloon, she slowly inflated a large balloon in a subway car during rush hour, forcing fellow riders to shift to make room.[9]

Messner's art practice has included several large-scale public sculptures that are aimed at urban pedestrian spaces. Meteor, installed in New York City's Times Square 1987-1988, comprised five welded steel sculptures with various visual affinities to technology, satellites, and more domestic manufactured items like ironing boards.[10][11][12] Amniotic Sea, installed in Foley Square in 1998, consisted of a steel platform, a large resin sac sculpture, and a newspaper vendor cabinet distributing Amniotic Sea tabloids with images of New York metropolitan beaches.[13]

Notes
  1. "Pratt Institute". www.pratt.edu. Retrieved 2016-03-06.
  2. "Ann Messner Statement". UMass Amherst Fine Arts Center. University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Retrieved March 6, 2016.
  3. "Ann Messner - The Creative Time Summit". creativetime.org. Retrieved 2016-03-06.
  4. Johnson, Ken (2014-04-17). "'The Real Estate Show Was Then: 1980'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-03-18.
  5. "Putting the 'No' in 'Nostalgia'". Hyperallergic. 2014-04-23. Retrieved 2018-03-18.
  6. Messner, Ann. "Disarming Images". Ann Messner, Disarming Images. Archived from the original on 13 August 2013. Retrieved 6 March 2016.
  7. "The Line We're On". The Brooklyn Rail. 5 March 2006. Retrieved 2018-03-18.
  8. "Art Guide". The New York Times. 1997-12-19. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-03-18.
  9. "Julie Caniglia on Ann Messner". www.artforum.com. Retrieved 2018-03-18.
  10. "Patricia C. Phillips on Ann Messner". www.artforum.com. Retrieved 2018-03-18.
  11. "Meteor". www.publicartfund.org. Retrieved 2018-03-18.
  12. "Meteor". walkerart.org. Retrieved 2018-03-18.
  13. Messner, Ann; Williams, Gregory (2000). "The Perils of Public Art: Anne Messner Interviewed by Gregory Williams". PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. 22 (1): 36–44. doi:10.2307/3245909. ISSN 1537-9477. JSTOR 3245909. S2CID 162035267.
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