As we approach the end of the Currency exhibition, join us for a new show within the show. Commerce: The Greens, Water Wheel, and Bosco Mall exhibits work by RISD artists developed in dialogue with the Currency show. At 6pm, Leigh Claire La Berge presents a short talk on The Work of Finance in the Corporate University in conversation with BFAMFAPhD and visitors.

During the course of the afternoon and evening, we will drink wine, consider the value of things, attempt to barter using leaves from the Money Tree, explore the fate of uncompensated work and learn about water wheels, sour dough and the Gowanus. 

Local Flora from Gowanus, Goldie Pablodor

4 – 6pm: Opening Reception – Commerce: The Greens, Water Wheel, and Bosco Mall, with new works by Goldie Poblador, Lucia Monge, Alexander Stewart, Julia Gartrell, and Minkyoung Kim.

6 – 7pm:  A Short Presentation by Leigh Claire La Berge and BFAMFAPhDA.  Campus Texts/Financial Texts: The Work of Finance in the Corporate University
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If the humanities and fine arts are worthless, as public discourse today claims, why do colleges and universities continue to fund these programs? In this short talk, Leigh Claire La Berge suggests that the presence of the arts and humanities on campus serves a dual and perverse function: first, it enables a corporate university culture to flourish, and second it enables corporations on campus to make money. La Berge asks: How should we understand and interpret these arts practices?

Join us!

To launch our Commerce year workshop series, book artist Esther K. Smith, author of Magic Books & Paper Toys and How to Make Books, will teach you how to transform your money…into wearable rings, shirts, elephants and other oddities. Bring your own US dollars to fold. If you think your dollars are continually losing value in the marketplace, give their value a boost by turning your bills into priceless works of art! …. Esther K Smith, author of Magic Books & Paper Toys and How to Make Books, makes collaborative limited editions and artist books at Purgatory Pie Press. These works are in many international collections from MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) to The Miniature Book Museum of Azerbaijan. Exhibits include the libraries of the Metropolitan Museum and London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. When she was in high school she was the origami club TA and carried a candy tin of paper squares and folded tiny cranes under her desk. 

Join us for free wine, risky money making and magical money laundering at the opening of Currency, the first show of the COMMERCE theme year. Currency is an exhibition of art, artifacts and books examining the representation of value and its relation to social consensus. The exhibition includes displays of alternative currencies, artist-made currencies and art objects made from currency. We will also examine art’s role as a form of currency.

For Saturday’s opening, and at intervals throughout the show, there will also be a money-making demonstration by Hackett and Bronwen Densmore who will operate The Coin Press, a guillotine-like, human-powered contraption. You will be able to witness this two-person minting outfit press REAL and VALUABLE coins using copper, brass and a machine that was dreamed up and assembled on the banks of the Gowanus using objects that can best be described as LARGE, RUSTY, and DANGEROUS.

       Dan Tague, Trust No One

The reception will also include the ceremonial witches Arielle Avenia and Violette Olympia, engaged for the evening to ritually cleanse your money of bad energy. Do not miss this opportunity to improve your life at this while-you-wait money laundering service. 

Currency participants include: Honey Brown, Makale Faber-Cullen, Dadara, Hackett and Bronwen Densmore, Rob Johnson, Hai Knafo, Poneros, Sal Randolph, Duke Riley, Jason Sinopoli, Swoon, Dan Tague, Mark Wagner and Caroline Woolard.