24 Artists Have Donated Works to the Museum to Support the Creation of New Art

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, Mass., has announced that it will be greatly expanding its annual benefit auction, offering 19 works and 5 limited edition multiples by 24 artists who have exhibited at MASS MoCA, including David Byrne, Teresita Fernández, Jenny Holzer, William Kentridge, and Xu Bing. All of the artists have donated their works, often selecting pieces which have direct links to their history with MASS MoCA, including works that were created, exhibited, or workshopped at the museum. With a wide range of one-of-a-kind works and limited-run fixed-price multiples, the digital auction will launch on Artsy on Friday, April 16, with bidding open for two weeks through Friday, April 30. Registration will open on Wednesday, April 14. All of the auction proceeds will go towards MASS MoCA’s mission of supporting the creation of new art.

Highlights include:
● Alex Da Corte, Blue Pencil Drawing (Something for Nothing for Lusia Harris): This work from the artist’s “Blue Pencil Drawing” series adapts a Little Audrey cartoon from the 50s, with parts of the original image covered by Wite-out. The blue pencil of the title was used by animators for preliminary sketches, as when reproduced, the pencil marks would be invisible. Da Corte’s work draws attention to what has been erased from history, in terms of race, gender, and labor. It is dedicated to 
Lusia Harris, one of the pioneers of women’s basketball.

● Mark Dion, Anatomy Theater: A drawing depicting a set from the opera Dion developed with David Lang, a Bang on a Can co-founder and Pulitzer Prize winner. Anatomy Theater was workshopped and presented at MASS MoCA in 2006.

● William Kentridge, Emmy Hemmings: One of the cardboard silhouettes that was featured in Kentridge’s performance The Head & The Load, which was workshopped at MASS MoCA in 2018 before being presented at the Tate in London and the Armory in NYC.

● Ledelle Moe, Congregation: A wall-bound installation of 99 fist-sized sculptural heads, part of an ongoing series, two of which Moe presented in her solo exhibition, When, on view at MASS MoCA from 2019 to 2021.

● Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Black people want/irony: A color-inverted photograph of a preparatory arrangement for Rasheed’s site-specific installation Each sentence is a sponge!, commissioned for the Kissing through a Curtain exhibition on view at MASS MoCA through October 2021.

● Xu Bing, Phoenix Print No.2 and Phoenix Print No.3: A pair of works on paper based on Xu Bing’s sketch of one of the monumental Phoenix sculptures he exhibited at MASS MoCA in 2012-2013 which were fabricated from materials gathered at 
construction sites in China.

The complete list of artists who have donated works to the auction are: Laurie Anderson, Kamrooz Aram, David Byrne, Alex Da Corte, Blane De St. Croix, Mark Dion, Marcel Dzama, Kim Faler, Teresita Fernández, Ann Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, Tim Hawkinson, Jenny Holzer, Glenn Kaino, William Kentridge, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Ledelle Moe, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Wendy Red Star, Alexis Rockman, Clifford Ross, Alyson Shotz, and Xu Bing. The auction will also include a photograph by Robert Rauschenberg, donated by Eckert Fine Art.

Registration for the auction will open on Wednesday, April 14, on Artsy.