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Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison

Professors Emeriti

Biographies

The Harrisons have been collaborating as artists since the early seventies. Since the mid-eighties they have done a large part of their work in Europe and have recently completed a book on the future of the European landscape, commissioned by the Schweisfurth Foundation of Munich and Hannover 2000, entitled Grüne Landschaften, Vision: Die Welt als Garten, published by Campus Verlag, Frankfurt. They have been associated with Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York City since 1974, with 'one-person' exhibitions in 1974, '75, '78, '80 (uptown as well as downtown), '82, '85, '91, '93 and 2003. Other single exhibitions include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art; The Maryland Institute, Baltimore, MD; The Johnson Museum at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The San Francisco Art Institute; The San Jose Museum of Modern Art; The Grey Gallery, New York University, New York, NY; The Laguna Museum of Art, Laguna Beach, CA; Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI; The Detroit Institute of the Arts, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA; Baxter Gallery, Cal Tech, Pasadena, CA; Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis, MO; Douglas F. Cooley Gallery, Reed College, Portland, OR; The Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia; The Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin; The Museum of the Revolution, Zagreb, Croatia; the Bauhaus Dessau, Germany; the Jeruzalemkapel, Gouda, Holland; The Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle BRD, Bonn, Germany; The Bluscoat Gallery, Liverpool, England; the Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany; Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO.

Peninsula Europe exhibitions include Der Alte Rathaus, Potsdam, Germany, The Ludwig Forum for International Art, Aachen, Germany; Les Abattoir, the Regional Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art, Toulouse, France; Kasteel Groeneveld, Baarn, Holland; Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NY, and it will travel to Greece, Italy, and Austria before ending in Munich in 2005. Group exhibitions include: Expo '70, Osaka, Japan, 1970; Art and Technology, the L.A. County Museum of Art, 1971; Eleven Los Angeles Artists, Hayward Gallery, London, 1971; Vesuvio, Henry Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA and Galeria Il Centro, Naples, Italy, 1972-1973; Projekt '74, Koln, Germany, 1974; Couples, PS1, New York, NY, 1977; Social Works, LAICA, Los Angeles, CA, 1979; Contemporary Art in Southern California, The High Museum, Atlanta, GA, 1979; Common Ground, the Ringling Museum, Sarasota, FL, 1982; Gedenken und Denkmal, Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany, 1988; Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany, 1987; The Venice Bienale, 1976 and 1980; Collaboration in the 20th Century, The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., 1983; The Sao Paulo Bienale, 1985; Artec '91, the Second International Bienale in Nagoya, Japan, 1991; Kunst, Kultur, Okologie, Galerie Edition, Munich, Germany, 1993; Differentes Natures, La Defense, Paris, France, 1993; Villette-Amazone at La Villette, Paris, France, 1996; Encounter with Creation, the Kunsthallen, Brandts Klaedefabrik, Arthus, Denmark, 1996; Art Transpennine, The Henry Moore Foundation and the Liverpool Tate, 1998; Aufriss, The Grasse Museum, Leipzig, 1997; Maßstabssprung, Leaps of Scale, the Deutsches Architekten Museum, Frankfurt, Germany, 1998; Natural Reality, the Ludwig Forum fûr International Kunst, Aachen, 1999; The Opening Exhibition, Les Abattoirs, the Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art, Toulouse, France, 2000; Made in California, the Los Angeles Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, 2001.

Traveling exhibitions include the single artist exhibition, The Book of the Seven Lagoons, traveled by the American Association of Art Museums in 1987-1989, and numerous group exhibitions such as Fragile Ecologies, initiated by the Queens Museum in 1992 and traveled by the Smithsonian Institute, and Generation of Mentors, initiated by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D. C., 1994, as well as Differentes Natures, Paris, France, 1993, and Creative Solutions to Ecological Issues, initiated at the Dallas Museum of Natural History, 1994.

Projects completed or designed include a meadow reclamation completed at Art Park, New York, 1977-1978; the conceptual design for Baltimore Promenade in Baltimore which is mainly built, 1981; the conceptual design for the reclamation of Devil's Gate Debris Basin in Pasadena, 1987, which is still in process; a conceptual design for the master plan for the San Diego Landfill (with Martinez, Cutri and McArdle) in 1992; the design for "A Wetland Walk for Boulder Creek" (proposing an ecological walk at the site of the tertiary treatment plant for the sewage outfall in Boulder, CO). Public art projects such as California Wash: A Memorial for the Disappearing Coastal Landscape at Pico-Seagate in Santa Monica (1988-1996) and Disappearing Path in Newport, CA in the early 90's have been completed.

Invited proposals include the reclamation of a 50 square kilometer strip mine in Bitterfeld, Germany with the Bauhaus at Dessau with a separate proposal for the Muldeaue; a reclamation plan for Tagebau Witznitz at Borna, Germany and A Brown Coal Park for Südraum Leipzig with the Kulturstiftung des Freistaats Sachsen and Siemens AG; A Forest Promenade for Cergy-Pontoise at the request of the Minister of Culture for the ring cities of Paris, France; Dreaming the Yarkon Alive Again in Israel at the request of the Tel Aviv Foundation and the City Planner of Tel Aviv; the designs for A Serpentine-Lattice for the Pacific Northwest Temperate Coastal Rain Forest of North America by Reed College and A Grand Park and Meander Walk for UCSD (1984-1987) at the University of California, San Diego.

Recent projects include The Endangered Meadows of Europe for the roof of the Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle in Bonn, Germany, 1996-1998 - now transformed into meadows for the Rheinaue parks in Bonn, and another meadow situated in a new cultural landscape was designed for an Artpark in Austria. The Green Heart of Holland for the Cultural Council of South Holland is being enacted in part, and parts of Casting a Green Net: Can It Be We Are Seeing a Dragon? for Art Transpennine, a collaborative effort with the Liverpool Tate and the Henry Moore Foundation in England are being discussed. A preliminary version of a work for the Garonne River in France has already been exhibited and a small building at Les Abattiors has been dedicated to the ongoing project for the next several years. Peninsula Europe: the High Ground (2000-ongoing) is a 3000 sq. ft. multimedia exhibition installation funded by the European Union, the Deutsche Bundes Umweltstiftung, the Scweisfurth Stiftung and various cultural institutions and museums. (Catalogs in four languages on request. See www.peninsula-europe.net.)New work in progress: the Schelde River, a connection between Antwerp and Ghent in Flanders, the Santa Fe, NM drain basin; the farms and the meadowlands of Yorkshire, England.

Collections include the Powers Collection in Australia; The National Museum of Modern Art, The Pompidou Center in Paris; The La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art; The Brooklyn Museum of Art; The Museums of Modern Art in New York and Chicago; The Tel Aviv Museum in Israel; Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York; Metromedia; The Chase Manhattan Bank; The First National Bank of Chicago; ARCO, Inc., Dallas; The Art Gallery of Washington University in St. Louis; the Chicago Office of the American Medical Association; The Albertina Museum in Vienna, Austria; as well as various private collections. Books: Chapters or significant mention occur in numerous books and journals.