Show and Tell: A Chronicle of Group Material

In 1979, the artist collective Group Material opened a storefront at East 13th Street on New York's Lower East Side, from which they launched exhibitions--45 in all--that radically overhauled curatorial thought, setting art alongside artifacts, documentary material and storebought objects, within exhibitions that were oriented around topical social concerns. Group Material's original members--Julie Ault, Patrick Brennan, Beth Jaker, Mundy McLaughlin, Marybeth Nelson, Tim Rollins and Peter Szypula--came from backgrounds in feminism, Marxist theory, design and popular culture, and curated classic exhibits reflecting this eclecticism, such as It's a Gender Show, AIDS Timeline and The People's Choice--a collection of everyday objects (wedding photos, dolls, even a cigarette-pack collage) gathered from people living on their block. Show & Tell is the first monograph on Group Material, and charts the group's activities, with essays by original members, plus original documents, photographs, drawings, correspondence and interviews.