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.