ELIZABETH PEYTON — Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton, New Museum, New York, 2008

Issued by the New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, for the exhibition Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton, 8 October 2008–11 January 2009. Members’ private viewing and reception: 11 October 2008.

Peyton’s first survey at an American institution, bringing together more than one hundred paintings, drawings and prints made over the previous fifteen years. Her portraits collapsed the distance between private attachment and public image: friends, artists, musicians and political figures entered the work through snapshots, magazines, record covers and other already-circulating pictures. The scale remained intimate even as the subjects became culturally overexposed.

This is not the substantial exhibition catalogue. It is the smaller object that moved directly through the museum: part invitation, part exhibition notice and part membership solicitation. A private viewing, three reproductions, institutional language and donor categories are held within the same folded sheet.

The venue matters. The New Museum had opened its purpose-built Bowery building less than a year earlier. The handout therefore records two forms of arrival at once: Peyton’s transition into the American museum survey and the institution’s new public identity at 235 Bowery. The object was made to perform briefly — it announced an evening, recruited members and directed bodies towards a particular place and time. What remains is a compact record of how an exhibition entered circulation before becoming history.

14.5 × 21.5 cm folded; 14.5 × 64.5 cm unfolded. Three-panel offset-printed exhibition handout with colour reproductions; text in English. New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, 2008. Condition: good. General handling and surface wear, with rubbing, creasing and pressure marks along the original folds. Minor edge wear, corner softening and small areas of abrasion. Complete and fully legible.

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