For Art’s Sake: Pilgrimage to Jersey City Museum

I modeled these actions after El Camino de Compostela in Spain, staging a series pilgrimages to seven museums in the New York metropolitan area. During my journeys, I carried a pilgrim’s credential that I asked museum directors or other cultural officials linked to the places that I visited to stamp and or sign.

For the fourth pilgrimage on February 2, 2006, I traveled by foot and ferry from the offices of LMCC to the Jersey City Museum, stopping at educational/cultural organizations along the route: an Episcopal church, an all-boys Catholic school and a public school, to spread the word about performance art and the penances that I have been undertaking. Upon my arrival at the Jersey City Museum, Marion Grzesiak, Executive Director, recorded her signature in the credential.

For Art’s Sake was presented as part of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Residency Program and the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, and in collaboration with El Museo del Barrio, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Jersey City Museum, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Queens Museum, Longwood Arts Project/Bronx Council on the Arts, Local Project, Y Gallery, Steinway and Elmhurst Libraries in Queens, and the Center for Book Arts.

Funding for these pilgrimages have been provided by: The Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art (Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art is supported by Jerome Foundation and public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency); The Center for Book Arts; Lambent Fellowship Program of Tides Foundation; The National Association of Latino Arts and Culture; The Michael Richards Fund, a program of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; The Center for Book Arts; The Urban Artist Initiative/NYC; and Queens Museum.

Special thanks to Dolores Zorreguieta, Martha Wilson, Sara Guerrero-Rippberger, Harley Spiller, David Hinkle, Geoffrey Jones, and Edwin Ramoran.