Manager of Community Engagement Lisa Harper Chang describes ideas behind outreach programs for the past exhibition, Ideal (Dis-) Placements, and for the upcoming Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark.

Looking back on last Spring’s Let’s Look and Staging Old Masters, Lisa Harper Chang considers the transformative power of art and how it will again be harnessed for the highly anticipated Urban Alchemy. The Pulitzer has already begun partnering with schools and artists for this exhibition, which opens October 30, and is planning a series of panel discussions on themes in Matta-Clark’s art. You can learn more about these and other exciting new programs on our budding website Transformation.

Transformation, tangible and abstract, was the essence of much of Matta-Clark’s work. With Garbage Wall, he reaped castoffs of everyday life and made them functional, visually compelling, and community building. He fried Polaroid pictures in Photo-Fry, intersecting the transfiguration that occurs in cooking, in film development, and in artistic creation. For Food, an artist-run/owned restaurant, Matta-Clark and his SoHo peers turned dinner into performance and a common space for neighbors. Most notably, he asked spectators to reevaluate the way they view architectural spaces, by cutting parts of buildings away.

Matta-Clark’s activism through creative acts easily relates to the activities on Transformation. For the site’s “Your St. Louis,” St. Louisans will be asked to relay stories and offer photos of their urban landscape and to perhaps, by learning what others have to share, further understand and value their city. In “Local Artists,” read how Robert Longyear and Jenny Murphy use art as a way to foster community, empower youth, and prompt questions about the value of discarded objects. Hear from North St. Louis’ Holy Trinity students on how they see their community as opposed to how it’s defined by outsiders.

Matta-Clark strived for inclusivity in his work. Besides being a resource on how art can foster community, we hope St. Louis residents will feel free to contribute to Transformation, in online discourse and “Your St. Louis” projects.