Gallery Talk: LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS

Curator and AU Museum Director, Jack Rasmussen and Co-curator Kerry Brougher will discuss the exhibition "LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS
Bruce and Jean Conner in Mexico, 1961-62", in a gallery talk scheduled for

Friday, 2:00- 3:00pm

About the exhibition:

Artists: Bruce Conner and Jean Conner
Co-produced by the Conner Family Trust and the American University Museum

Follow the journey of artists Bruce Conner (iconic artist during the Beat, Psychedelic, and Punk periods) and his wife Jean (as reserved as her husband was assertive in seeking public attention), during the year they moved to Mexico City because Bruce believed they could “live cheaply and hide in the mountains when the bomb dropped.”

Bruce and some ex-pat friends (including Timothy Leary) would search for magic mushrooms and hidden Aztec pyramids while Jean stayed at home, recording aspects of the local culture. Their resulting drawings and the kaleidoscopic film Looking for Mushrooms Bruce made during their travels are topographic, psychedelic, religious and mundane. They give us a record of the young couple’s brief year of experimentation that ended with the birth of their son and their running out of money.

Find out how two young creative personalities, so different from each other, reacted to a cultural situation so radically foreign from their own in the first museum exhibition to concentrate on this formative time in their lives.

This event will be held in-person at the museum.

Please direct any questions about this event to the museum's main contact for this event, Patricia E Poku-Speight at [email protected].

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Event Venue

American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest, Washington, United States