The Bruce High
Quality Foundation
Founded 2001 in Brooklyn, New York
The Bruce High Quality Foundation, a group of anonymous artists, uses performances and pranks to critique the art world. For the work on view in 2010, the Foundation repurposed an iconic vehicle as a “portable museum,” a site for both reviving and putting to rest American cultural myths. Designed to be both an ambulance and a hearse, the Cadillac Miller-Meteor has been used to care for the dying, transport the dead, and as a prop in the movie Ghostbusters. The title of this work refers to Joseph Beuys’s 1972 performance I Like America and America Likes Me. Upon arriving in New York from his native Germany for his performance, the artist was bundled into a Cadillac ambulance and shuttled to an art gallery, where he kept company with a coyote for three days before returning directly to the airport. Beuys’s personal, ritualized confrontation with the United States is revisited here as a collective experience. A video projected on the windshield surveys a contemporary culture defined by YouTube clips, Hollywood movies, and news media. The voice-over describes an ambivalent, yearning relationship with the United States, as if the country were a dysfunctional family member or abusive lover.
Read about the artist
Their Own Brucennial
—The New York Times (February 2010)
Forget the Biennial, 2010 is All About the Brucennial
—The L Magazine (February 2010)
The Nifty 50: Bruce High Quality Foundation
—T Magazine/The New York Times (January 2010)
Bruce High Quality Foundation, Art History With Benefits, at X-Initiative
—Artforum.com (November 2009; note: registration required)
Artists Without Mortarboards
—The New York Times (September 2009)
Money Talks
—Artnet (August 2009)
Enter the Afterlife: A Conversation with the Bruce High Quality Foundation
—Art in America Online (March 2009)
And the Beat Goes On
—The New York Times (December 2009)
Plan Your Visit
The Bruce High Quality Foundation’s work is on view
in the Museum’s fourth floor galleries.
