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See You Again

See You Again was collaborative, caucus-vote museum acquisition project produced by the PSU Art & Social Practice Program and presented at the Portland Art Museum in Portland, OR in 2015.

The Art & Social Practice program was invited to present a project for Shine-A-Light, the Portland Art Museum’s socially-engaged art program. We proposed to use our project honorarium fee (given to us by PAM) to purchase a social practice artwork and then donate that artwork back to the museum. This resulted in See You Again, a cocktail hour hosted in PAM’s ballroom where members of the public voted caucus-style for the first non-object artwork to be proposed to PAM’s permanent collection.

In short but passionate political speeches, each student argued in favor of one of six socially-engaged artworks presented to the public. Artists considered were Ariana Jacob, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Ben Kinmont, Carmen Papalia, Pedro Reyes, and Stephanie Syjuco. After a stirring debate and an eloquent argument by visiting artist Julie Ault, the audience voted for their favorite artwork by standing next to the corresponding flag.

At the end of the evening, Stephanie Syjuco’s notMoMA was chosen by the audience to be proposed for permanent collection to the Portland Art Museum.

The Art & Social Practice program purchased notMoMA from Syjuco and later formally presented it to PAM’s Acquisition Committee, who voted to include the work in the museum’s permanent collection. The process took a while, so in the meantime we presented the work at KSMoCA. The work now is part of PAM’s permanent collection and exists as a set of instructions for producing the work in the future.

Special thanks to Stephanie Parrish, Associate Director of Education and Public Programs at PAM, for her invitation and support of this project, and to Sara Krajewski, The Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at PAM, who helped us with the acquisition process.