Helen Mayer Harrison

Artist, San Diego

Biography: The Harrisons have been collaborating for 30 years. They are professors emeriti, currently on research status, from the Visual Arts Department at the University of California at San Diego. They are known internationally for producing visionary works, grounded in the natural sciences, that argue for beneficial new forms in the cultural landscape. The majority of their work since Documenta 8 in 1987 has been in Europe. These works include large scale projects and proposals made for cities and city areas such as SudraÜm Leipzig and Cergy-Pontoise, rivers such as the Sava in the former Yugoslavia, regions such as the transPennine area of England. In Europe, they have exhibited in museums, galleries and exhibition halls such as the Ludwig Forum in Aachen, the Neue Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin, the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool, the Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle, BRD in Bonn or La Villette in Paris. The Harrisons have worked with institutions such as Bauhaus Dessau or the Cultural Council of South Holland. They have had a D.A.A.D. in Berlin in 1988-89 and have exhibited there at the Neue Berliner Kunstverein, and in Denken und Denkmal at the Martin Gropiusbau. They exhibited in Art and Technology at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1991, Projekt’74 in Koln, the Venice Bienale(1976 &1980) and the Sao Paulo Bienale(1985)as well as Artec’ 91 - the Nagoya Bienale in Japan and Newton Harrison had a work in the American Pavillion at Expo’70 in Osaka. Their book, Grüne Landschaften – Vision:Die Welt als Garten, was one of 10 books, commissioned by the Schweisfurth Stiftung and Hannover 2000, published by Campus Verlag, to deal with the future. The vision of the future European landscape prefigured the work Peninsula Europe (Peninsula Europa or Halbinsel Europe) that will begin its exhibition tour at the Altes Rathaus in Potsdam., Thereafter moving to venues in Holland, France, Italy and Austria. The work is supported by grants from the European Union and the Deutsches Bundes Umwelt Stiftung as well as by the Schweisfurth Stiftung and also by the BUGA and the city of Potsdam.   Events with Helen Mayer Harrison