On view in NYU’s Special Collections Center, second floor of the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, September 17-January 28, 2025
New York University Libraries present Panmodern! The Mark Bloch / Postal Art Network Archive, an exhibition of artifacts from the Mark Bloch/Postal Art Network Archive exploring analog networks of communication, the distribution of art through international postal systems, and mail art as a precursor to present-day social networking. The exhibition will showcase examples of original mail art sent to Mark Bloch in New York City from all over the world in the form of objects, envelopes, publications, and postcards documenting avant-garde cultural activities from 1978-2024.
The show, curated by Bloch, will examine the decentralized, non-hierarchical and often misunderstood or mischaracterized nature of mail art, also known as “correspondence art” and “postal art.” Mail art developed out of Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School in the 1950s and became a global movement organized around sending small scale works through the postal system. The movement emphasized connection with other artists and egalitarian ideals that allowed artists to circumvent official art distribution and approval systems—such as art markets, museums, and galleries.
This exhibition will provide a provocative overview of the international mail art network, which has thrived below the radar of the traditional art world and the general public with its own rules and aesthetics since the mid-1950s, and continues today in the era of social media. The mail art scene has been cited as an important precursor to social media; Mark Bloch was an early convert from postal-centric to online communities, spearheading experiments in online art discussion groups and text-based teleconferencing systems.
An American mail artist whose practice is entrenched in long distance communication, Bloch is a prominent figure in the mail art scene. Since 1980, he has published Panmag, a zine documenting the New York mail art scene, and has written extensively on Fluxus—an international avant-garde collective of artists and composers founded in the 1960s—performance, communication, conceptual art, mail art, and contemporary art, including many early texts on Ray Johnson.
“It is a thrill to finally get to share this stuff with the world. I now find myself to be the caretaker of a beautiful archive of people’s heartfelt expressions. This archive tells the story of lesser-known people who are following in strong, important international art traditions, like Dada and Surrealism, and who never stopped the experimentation that was important in the first half of the twentieth century,” said Bloch.
Bloch has organized the show around ten focal points which allow visitors to explore the overarching narrative of the mail art movement through the lens of Bloch’s personal collection and history and the work of individual artists. These narrative themes include: mail art’s connection to broader communication media; Bloch’s globally-distributed artwork; the more obscure objects people mailed that pushed the boundaries of the postal service; the various tools employed by artists (such as collages, zines, and artist books); the relationship between mail art and broader artistic movements; a seminal moment in the 80s where key artists collided and re-conceptualized the mail art movement; the sub-movement of Neoism which emphasized confusion and ambiguity as the cure for societal isolation and alienation; the differences between mail art practices in different countries; and the progression from physical networks to digital communities.
Exhibition opening is September 17, 2024 from 6pm-8pm. To attend the opening, register on Eventbrite. Public programming will be announced at a later date.
Panmodern! The Mark Bloch / Postal Art Network Archive is on display in the NYU Special Collections Center, Second Floor, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South (at LaGuardia Place) from September 17, 2024. [Subways A,C,E, B,D,M to West 4th Street; 6 line to Astor Place; R train to 8th Street.].
The exhibition is free and open to the public. To gain access to the exhibition, members of the public should email special.collections@nyu.edu at least one business day in advance of their visit.
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