Maybe because Robert Stearns’ leadership of the Contemporary Arts Center was relatively short and long ago, his death in early December from cancer didn’t attract much notice here. He was 67 and died at his home in Palm Springs, Calif.
He had been the CAC’s young, enthusiastic director from 1978-82. But in Minneapolis, where he went from here to be the Walker Art Center’s performance coordinator and curator until leaving in 1988 to be the first director at Columbus’ Wexner Center for the Arts, his passing brought greater remembrance. As Sam Segal wrote on the Walker’s blog, “Despite his relatively short tenure at the Walker, Stearns’ impact on our community has endured.”
The same can be said for his time here as director. In addition to presenting more traditional exhibitions, Stearns had a devotion to cutting-edge performance and installation work, including new and avant-garde music. He made the CAC, then located on Fifth Street in the second floor of the Formica Building in a space humorously above a drug store, a performance venue of historic importance.
These performances took place in a gallery overlooking Government Square that could accommodate more than 100 people.
He came here from New York performance space The Kitchen, a haven for experimental arts. And he brought to Cincinnati a dazzling array of artists, not always well known at the time, who have gone on (some after passing) to shape Contemporary art and progressive American culture: Laurie Anderson, Robert Wilson, Bill T. Jones, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Klaus Nomi, Peter Gordon, Charlemagne Palestine and more. (He did not invent avant-garde performances at CAC — John Cage had been there in 1957.)
Mark Rohling, Stearns’ preparator during his CAC years (and now exhibition designer/chief preparator at Taft Museum of Art), contacted me because he felt Stearns, upon his passing, needed more acknowledgement here for what he had done. And he had some fascinating stories about the Stearns years at the CAC.
First and foremost, perhaps, was a 1980 exhibition that the CAC organized, Robert Wilson: Theater of Images. A theater director now heralded as visionary, Wilson had worked with composer Philip Glass to create the landmark opera Einstein on the Beach. It debuted in Europe in 1976 and was then performed at the Metropolitan Opera, but had had no other U.S. productions at that time.
Stearns wanted to present Wilson’s theater sets as art — and subsequently brought in Glass’ ensemble to play from Einstein. “For me, that was one of the things exciting about working there then — the mixing of visual art with performing art,” Rohling says.
But not everyone got it. He remembered that when crates arrived, they were nailed shut. “We had to get crowbars to open them up and that kind of freaked people out,” Rohling says. “Usually, you just unscrew something or flip a latch and they open up. It puts the artist’s work at risk when you have to chip away at a crate. But they had come from people who thought of them as props and not as art, as we did.”
In 1980, Stearns brought the visually and sonically striking countertenor singer/performance artist Klaus Nomi (who died in 1983) for a show at the CAC. Appearing solo and using backing tracks, he wore a costume with a vinyl collar, big lapel and “a triangular thing that was patent leather as I recall,” Rohling says. After the performance, Nomi told the crowd his show would continue with a post-midnight set at an underground downtown club called The Pit.
And then there was the 1980 performance by the Minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine — from Rohling’s recollections, it appears he was performing his challenging “Strumming Music,” a 1974 piece in which he alternates between just two notes for some 45 minutes.
“He insisted he had to have a Bösendorfer concert grand piano so we brought it in. The next day we noticed there was blood on the keyboard, from him hitting the note over and over.”
Stearns’ importance to Cincinnati’s fine arts continues today. Glass has been a guest creative director of the Cincinnati Symphony, and he and Reich have been featured at MusicNow.
And, after a long time deemphasizing performance, CAC now has a curator specializing in it, Drew Klein. Someday, we may find that the recent cutting-edge shows he’s presented there — featuring relatively unfamiliar names like Jace Clayton, Taylor Mac or Marc Bamuthi Joseph — will prove as prescient as Stearns’ choices were some 35 years ago.
CONTACT STEVEN ROSEN: srosen@citybeat.com
This article appears in Jan 7-14, 2015.
