Archive of renowned artist Maren Hassinger acquired by Getty

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The Getty Research Institute has acquired the archive of celebrated African-American artist and educator Maren Hassinger, the Beverly Press Park LaBrea News reports.

Hassinger, whose career spans four decades, is famously known for exploring the relationship between the natural world and modern technology through sculpture, performance and installations. 

“Our relationship to nature is going to be different than other generations’ relationship to nature because we have damaged everything,” the Los Angeles-born artist has said, according to New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

The Getty collection has a wide variety of materials, spanning from the early 1970s to the late 2000s. Photographs, correspondence, print media, handwritten notes, exhibition documentation, and audio-visual material are all part of the archive, per the Beverly Press Park LaBrea News.

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The archive also highlights Hassinger’s affiliations with prominent Los Angeles-based African-American artists. 

“The Maren Hassinger archive complements, and supplements, texts and other research materials related to African American art in GRI collections, specifically within the context of mixed-media sculpture and performance on both coasts,” said Mary Miller, director of the Getty Research Institute, according to Beverly Press Park LaBrea News.  

Over the next few years, the collection will be cataloged and accessible to Getty Research Institute researchers.

“I am very honored for my archive to be included in the Getty Research Institute,” Hassinger said. “The GRI has a profound influence on the historical investigations of contemporary art. After all my trials and tribulations in this field, it is gratifying to know that my work will be preserved for future engagement.”

After training as a dancer, Hassinger studied sculpture and visual art in college. Her work as an educator included 20 years as director of the Rinehart School of Sculpture at Baltimore’s Maryland Institute College of Art, according to MoMA. 

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LeRonn Brooks, curator of the African American Art History Initiative at the Getty Research Institute, said, “Hassinger has distinguished herself as a true innovator whose mastery of visual and performance art practices has influenced generations of artists.”

Brooks called Hassinger a “true innovator whose mastery of visual and performance art practices has influenced generations of artists.”

Learn more about Hassinger and her art below.

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