September 2016-June 2017

Concrete Happenings invited art-lovers and car-lovers, artists and scholars, drivers and pedestrians to confront the power of public art—the strange power of a massive sculpture produced by Fluxus artist Wolf Vostell. In 1970, in Chicago, Vostell encased a Cadillac in concrete. The product of that “happening,” Concrete Traffic, was installed in the University of Chicago Campus North Parking Garage on October 1, 2016. It served as the provocation for a comprehensive suite of exhibitions and interactive public programs—performances, screenings, talks, art workshops, happenings—that offered unique opportunities to engage with a crucial art historical moment and movement, and to explore the intensities with which an artwork can form and transform its publics.

Learn more at arts.uchicago.edu/concretehappenings.

Related Links

Concrete Happenings

Concrete Traffic

Wolf Vostell

Material Matters at the Neubauer Collegium

Video

Conserving Concrete Traffic
Concrete Traffic Procession to the University of Chicago
Public Art at the University of Chicago