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Projects Class

Askevold, David

Halifax. Nova Scotia College of Arts and Design. 1969
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One of the earliest and most important Conceptual Art printed ephemera.

David Askevold came to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in the autumn of 1968, and it was here that he would come to develop his idea of the Projects Class, which ran from 1969-1972. Originally hired as a sculpture teacher in the Foundation Program, Askevold’s invention of the Projects Class quickly became one of the landmark pieces of Conceptual art exhibition.

The Projects Class helped to put Nova Scotia Arts Collage on the map, and at the centre of Conceptual Art innovation.

Askevold recruited a number of New York-based and international conceptual artists to write and submit proposals for projects to be completed by the students. These artists included: Robert Barry, Mel Bochner, Jan Dibbets, Sol Lewitt, N E Thing, James Lee Byars, Robert Smithson, Doug Huebler, Dan Graham, Lucy Lippard, Joseph Kosuth, and Lawrence Weiner. Some of the artists would come to see the projects progress and became involved with the students collaborative processes.

The projects were submitted on typed or handwritten cards, which would then be given to the students. This sort of exchange - between artists and students - opened up the idea that teaching or engaging with a class could become a work of art in itself.
Complete sets of the cards are increasingly difficult to find.
A rubber-stamped manila envelope containing a complete set of 12 cards (each 126 x 177 mm).
#43117