Sarah Crowner: Around Orange / Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis

The Pulitzer Arts Foundation presents two exhibitions that reference, in different ways, the architectural identity of St. Louis: three new commissions by artist Sarah Crowner, and an exhibition of architectural fragments and archival holdings from the National Building Arts Center that look at the architectural history of the St. Louis region.

Sarah Crowner: Around Orange
A bold red, orange, blue, and black abstract painting installation over seventy-feet long, glazed red terracotta tiles, and a pale birchwood floor structure are the building blocks of a major three-part commission by New York–based artist Sarah Crowner (b. 1974). Her vivid installations often respond to particular sites, inviting us to take a closer look at our surroundings. Crowner finds inspiration in a global range of sources including Mexican craft and design, twentieth-century modernism, and the natural world, often developing work in relation to the artists that have informed her practice.

Transforming the main level of the museum, Crowner’s site-specific installations created for the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, foreground the museum’s building, designed by architect Tadao Ando (b. 1941). The first of his freestanding public commissions in the United States, the Pulitzer’s building embodies Ando’s interest in minimalist forms and the integration of natural and built environments. Crowner responds to the museum’s architecture while introducing new ways to inhabit its spaces. Around Orange also pays homage to the vision of artist Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015), whose work has been an important influence for Crowner. Kelly’s site-specific work Blue Black is a cornerstone of the museum’s collection and is on permanent view in the main gallery.

Sarah Crowner: Around Orange is organized by Stephanie Weissberg, Curator, Pulitzer Arts Foundation.

Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis
Urban Archaeology gleans insights into the pressing issues of the built environment by way of building artifacts, the architectural salvage left in the wake of urban renewal and accelerated material change in St. Louis. The exhibition presents more than 25 objects—from a theater facade to a hand-pressed clay brick—drawn from the National Building Arts Center (NBAC), the nation’s largest collection of architectural, structural, and industrial artifacts, located in a former steel foundry 10 minutes from St. Louis’s downtown.

NBAC has worked for over four decades to salvage and preserve significant parts of condemned buildings across the nation that would otherwise be completely lost. Urban Archaeology highlights some of the most ambitious work undertaken by NBAC and others to preserve knowledge of St. Louis. While this exhibition is not a comprehensive history of the city’s architecture and its preservation, it raises important questions about the practice of salvage, expanding historical memory, and envisioning the future of St. Louis and similar cities with commercial and population decline.

This exhibition is curated by Michael R. Allen, Executive Director, National Building Arts Center, with Stephanie Weissberg, Curator, and Molly Moog, Curatorial Assistant, Pulitzer Arts Foundation.

More information on Sarah Crowner: Around Orange and Urban Archeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis can be found at pulitzerarts.org.