Cornelius to Wed

Washington Project for the Arts and Corcoran Gallery of Art
Announce Save the Date, by Kathryn Cornelius
Performance part of Take It to the Bridge, a series of installations and performances in the Corcoran’s Performance Bridge from July 18 – September 15

Washington, D.C. (August 6, 2012) – Washington Project for the Arts and the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design are pleased to announce Save the Date, a performance by Kathryn Cornelius, taking place on Saturday, August 11, from 10am to 5pm.

Save the Date explores the life cycle of marriage and divorce and the wedding ceremony’s complex mix of private emotion, public spectacle, social expectation, and state power. Over the course of seven hours, Kathryn Cornelius will exchange vows with seven suitors. Each wedding ceremony will be followed by a champagne toast, cupcakes, a first dance and then, finally, the signing of divorce papers. A legal wedding officiant will perform the ceremonies, while the signing of divorce papers will be overseen by a divorce attorney. Ceremonies will begin on the hour, every hour, and run from 10am through 5pm. 

The seven suitors selected to wed the artist include performance artists Eames Armstrong, Holly Bass, and Andrew Bucket, writer and filmmaker Stephen Mack, art collector and physician Dr. Fred Ognibene, research scientist Dr. John Royer, and software engineer Antowne Walters. Cornelius invited proposals through the project website and personally selected six suitors. The seventh suitor was selected by a public vote, through the project’s Facebook page.

Save the Date approaches the topic of marriage, weddings, and divorce with both humor and gravity. This ceremony, and the attendant legal document, has, throughout history and across cultures, separated state-sanctioned and socially approved relationships from those deemed immoral, unacceptable, or simply unthinkable. In the midst of the debate over marriage equality and ever-present concerns over the frequency of divorce, Save the Date invites the viewer to consider the meaning of marriage as a lifetime commitment, a social ritual, a legal institution, and a public declaration of love. 

For more on Save the Date, visit http://savethedatedc.tumblr.com and follow the project on Twitter @SaveTheDateDC.

Kathryn Cornelius is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, video, photography, text, sounds, and sculpture. She is represented by Curator’s Office in Washington, DC. Her work has been exhibited nationally in cities such as New York, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Baltimore and internationally in Frankfurt, Germany, Herford, Germany, Barcelona, Spain, and Naples, Italy.

Save the Date is part of Take It to the Bridge, a nine-week series of installations and performances taking place through September 15 in the new Performance Bridge located inside the Corcoran’s glass entryway on 17^th Street. The Performance Bridge was first constructed at the Corcoran Gallery of Art as the stage for Holly Bass’s performance Moneymaker, a seven-hour endurance work that took place on February 11, 2012, during the final weekend of the Corcoran’s landmark fall exhibition 30 Americans. For Take it to the Bridge, eleven artists living and working in the DC-Baltimore region will present nine installations and performances, investigating the Bridge’s physical characteristics and pushing the boundaries of this non-traditional space to explore a variety of social, political, and aesthetic issues. Installations will open on Wednesday and remain on view through the following Sunday for all museum hours. Performances will take place on Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. unless otherwise noted. The first seven weeks of the series coincide with the Corcoran's Free Summer Saturdays promotion, which run from May 26 - September 1, 2012. 

In conjunction with the series, WPA and the Corcoran present a public talk with Esa Nickle, Managing Director/ Producer of Performa, on Thursday, August 9 at 7pm. Founded by RoseLee Goldberg in 2004, Performa is the leading organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth-century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century. Nickle joined the Performa team in May 2005 as the Biennial Coordinator of Performa 05 and has since expanded her role as the line producer of Performa commissions, international tours and special events. During her talk, Nickle will discuss

new directions in performance and Performa’s work from 2005 to 2011. For more information and to register, visit https://getinvolved.corcoran.org/performa.

See the full Take it to the Bridge schedule below and more information online at http://www.corcoran.org/summer/bridge  and wpadc.org

July 18 – July 22: Ubuntu, Maya Freelon Asante
Saturday, July 28, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.: Sleep, Chajana denHarder
August 1 – August 5, all museum hours: Canaries in McMansionland, Jennifer Coster
Thursday, August 9, 7 p.m.: Public Talk with Esa Nickle, Managing Director/Producer of Performa
Friday, August 10: WPA Member meetings with Esa Nickle@WPA
Saturday, August 11, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.: Save the Date, Kathryn Cornelius
Saturday, August 18, 12 p.m. – 5 p.m.): Procedures for Ground Safety Loss, Sarah Levitt
August 22 – August 26, all museum hours: The Airborne Leaflet Campaign, COLON:Y (Chukwuma Agubokwu and Wilmer Wilson IV)
Saturday, September 1, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.: Maid in the USA, Carolina Mayorga
Saturday, September 5 – September 9, all museum hours: Bridging the Light, Annie Albagli
Saturday, September 15, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.: This Space Occupied (by Maida), Maida Withers with composer Steve Hilmy