Alice Hutchins

Alice Louise Hutchins (November 4, 1916 – October 25, 2009) was an American sculptor known for her metal assemblages and constructs. She incorporated magnets into many works, and interactive participation by the viewer is also a core component of many of her sculptures.

Biography Hutchins was born Alice Williamson, one of three siblings, in Van Nuys, California in 1916. She was raised in Chico. In a 2005 interview, she recalled being an imaginative and curious child: She attended University of California at Berkeley, before dropping out to marry a lawyer whose career took them to over a dozen cities, including Cairo and Paris. It was in Paris that Hutchins discovered her affinity for art.

Told by the French art critic Pierre Schneider that her new work would be better received in the US, Hutchins flew to New York in 1967 with her first magnetic works. She gravitated to the artists’ enclave eventually known as Soho where she was invited to set up a NY studio in a “fluxhouse” organized by George Maciunas. Dividing time between studios in Paris and New York, she discovered new sources for magnets. Her early metal work was in multiples, favoring accessibility over exclusivity. These were first sold in 1967, unsigned and unnumbered at ‘Multiples,’ the Marian Goodman Gallery on Madison Avenue. She soon abandoned a promising painting career to devote her full attention to transformable metal assemblages and finally constructs using permanent industrial magnets. The artist has said about her experimental work, “It began in the liberating years of the 60s when change was in the air. I had grown dissatisfied with painting. It was for the limited few. I was looking for another form of communication, something that could be more easily understood and enjoyed. I found it with magnets.”

Throughout the 1970s - 1990s, Hutchins regularly exhibited throughout the United States and abroad, in both solo and group exhibitions.

One of her final exhibits was during July and August 2009 at the D'Amelio Terras gallery in New York City, which featured a retrospective of her works in wood and metal. The interactive component of her sculptures is characteristic. Hutchins' works "change shape from show to show, and can even be reassembled by viewers (by request and with assistance from gallery staff )". Museum of Art and Design (New York City) Berkeley Art Museum, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Barbara and Peter Moore Fluxus Collection, Cambridge, Massachusetts Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Jean Brown Collection, Santa Monica, California La Societé des Amis du Centre National de l'Art Contemporain, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, France Museum of Contemporary Art, Françesco Conz Collection, Zagreb, Croatia Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California Staatsgalerie Archiv Sohm, Stuttgart, Germany Tate Modern, Fluxshoe Archive, London Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota Museum of Northern California Art, Chico, California

Selected exhibits Fluxus, Tate Modern, London, 2000 Fluxbritannica: Aspects of the Fluxus Movement, 1962–73, Tate Modern, London, 1994 Venice Biennale, 1990 "Improvisation", March 18 - April 20, 1988, Redding Museum and Art Center