Free Assembly
OPEN THIS SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
Edna Andrade
Richard Anuszkiewicz
Willem de Kooning
Grace Hartigan
Hans Hofmann
Jasper Johns
Wassily Kandinsky
František Kupka
Henri Matisse
Joan Mitchell
Piet Mondrian
Jackson Pollock
Joseph Stella
September 21 – December 7, 2025
Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, 12:00–6:00pm
In the mid-1960s, when Marcel Broodthaers began devising the blobs, foliage, and puffs of smoke featured in his Industrial Poems plaques, an American company called Springbok Editions had a similar ambition: to make abstraction both compelling and accessible. But where Broodthaers made his ambiguous visual gestures by turning commercial sign technology into artworks, Springbok Editions made theirs by turning artworks into jigsaw puzzles. The company's motto was, "Elevating minds, one piece at a time."
Free Assembly will feature twelve such puzzles from the permanent collection of the Broodthaers Society of America. The puzzles will be carefully presented in their original boxes and wholly unassembled at the outset. Visitors to the exhibition will be free to assemble as little or as much of the puzzles as they like.
Founded in 1963, Springbok Editions eschewed such typical puzzle imagery as anodyne landscapes, kittens, and cluttered shelves for abstract paintings by some of the 20th Century’s most revolutionary artists. In five short years, Springbok Editions made jigsaw puzzles out of Františcek Kupka's Discs of Newton (1912), Piet Mondrian's Victory Boogie Woogie (1944), Joan Mitchell's George Went Swimming at Barnes Hole but it Got too Cold (1954), Willem de Kooning"s Gotham News, (1955-56), and Grace Hartigan's Billboard (1957), to name a few.
For his part, Marcel Broodthaers was proactive with the idea of free assembly throughout his career, sometimes from opposing political points of view. To cite two examples:
When artists occupied the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, as part of the Mai '68 uprisings, they elected Broodthaers as one of their spokespersons. Rather than argue for exhibition space dedicated to contemporary art—which is what many of the occupiers wanted—Broodthaers petitioned for social space where artists could assemble and share ideas. He was ultimately unsuccessful and went off to start a museum of his own. The rest is history.
Barely six years later, Broodthaers had somewhat soured on art's ability to effect meaningful social change and, figuratively at least, posed the idea of free assembly as a performative prop and means of disengagement. In Décor: A Conquest by Marcel Broodthaers, his 1975 installation at the ICA London, the centerpiece of the 20th Century period rooms was a patio table, umbrella, and four chairs accompanied by shelves loaded with automatic weapons. On the patio table, a nearly completed jigsaw puzzle of the Battle of Waterloo was displayed, a stark symbol of the distance between the carnage evoked by one set of objects in the room and the comparative leisure evoked by the other.
Where are we now on this hypothetical spectrum between occupation and ennui? Have you checked in, or checked out? What role does abstraction—or distraction—play in all this? Free Assembly offers an opportunity to find out. Gallery hours are Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays noon–6:00pm and by appointment.
Springbok Editions was founded by Robert and Katie Lewin. Inspired by circular puzzles manufactured by Waddingtons that Robert encountered in the United Kingdom, the Lewins began manufacturing die-cut puzzles in the United States and quickly revolutionized the industry. Springbok Editions became known for the "heft" of their puzzle pieces, their high-quality fit, and their state-of-the-art color printing. Throughout the 1960s, Springbok Editions licensed paintings from the permanent collections of the Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris, the Albright-Knox Art Museum, Buffalo, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Museum, among others.
Edna Andrade
Richard Anuszkiewicz
Willem de Kooning
Grace Hartigan
Hans Hofmann
Jasper Johns
Wassily Kandinsky
František Kupka
Henri Matisse
Joan Mitchell
Piet Mondrian
Jackson Pollock
Joseph Stella
September 21 – December 7, 2025
Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, 12:00–6:00pm
In the mid-1960s, when Marcel Broodthaers began devising the blobs, foliage, and puffs of smoke featured in his Industrial Poems plaques, an American company called Springbok Editions had a similar ambition: to make abstraction both compelling and accessible. But where Broodthaers made his ambiguous visual gestures by turning commercial sign technology into artworks, Springbok Editions made theirs by turning artworks into jigsaw puzzles. The company's motto was, "Elevating minds, one piece at a time."
Free Assembly will feature twelve such puzzles from the permanent collection of the Broodthaers Society of America. The puzzles will be carefully presented in their original boxes and wholly unassembled at the outset. Visitors to the exhibition will be free to assemble as little or as much of the puzzles as they like.
Founded in 1963, Springbok Editions eschewed such typical puzzle imagery as anodyne landscapes, kittens, and cluttered shelves for abstract paintings by some of the 20th Century’s most revolutionary artists. In five short years, Springbok Editions made jigsaw puzzles out of Františcek Kupka's Discs of Newton (1912), Piet Mondrian's Victory Boogie Woogie (1944), Joan Mitchell's George Went Swimming at Barnes Hole but it Got too Cold (1954), Willem de Kooning"s Gotham News, (1955-56), and Grace Hartigan's Billboard (1957), to name a few.
For his part, Marcel Broodthaers was proactive with the idea of free assembly throughout his career, sometimes from opposing political points of view. To cite two examples:
When artists occupied the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, as part of the Mai '68 uprisings, they elected Broodthaers as one of their spokespersons. Rather than argue for exhibition space dedicated to contemporary art—which is what many of the occupiers wanted—Broodthaers petitioned for social space where artists could assemble and share ideas. He was ultimately unsuccessful and went off to start a museum of his own. The rest is history.
Barely six years later, Broodthaers had somewhat soured on art's ability to effect meaningful social change and, figuratively at least, posed the idea of free assembly as a performative prop and means of disengagement. In Décor: A Conquest by Marcel Broodthaers, his 1975 installation at the ICA London, the centerpiece of the 20th Century period rooms was a patio table, umbrella, and four chairs accompanied by shelves loaded with automatic weapons. On the patio table, a nearly completed jigsaw puzzle of the Battle of Waterloo was displayed, a stark symbol of the distance between the carnage evoked by one set of objects in the room and the comparative leisure evoked by the other.
Where are we now on this hypothetical spectrum between occupation and ennui? Have you checked in, or checked out? What role does abstraction—or distraction—play in all this? Free Assembly offers an opportunity to find out. Gallery hours are Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays noon–6:00pm and by appointment.
Springbok Editions was founded by Robert and Katie Lewin. Inspired by circular puzzles manufactured by Waddingtons that Robert encountered in the United Kingdom, the Lewins began manufacturing die-cut puzzles in the United States and quickly revolutionized the industry. Springbok Editions became known for the "heft" of their puzzle pieces, their high-quality fit, and their state-of-the-art color printing. Throughout the 1960s, Springbok Editions licensed paintings from the permanent collections of the Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris, the Albright-Knox Art Museum, Buffalo, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Museum, among others.