Beth Lipman

Overview

Alturas Foundation selected Beth Lipman as its Artist in Residence for 2019 to develop a new direction in her chosen media, glass. Beth has devoted her residency to a project she has entitled House Album, a selective portrait of the United States that explores issues surrounding agency, identity, and memory.

The work is composed of two and three dimensional domestic objects that represent significant individuals and critical episodes in America’s history, creating an allegory of our collective home. The concept is generated from two specific traditions of defining domestic interiors: the late nineteenth century pastime of scrapbooking of miniature houses (two dimensional) and the Period Room (three dimensional), an exhibition construct utilized in museums from the early twentieth century to the present day. In both of these applications individuals aspire to create the ideal home, and by extension their perceived individual identity.

House Album was on exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design in New York from Sep 24, 2020 through Nov 7, 2021 as part of Beth’s retrospective exhibition there entitled Beth Lipman: Collective Elegy.