LUCIA ZEZZA | DATE 6/8/2025

Artbook at MoMA PS1 Bookstore presents J. Hoberman and Melissa Rachleff Burtt on 'Everything is Now'

Sunday, June 8 at 4 PM, Artbook @ MoMA PS1 presents J. Hoberman discussing Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop. To celebrate this new work Hoberman will be in conversation with Melissa Rachleff Burtt.

Q&A followed by a book signing.

Event livestreamed on Instagram at @artbookps1.

Please RSVP for the event and pre-order a signed copy here.

Like Paris in the 1920s, New York City in the 1960s was a cauldron of avant-garde ferment and artistic innovation. Boundaries were transgressed and new forms created. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, and the alternative press, Everything Is Now chronicles this collective drama as it was played out in coffeehouses, bars, lofts, storefront theaters, and, ultimately, the streets. The principals here are penniless filmmakers, jazz musicians, and performing poets, as well as less classifiable artists. Most were outsiders at the time. They include Amiri Baraka, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Carolee Schneemann, Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, and many more. Some were associated with specific movements (Avant Rock, Destruction Art, Fluxus, Free Jazz, Guerrilla Theater, Happenings, Mimeographed Zines, Pop Art, Protest-Folk, Ridiculous Theater, Stand-Up Poetry, Underground Comix, and Underground Movies). But there were also movements of one. Their art, rooted in the detritus and excitement of urban life, was taboo-breaking and confrontational. As J. Hoberman shows in this riveting history, these subcultures coalesced into a counterculture that changed the city, the country, and the world.

The principals here are penniless filmmakers, jazz musicians, and performing poets, as well as less classifiable artists. Most were outsiders at the time. They include Amiri Baraka, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Carolee Schneemann, Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, and many more. Some were associated with specific movements (Avant Rock, Destruction Art, Fluxus, Free Jazz, Guerrilla Theater, Happenings, Mimeographed Zines, Pop Art, Protest-Folk, Ridiculous Theater, Stand-Up Poetry, Underground Comix, and Underground Movies). But there were also movements of one. Their art, rooted in the detritus and excitement of urban life, was taboo-breaking and confrontational.

As J. Hoberman shows in this riveting history, these subcultures coalesced into a counterculture that changed the city, the country, and the world.

J. Hoberman was for over three decades a film and culture critic for The Village Voice. His previous books have explored the subculture of midnight movies, the rise and fall of Yiddish-language cinema, the international Communist avantgarde, SoHo performance art, and the underground filmmaker Jack Smith. His “found illusions” trilogy—which includes The Dream Life, Make My Day, and An Army of Phantoms—used Hollywood to refract the history of the Cold War. He also acted as guest curator of the legendary 1997 exhibition at PS1, "Jack Smith: Flaming Creatures," a cross disciplinary retrospective exhibition of the work of the revolutionary American artist, Jack Smith (1932-1989).

Melissa Rachleff is a Clinical Professor in the Visual Arts Administration Program at NYU: Steinhardt, where she concentrates on the nonprofit sector. In 2017 she curated Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952-1965 for NYU Grey Art Gallery and wrote/edited the accompanying book, which is co-published by the Grey and Prestel Publishing. Melissa began her career as the assistant curator at Exit Art and co-curated exhibitions on the intersection of visual art and documentation. She also worked on exhibits about under-examined artists at mid-career. As a program officer for the New York State Council on the Arts from 1999-2007, Melissa was an advocate in supporting contemporary art projects done in collaboration with local communities. She has written about artist organizations for a variety of publications, and her essay, "Do It Yourself: A History of Alternatives" was published in Alternative Histories: New York Art Spaces (MIT Press) in 2012. For the fiftieth anniversary of 1968, Melissa curated Narrative & Counternarrative: (Re)Defining the Sixties for NYU's Bobst Library, based on the school's three main archive collections: Fales Library & Archive, Tamiment Library and the University’s archive.

Artbook @ MoMA PS1 Bookstore
J. Hoberman 'Everything is Now' Book Discussion
Sunday, June 8 at 4 PM
22-25 Jackson Ave (at 46th Ave.)
Long Island City, NY 11101
(718) 433-1088
RSVP and pre-order a signed book at artbookstores.com