Flights of Fancy

PRESENTED BY THE USF CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM

JANUARY 13, — MARCH 4, 2017

Duke Riley creates allegorical narratives with immersive and interactive projects that inspire viewers to consider a range of ideas and issues that affect today’s culture and quality of life. Flights of Fancy, curated by Sarah Howard, Curator of Public Art and Social Practice at the USF Contemporary Art Museum, explores two of Riley’s projects: Trading with the Enemy and Fly By Night were contingent on site and history, and both utilized pigeons as performers.

Academic museums are well situated to harness interdisciplinary thinkers in the research of socially engaged art’s potential to generate political discussion, inspire public debate and shift perceptions. In recent years, the USF Contemporary Art Museum has extended its exhibition and educational programming to include community-based projects like The Music Box: Tampa Bay, which transformed a park in Tampa’s Sulphur Springs neighborhood into a musical village and performance space. This project, also organized by Sarah Howard, brought the New Orleans Airlift collaborative to Tampa to create an immersive environment that offered opportunities for participation from diverse community groups and performance artists from many different disciplines. Just as The Music Box: Tampa Bay had a second life as the museum exhibition Amplified: Reverberations from the Music Box, we are now offered an opportunity to reflect on two of Duke Riley’s projects and their efficacy in Flights of Fancy.

I am grateful to Sarah Howard for her curatorial research, insights and energy and the able museum staff in solving the myriad of problems associated with loans of related project materials from Duke Riley’s projects, including the housing of live pigeons. I also extend my appreciation to our community donors to ACE (Art for Community Engagement) who have pledged funds over the next three years to support programming and artists that address critical social, cultural and community issues. I am pleased that Duke Riley is working with Graphicstudio to produce print editions. Duke Riley’s practice demonstrates that the relevance of the arts to contemporary life could not be more vital.

- Margaret Miller, Director USF Institute for Research in Art

Read the full exhibition text from Margaret Miller, Director USF Institute for Research in Art, and Sarah Howard, Curator of Public Art and Social Practice, here.