Bettina Grossman's Archive Unveiled in Glasgow
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- Bettina Grossman lived in room 503 of the Chelsea Hotel from 1972, filling it with a massive archive of artworks, photographs, and objects.
- Bettina Grossman's work is being exhibited in "Bettina: Finite Structures" at the Glasgow International festival of contemporary art, featuring industrial marble sculptures and a newly digitised 8mm animation.
- Bettina Grossman created the 8mm animation "Penetration of Four Equal Constants by Eight Elements of Progressive Displacement (1975-76)" with physicist Robert W Weinberg, programmed on a computer‑controlled cathode‑ray oscilloscope.
- Bettina Grossman produced 1970s photographs such as "Phenomenological New York" and the self‑portrait series "Rencontres Psychic", which she developed and printed in her bathroom.
- Bettina Grossman's artistic practice shifted after a 1966 fire destroyed her studio, prompting her to abandon commercial design, adopt marble and other resilient materials, and develop a conceptual framework involving a “fourth dimension” inspired by Peter Ouspensky.
- Yto Barrada edited the 2022 book "Bettina" and now leads a team cataloguing Bettina’s archive after her 2021 death, working through unboxing and documentation.
- Bettina Grossman died in 2021 at age 94, having only recently begun to receive recognition, including a MoMA PS1 display two months before her death and a film "Girl with Black Balloons" by Corinne van der Borch.
Why it matters: The exhibition and ongoing cataloguing give scholars, curators, and the broader art world unprecedented access to Bettina Grossman's prolific, previously hidden oeuvre, reshaping the historical record of women artists and potentially influencing contemporary programming, scholarship, and market interest, and inspiring new research into overlooked avant‑garde practices.
