At the Williams College Museum of Art Active Ingredients: Prompts, Props, Performance flips the script on the performativity of art objects and the objectness of human performers. This two-part show consists of both a theatrical event and a gallery-based exhibition. Together, the two parts reverse the common distinction of performance as “live” and art objects as “dead.” The exhibition, Active Ingredients, considers contemporary object-based practices through the lens of performance, examining works that act, that promise future action, or prompt an audience response. The event, A People’s History of Performance Art, stages the canonical history of performance art through tableaux vivants of famous photographs. Together, these two presentations meditate on the meanings, subtleties, limits, and complications of “performance,” and the difficulties it poses for exhibition. “On the one hand, I
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