THE GIFT, San Francisco

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About THE GIFT, San Francisco

This Flickr group is for participants in THE GIFT, San Francisco: We want your pictures (or videos!) of where and how you have exhibited the portrait you received.

SFMOMA and German-born conceptual artist Jochen Gerz invited the public to take part in Gerz's photography project, The Gift.

During the first half of the exhibition The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now, 2,000 museum visitors had the opportunity to pose for portraits in a working photo studio in the galleries. December 19 was the last day of picture taking. Through the close of the exhibition the studio continuef to print and frame the portraits, which were then displayed in rotation on a gallery wall at SFMOMA.

Gerz returned to the museum on Sunday, February 8, 2009, when the exhibition closed, to distribute the pictures to the project's participants. Each participant was given a portrait and asked to exhibit it in his or her home or office.

You can see pictures of zillions of people picking up portraits at the closing-day reception here.

As Gerz explains, the gift invoked in the work's title is the act of exchange itself: "It is in art as in life: what you give is what you receive."

http://www.sfmoma.org/pages/exhibitions/details/aop_the_gift