Sarah Cooper is a curator, writer, and art historian based in Los Angeles.
She is the Public Programs Specialist for performance at the J. Paul Getty Museum, where she directs the experimental performance series Ever Present, among other programs.
She has organized programs featuring artists and musicians including Kim Gordon, Simone Forti, Brendan Fernandes, Patti Smith, Lonnie Holley, Martin Creed, Midori Takada, Helado Negro, Moor Mother, David Wojnarowicz, Derek Jarman, and Solange Knowles.
In addition, Sarah has held positions at The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Royal Academy in London, and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
She holds a Master's Degree in Art History from Hunter College, New York. Her thesis, Expanding Experimentalism: Popular Music and Art at the Kitchen in New York City, 1971-1985, explores the creative output of artists' bands and the relationship between popular music and avant-garde performance practices.
sarahannecooper [at] gmail.com
She is the Public Programs Specialist for performance at the J. Paul Getty Museum, where she directs the experimental performance series Ever Present, among other programs.
She has organized programs featuring artists and musicians including Kim Gordon, Simone Forti, Brendan Fernandes, Patti Smith, Lonnie Holley, Martin Creed, Midori Takada, Helado Negro, Moor Mother, David Wojnarowicz, Derek Jarman, and Solange Knowles.
In addition, Sarah has held positions at The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Royal Academy in London, and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
She holds a Master's Degree in Art History from Hunter College, New York. Her thesis, Expanding Experimentalism: Popular Music and Art at the Kitchen in New York City, 1971-1985, explores the creative output of artists' bands and the relationship between popular music and avant-garde performance practices.
sarahannecooper [at] gmail.com
(After Walter De Maria’s Beach Crawl)
The Phoebe Berglund Dance Troupe
November 13, 2021
Marsha P. Johnson State Park Beach, Brooklyn, New York
Commissioned by Getty Museum
Part of Ever Present: Meaningless Work, Get to Work: Fluxus Scores at the Getty Center
Choreographer: Phoebe Berglund
Sound Composer: Joseph Allan Johnson
Dancers: Julia Antinozzi, Juli Brandano, Wendell Gray II, Leanna Grennan, Amelia Heintzelman, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Jade Manns, Leah Samuels, Ella Wasserman-Smith
Originally published in An Anthology of Chance Operations, Beach Crawl is an early work by Walter De Maria, who would gain renown as a minimalist sculptor and pioneer of monumental earthworks. Presaging those terrestrial experiments, this score instructs one to crawl on their hands and knees while moving three rocks in a circular pattern down a sandy stretch of beach.
In the hands of the choreographer Phoebe Berglund, these instructions are transformed into a new work of dance. Her dancers’ crawl is punctuated with moments of meditation and tender contact, unfolding in concert with the natural elements and the etherial sonic atmosphere performed by composer Joseph Allan Johnson.
Photos by Sarah Cooper and Phoebe Berglund.