The Bruce High Quality Foundation 

Founded 2001 in Brooklyn, New York

The Bruce High Quality Foundation, a group of anonymous artists, uses performances and pranks to critique the art world. For the work on view in 2010, the Foundation repurposed an iconic vehicle as a “portable museum,” a site for both reviving and putting to rest American cultural myths. Designed to be both an ambulance and a hearse, the Cadillac Miller-Meteor has been used to care for the dying, transport the dead, and as a prop in the movie Ghostbusters. The title of this work refers to Joseph Beuys’s 1972 performance I Like America and America Likes Me. Upon arriving in New York from his native Germany for his performance, the artist was bundled into a Cadillac ambulance and shuttled to an art gallery, where he kept company with a coyote for three days before returning directly to the airport. Beuys’s personal, ritualized confrontation with the United States is revisited here as a collective experience. A video projected on the windshield surveys a contemporary culture defined by YouTube clips, Hollywood movies, and news media. The voice-over describes an ambivalent, yearning relationship with the United States, as if the country were a dysfunctional family member or abusive lover.

READ About the Artist

"Their Own Brucennial"
—The New York Times (February 2010)

"Forget the Biennial, 2010 is All About the Brucennial"
—The L Magazine (February 2010)

"The Nifty 50: Bruce High Quality Foundation"
—T Magazine/The New York Times (January 2010)

"Bruce High Quality Foundation, _Art History With Benefits, at X-Initiative"
—Artforum.com (November 2009)

"Artists Without Mortarboards"
—The New York Times (September 2009)

"Money Talks"
—Artnet (August 2009)

"And the Beat Goes On"
—The New York Times (December 2009)