Bruce High Quality Foundation

The members of the artist collective Bruce High Quality Foundation carry out some very entertaining pranks, from following Robert Smithson’s posthumous Floating Island around New York Harbor in a dinghy to hurling themselves, clad in football gear, at public sculptures in Manhattan. Their performances, though witty and weird, are serious critiques of institutions. Carrying this to the next level, in September the five anonymous Bruces, all graduates of Cooper Union’s art program, with the art-commissioning agency Creative Time, launched the Bruce High Quality Foundation University on West Broadway, in New York, whose first course is Bring Your Own University (B.Y.O.U.). The collective is also mounting its second solo show, to run from December 4 through January 23, at the Susan Inglett Gallery. It comprises work responding to the university’s curriculum, which includes lecture topics like "Occult Shenanigans in 20th/21st Century Art," "What’s a Metaphor? The B.H.Q.F.U. Detective Agency," and "Edifying." Together, the show and the university undermine the commercialized and market-driven platform that art schools today rest upon.