Shelf Life, an online archive of “nonperishable cultural sustenance from friends around the world,” began as a read-and-watch list through the Nasher Sculpture Center’s website in March 2020. Guest artists, curators, and writers are asked to share reading, watching, and other recommendations (especially appropriate while we shelter in place). Many entries have gone beyond Shelf Life’s original remit, with guests submitting letters, diaries, and pictures of their daily walks while in isolation.
Some brief examples:
Curators of CultureHole TV Jeff Gibbons and Gregory Ruppe talk Muppet Babies, Bob Marley, and latte art.
Culture Hole TV. Episode 1: Hugs.
Dallas artist and urban farmer Cynthia Mulcahy shares ideas about creating islands in Dallas’s Trinity River, Philip Guston’s Nixon drawings, and watching her olive tree grow.
Scottish writer and curator Gavin Morrison talks writing under “special circumstances” (i.e. imprisonment), Enzo Mari’s brutalist DIY furniture designs, and a Marseille radio station.
Frieze Magazine associate editor Evan Moffitt runs a variety of stories of isolation, and animated Instagram lizards.
For a full list of artists/recommendations, please visit Shelf Life online.
As a next step, Shelf Life’s organizers are creating a Facebook group as a way to let fans and followers join the discussion — sharing any form of cultural enrichment (from books to articles to films to life practices), and vocalizing responses to the entries already posted on the Nasher’s website.
For more on Shelf Life, please visit the Nasher Sculpture Center’s website here.
