American artist and professor Allan Kaprow is best known for cofounding the art movement Fluxus and promoting a new type of performance art he coined “happenings.” In his influential 1958 essay, “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” Kaprow calls on artists to take Abstract Expressionism a step further by creating “environments” made up of everyday objects that viewers are invited to touch and manipulate. One such environment, Yard, 1961, consists of hundreds of black rubber auto tires that visitors can climb on, jump atop, and move around as they see fit. For Kaprow, encouraging the viewer to change an environment’s composition is what transforms an environment into a happening.

–Carly Davis, from the Glenstone Field Guide