Columbia Center for Oral History Portal > Oral history interview with Sylvia Whitman, 2015Biographical NoteSylvia Palacios Whitman is a painter, sculptor, and dancer born in Osorno, Chile. She first came to New York in the 1960s after studying at the Santiago School of Fine Arts to pursue her own work in drawing and painting. She became interested in dance and theater performing with Trisha Brown and Robert Whitman, whom she married in 1968. Soon after leaving The Trisha Brown Dance Company, Palacios Whitman developed a unique performance style of her own in which she used surreal stage props and giant drawings to create a visual theater that combined a Latin-American pictorial sensibility with the minimalism of the New York dance scene
Scope and ContentsArtist Sylvia Palacios Whitman recalls her early years in New York, including being discovered by Richard Avedon and being photographed for the cover of Harper's Bazaar. She discusses meeting Robert Whitman at Christophe de Menil's house in East Hampton. She recalls Whitman introducing her to Trisha Brown, with whom she became friends and collaborators. She discusses her memories of Rauschenberg from her years in New York and visits to Captiva with her young children. She discusses her book project with Susan Weil, funded by Rauschenberg Foundation and recalls performances at downtown spaces in the 1970s including The Kitchen, and the recent revival of her work at the Whitney Museum of Art in the winter of 2013 and spring of 2014
SubjectsAccess ConditionsCopyright by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, 2015
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