“Happening Pedagogy offers an original and profoundly important interpretation of the early career of Allan Kaprow, a central figure in the experimental arts scene that coalesced in New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Kaprow emerges here not only as a pathbreaking avant-garde artist and penetrating critic, but as an innovator in arts education. Capper demonstrates how Kaprow drew on his immersion in Deweyan pragmatism and experiences as a student in classes taught by Hans Hofmann, Meyer Schapiro, and John Cage in designing participatory artworks that were themselves educational interventions engaging the activity of college students. He did so while employed in the expanding public universities of the postwar period, which enabled a practice that disavowed the production of art objects for the market. Capper has given us a ‘site-specific’ Kaprow, as it were, and in the process provides a new history of modernist art education, patronage, and avant-garde art in the late twentieth century.”

Casey Nelson Blake, Columbia University

“One way to think of Happening Pedagogy is as an intellectual biography of Allan Kaprow. Capper situates the artist and his practice firmly in the classroom, first as a student and then as a teacher, particularly a professor, with all the institutional complexities that role entails. Happening Pedagogy approaches Kaprow’s work with a new lens; Capper has done an exceptional amount of research, developing fresh insight into Kaprow and his work.”

Howard Singerman, Phyllis and Joseph Caroff Professor of Art History, Hunter College

“Making excellent use of Kaprow’s papers at the Getty, Happening Pedagogy offers readers primary-source access to the artist’s thinking and practice as artist and teacher, presenting his experiences as student, artist, and pedagogue. Capper also analyzes Kaprow’s educational models—including Hans Hofmann, Meyer Schapiro, and John Cage—in relation to his evolution as an artist and teacher, and she presents firsthand accounts of Kaprow’s encounters with students, fellow faculty, and administration at the various colleges where he taught. For those interested in the artist, in the history of happenings, and more generally in participatory art, Capper’s book is a valuable contribution that offers unique understanding of the artist.”

Steven Henry Madoff, School of Visual Arts