This was the case for me with this 'peformance'. I originally walked past it and only later decided to go back and see what it was all about. And I'm so glad I did.
Perhaps it is because I am myself dealing with the realities of getting older in a world where youth is idolized and the older you get the less society seems to want to listen to what you have to say. What a terrible waste. What wisdom, insights and stories there are to be heard if only the older person were listened to. This performance featured 430 women over the age of 60 sharing their views on getting older.
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern-tanks/display/suzanne-lacy-crystal-quilt
'On 10 May 1987 in Minneapolis, 430 women over the age of 60 gathered to share their views on growing older. The resulting performance, The Crystal Quilt, was broadcast live on television and attended by over 3,000 people.
It was the culmination of the Whisper Minnesota Project, a three-year public artwork empowering and giving a voice to older women. The process was consciously guided by a desire to represent diverse ethnic and social backgrounds alongside life experience and achievements, forming an active comment on the representation of older women in the media. Lacy has stated: ‘In some sense The Crystal Quilt was successful politically, in that the work was bigger, it had more social impact in that region, but do one or two events ever change the way people – other than those who directly experience it – see? This raises this issue of whether you can expect art to create social change, and at what point is it no longer art.’
The Crystal Quilt now exists in the form of a video, documentary, quilt, photographs and sound piece, combining the original elements of performance, activism and broadcast in an ambitious work that fuses social responsibility with the power of aesthetics: something Suzanne Lacy has pioneered in her long career as activist artist, writer and teacher.
The Crystal Quilt took place at the IDS Center Crystal Court, Minneapolis, and was broadcast by KTCA television. Suzanne Lacy collaborated with Phyllis Jane Rose, Miriam Schapiro, Nancy Dennis and Susan Stone.'
(Tate Modern)
