For Art in the Anchorage 3, participating artists and architects constructed three installations for Matthew Maguire’s The Memory Theatre of Giulio Camillo, a play inspired by the artist’s alarm at the United States’ international policies—such as the support of South Africa’s apartheid government, the buildup of MX missiles, and the provision of aid to Nicaraguan contras.

Giulio Camillo (1480-1544) was a hermetic philosopher who created a memory theatre: a literal theater of myths, stories, and scenes, which suggested a diagram of the way human memory functions. While Maguire’s play contained no contemporary references, The Memory Theatre of Giulio Camillo primarily addressed the consequences of forgetting the past, as well as functioned as a political work concerned with cultural memory and the limitations of social structures.

Multiple Artists

Art in the Anchorage 3: The Memory Theatre of Giulio Camillo

Manhattan

1986