To Whom It May Concern

A site-specific installation by Catherine Lord

October 8, 2011 – March 3, 2012 Extended through Summer 2012

ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives

909 West Adams Boulevard

Los Angeles, CA 90007

During the run of Cruising the Archive, ONE Archives will also exhibit a new installation by Catherine Lord titled To Whom It May Concern at ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archive near the University of Southern California. The installation borrows its title from the dedication of John Cage’s book Silence, published in 1961. To Whom It May Concern explores a network of generosity. Photographs of several hundred book dedications, considerably enlarged, will encircle the mezzanine, above the closed stacks of the library from which they were culled. Some are made to the famous, others to the unknown. Some are made to parents, others to hopes, to tricks and to initials.

Just as saying the words, “I do thee wed,” causes a marriage to come into being, putting into print, inside a book, the words, “I make you a gift of the words I have written,” causes that statement to be true. It tenders to another, in advance, the very object that the reader holds in her hands. It makes the gift upon the material that makes writing, and the gift itself, possible. Book dedications are gifts of labor and love. To dedicate a book is to hide the private in plain view, to splay intimacy upon a sheet of paper for any and all to see. This status, somewhere between public and private, is perfectly suited to the creation and transmission of “queer” culture. Coded, sly, witty, and polemical, these gifts turn queer into a verb. They queer “culture.”

No database indexes the dedications in the library of ONE Archive. The dedications used in To Whom It May Concern were found by a manual search. The books that contain the dedications have been returned to their shelves without recording bibliographic details. Information about authors, book titles and dates can be retrieved only by chance, or by another laborious search.

To Whom It May Concern is presented by the University of Southern California Libraries.

The artist is grateful to Mia Locks, David Frantz, Bud Thomas, Joseph Hawkins, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives and the University of Southern California Libraries.

ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives is located at 909 West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90007.

Parking is free. Enter parking lot off of Scarff Street.

Hours: Tuesday & Friday, 1:30 – 5:30pm; Wednesday & Thursday 3:30 – 9:00pm; Saturday, 11:00am – 5:00pm; Closed Sunday & Monday

Admission is free – suggested donation of $5

Opening reception for To Whom It May Concern on Saturday, October 22, 2011, 5-8pm.