Pam Butler Good Girl Archive
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Abstract
This collection contains the original artwork, photocopies, and audio and video recordings produced by the Good Girl and Win street art projects as conceived and executed by artist Pam Butler in Buffalo and New York during the 1990s.
Biographical
Pam Butler is an American fine artist whose work generally explores ideas of social construction and female identity.
Born in 1956, Butler grew up in the suburbs of Buffalo, New York, and moved to New York City in 1978. In 1992, while working as a bookkeeper, she began pasting homemade posters onto buildings, lamposts, and other city fixtures. The black and white images, done in marker, depicted a stylized woman accompanied by a perjorative ("Good Girl," "Whore," "Angel" etc.). By the end of the year the work had become a familiar presence in lower Manhattan; 10,000 posters, consisting of over 230 drawings, were eventually put up over a two-year period ending in 1994.
Butler's next project, titled "Win," incorporated the cumulative and serendipitous qualities of her earlier street art into an interactive public work. Viewers were invited by Butler's posters and flyers to call and write in to an entity called the Win Line, and share their reactions to various questions related to success ("Have you ever won the lottery?", "Suppose your life ws all over and you hadn't gotten the grand prize yet?"). Responses were recorded on an answering machine, and in public using video.
These projects could be considered in the tradition of other New York street and public artists like Keith Haring, AVANT, and Jenny Holzer. Since the 1990s she has continued to make and exhibit her art. Butler received a MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1990, and has exhibited at P.S. 122, White Columns, Artists Space, FDR Gallery, and Visual Arts Gallery.
Arrangement
This collection is arranged into six series.
Missing Title
- Posters
- Photographs and Supplemental Material
- Video recordings
- Sound recordings
- Data Storage
- Objects
Scope and Content
The Pam Butler Good Girl Archive is comprised of original artwork, photographs, audio and video recordings, exhibition proposals, and ephemera primarily related to the "Good Girl" and "Win" street art projects produced by Butler in the 1990s. Elements include poster mock-ups and reproductions, project proposals, flyers, posters and postcards. This body of components also includes interviews conducted with Butler, press coverage, and contextual information related to the New York street art milieu of the 1980s and 1990s. There is also professional and personal correspondence, production and personal photography, digital anthologies, and two self-published collections of work.
Subjects
Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open to researchers. Please contact the Fales Library and Special Collections, fales.library@nyu.edu, 212-998-2596.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright (or related rights to publicity and privacy) for materials in this collection was not transferred to New York University. Permission to use materials must be secured from the copyright holder. Please contact the Fales Library and Special Collections, fales.library@nyu.edu, 212-998-2596.
Preferred Citation
Published citations should take the following form:
Identification of item, date (if known); Pam Butler/Good Girl Archive; MSS 322; box number; folder number; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.
Provenance
The contents of the Pam Butler/Good Girl Archive were donated by Pam Butler to the Fales Downtown Collection in 2011.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Audiovisual and born-digital materials have not been preserved and may not be available to researchers.