Vito Acconci, enigmatic poet, installation artist, and designer of buildings, landscapes, performance pieces, and videos, died on April 27, 2017. He was 77.
"In January 1972, Acconci staged one of the decade’s most notorious performance art pieces at the Sonnabend Gallery in SoHo" (The Met) Given many titles and descriptions by museums, critics, and art historians, he was dependably mysterious. His page on the MOMA website features the video Where We Are Now (Who Are We Anyway?), and his retrospective of early work was held at MoMA PS1 in 2016. Obituaries in the New York Times, W Magazine, and Art News, among many other publications, describe him as relentless, reckless, humble, transgressive, pathetic, and menacing. "His death at the age of 77 brings to an end one of the most unusual, superb, and trailblazing careers in postwar American art," wrote Andrew Russeth for Art News.