‘SCORE!’ at Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College

Within Ms. Sillman’s solo show is an exhibition curated by Ms. Sillman and painter Cheyney Thompson. The two artist-curators pull from the museum’s Marieluise Hessel collection to put on view works by Valie Export, Imi Knoebel and William Copley, and Carolee Schneemann, among others. The mix of performance-based photography and video looks fresh in the context of Ms. Sillman’s colorful painting show. Although the tiny group of mostly monochrome works seems to have little to do with Ms. Sillman’s painting, the room-sized display itself is worth seeing.

The title, “SCORE!” takes on multiple meanings, from the sexual (“score!”) and musical, to the game-oriented and systematic. A well-known video from Bard’s John Cage Trust shows the musician performing “Water Walk” (1959) on the game show I’ve Got a Secret. Also on view is Cage’s original performance score, which includes stage directions like “squeeze duck,” and “stop mixer.” Ilene Segalove puts on view all her pants. Ms. Export wears crotchless pants and a fright wig in an iconic self-portrait, Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969-2001). The show is a playful take on the rigors of conceptual art. As such, it traces a lineage that takes us right back to Cage himself, and in doing so emerges as a ludic reshuffling of a collection that continues to yield surprises.