Ted Purves

Ted Purves (7 June 1964, New York City, US – 4 July 2017, Berkeley, CA, US) was an American artist, educator, and independent curator living in Oakland, California. He was the chair of the first Social Practice graduate program in the US, at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, California. Central to Purves' interests were the gift economy, and the distribution of free goods and services by artists.

Publications

• What We Want is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art (editor), SUNY Press, Sep 2005, 224 pp, IA; 2nd ed. as What We Want Is Free: Critical Exchanges in Recent Art, eds. Ted Purves and Shane Aslan Selzer, SUNY Press, Jul 2014, 318 pp. Explores how contemporary artists use gifts, barter, and other forms of nonmonetary exchange as a means and medium of artistic production. Publisher.

Links

• Temescal Amity Works, public project in Oakland. (archived)
• Podcast, 2010
• Shadow Cabinets in a Bright Country, exhibition, Apexart, 2002
• CCA (archived)
• Tributes: Lynne McCabe (SFMOMA), Jordan Kantor (Artforum).