Burton, Scotr, 1939-1989.

Walter Scott Burton III was born June 23, 1939 in Greensboro, Alabama to Walter Scott Burton, Jr. and Hortense Mobley Burton. Burton's baby book notes he was born extremely prematurely, at 6 and a half months, and there were "very discouraging prospects for saving his life." His parents separated and Hortense Burton raised her son alone in the town of Eutaw, Alabama. In 1952 or 1953, mother and son moved to Washington, D.C., where Burton's uncle, Radford E. Mobley, was a Washington correspondent for the Knight newspaper chain. Scott entered high school while Hortense Burton worked at various governmental administrative jobs.

In the mid-fifties, Burton studied art with Leon Berkowitz at the Washington Workshop of the Arts, and became close friends with Berkowitz and his wife, Ida Fox. With Berkowitz's encouragement, Burton attended summer sessions at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in Provincetown, MA, from 1957 until 1959. Burton went on to attend Goddard College of Plainfield, VT, then George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and took classes at Harvard University. Burton finished his undergraduate education at Columbia University in 1962 and achieved his Master of Arts from New York University in 1963; he was committed to staying in New York and fully intending to pursue a career in creative writing.

During his college and graduate studies Burton worked for a time at the membership desk of The Museum of Modern Art and ingratiated himself with the New York art and theater community, counting among his friends Edward Albee, Terence McNally, Jerome Robbins, Lincoln Kirstein, Alex Katz, Philip Pearlstein, and others. In 1966, through his friends, he gained work writing reviews for Art News. By the end of the 1960s, Burton's social circle included John Perreault, Vito Acconci, Eduardo Costa, and others. Together, the group began assembling works of street theater and other performance and conceptual works of art, and Burton laid aside his plans for a career as a writer.

Scott Burton considered 1970 to be a turning point in his life and artistic career. As a guest lecturer at the University of Iowa, Burton participated in a two evening assembly of performances and installation art, Two Evenings. On one evening he staged his first tableaux, Ten Tableaux: Theater as Sculpture, and on the second evening exhibited the outdoor installation work, Furniture/Landscape, his first use of furniture. Significant performances followed through the 1970s including Eighteen Pieces, at Finch College, New York, in 1971; Group Behavior Tableaux, at the Whitney Museum of American art and other locations, in 1972; Pair Behavior Tableaux, at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1976; and Individual Behavior Tableaux, at University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, in 1980; as well as many others.

Burton began to focus seriously on furniture sculpture separate from performances in 1977 and 1978, with important early exposure in the exhibition at the Guggenheim, Young American Artists: 1978 Exxon National Exhibition. Through the 1970s, furniture played an important part of Burton's performances, such as Pair Behavior Tableaux and Two Chair Pieces, and he occasionally created stand alone furniture sculptures from 1970 onward. His first solo exhibition of sculpture was Pragmatic Structures at the Droll/Kolbert Gallery, in 1977. Burton met Max Protetch in 1979, exhibited at Protetch's Washington, D.C. gallery that year, and joined Protetch's new New York gallery in 1980, at the same time that Burton was turning away from performance and focusing solely on furniture works.

Commissions for work by Burton began in 1980 and soon large projects of site-specific furniture and space design comprised a major part of Burton's output. Burton's most significant commissions include a contribution to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Regional Center, Seattle (1983); the complete park design of Pearlstone Park in Baltimore (1985); the design of atrium furnishings, plantings, and outdoor plaza designs for the Equitable Center, New York (1986 and 1987); and, with Siah Armajani and Cesar Pelli Architects, the Hudson River plaza of Battery Park City and the World Financial Center (1988).

By the end of the 1980s Scott Burton was undoubtedly at the pinnacle of his career. In 1986 the retrospective exhibition, Scott Burton, was held at the Baltimore Museum of Art accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue. In 1989, Burton completed his work on the plaza of Battery Park City and the World Financial Center; he curated the exhibition, Artist's Choice: Burton on Brancusi [MoMA Exh. #1514, April 7-July 4, 1989], which included an installation of his own work in the museum's sculpture garden; and the exhibition, Scott Burton: Sculptures 1980-89, was shown in both Stuttgart and Paris. While attending to the installation of the show in Stuttgart, Burton was taken severely ill and hospitalized. Scott Burton died of AIDS on December 29, 1989, at the age of 50. A memorial was held at The Museum of Modern Art on March 28, 1990.

From the description of Scott Burton papers, 1900-2000 (bulk 1939-1990) (Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)). WorldCat record id: 758849905