The Matthew Higgs Society
The Matthew Higgs Society (MHS), founded in 2006, was a non-membership-based honorary society dedicated to fostering a greater understanding and appreciation of the varied accomplishments of the British-born artist, curator, and writer Matthew Higgs. It was the only society of its kind in the United States.
The MHS maintained a living archive on Higgs' life & career. In the beginning, it collected material from the Museum of Art library, newspapers, organizations that had worked with Higgs, the Internet, and ephemera mailed in by others. Anyone who helped to expand the archive — by contributing materials, or writing reviews of Higgs' shows — were mailed an open-edition postcard thanking them for their support. The MHS archive at its most complete included writings by and about Higgs, reproductions of his artwork, documentation and ephemera related to exhibitions he has curated, copies of W.C. (White Columns' 'zine), a facsimile of IMPRINT 93, press clippings, photographs of him at parties and special events, and ephemera not relating to Higgs but reminding people of him, such as a New Yorker cover featuring a bespeckled, balding man fixing what appears to be a robot.
The MHS took many different physical forms over the years. At Triple Triple Candie's first Harlem space, it occupied former a gallery. There was a reading table with library lamps, three-ringed binders, booklets, and photocopied examples of Higgs' artwork on the walls. At the second Harlem space, a small, shingled, shack-like structure housed two study carrels, a bookshelf, and a slide show. A fragment of that space was later included in an exhibition at the Elizabeth Foundation Project Space in New York.
When Triple Candie moved to Philadelphia in 2010, it continued to collect materials via mail, but with interest waining in its subject, and the collection no longer publicly accessible, the archive collected dust. New additions waned and its contents no longer remained up-to-date. It survived another move in 2015 but in 2022, when Triple Candie again relocated, it dumped everything in the trash.
About Matthew Higgs
Matthew Higgs is a popular and widely respected arts professional who, since 2004, has been the Director and Chief Curator of White Columns. From 2001–4, he was curator of the Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art in San Francisco, and prior to that he was a curator at the ICA in London. In 2009, Higgs curated an exhibition of Lucas Samaras' work for the Greek Pavillion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. In 2006, he was a jury member for the Turner Prize. He writes frequently for Artforum, Frieze, and other publications.
