Andrea Fraser

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Andrea Fraser (sometimes known by her performance name, Jane Castleton) is a New York-based performance artist, mainly known for her work as an institutional critique artist. Fraser was born in 1965 in Billings, Montana.

Fraser's brand of performance during the 1990s popularized the institutional critique art movement, a loosely-formed artistic practice meant to critique the very institutions that are involved in the sale, display, and commerce of art. Arguably Fraser's most famous performance, Museum Highlights involved Fraser posing as a Museum tour guide at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1989 under the psuedoname of Jane Castleton.^[1] During the performance, Fraser led a tour through the museum describing it in verbose and overly dramatic terms to her chagrined tour group. For example, in describing a common water fountain Fraser proclaims "a work of astonishing economy and monumentality ... it boldly contrasts with the severe and highly stylized productions of this form!" Upon entering the museum cafeteria: "This room represents the heyday of colonial art in Philadelphia on the eve of the Revolution, and must be regarded as one of the very finest of all American rooms."

Fraser's work typically analyzes the politics, commerce, histories, and even the self-assuredness of the modern-day art museum, including the hierarchies and the exclusion mechanisms of art as an enterprise. Fraser's performances, despite having serious undertones, are often presented in a humurous, ridiculous, or satirical manner.

In 2003, an Untitled videotape performance of Fraser's turned into an art-house scandal. The videpotape showed Fraser and an unidentified art patron engaging in sexual activities. Reportedly, the art-patron payed Fraser upwards of twenty-thousand dollars for the experience, in an act of artistic prostitution. Though the piece was meant as a scathing commentary on the relationship between artist and patron, there was a considerable backlash from the piece, particularly from many feminists and female artists.