On October 28, join the artist on a journey from the world’s financial capital to the old custom house, in a work hosted by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Franklin Furnace. The artist Nicolás Dumit Estévez sets out on a pilgrimmage in the morning from LMCC's 125 Maiden Lane headquarters and arrives at 12noon at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, George Gustav Heye Center, Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, One Bowling Green.

Estévez will travel on his knees from LMCC to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, carrying in his hands a piece of casabe, a type of bread prepared from the cassava root, thus transporting a legacy of the Caribbean Taíno culture to be presented as a gift to the institution. The museum is located at the southern end of the Wiechquaekeck Trail, an old Algonquian trade route, in the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House. The Custom House, designed by Cass Gilbert (1959-1934) and opened in 1907, once collected revenues for the Port of New York, then the country’s most prosperous trade center. The journey comes to an end when a Museum staff member signs the passport he carries.

LMCC and Franklin Furnace are proud to partner on interdisciplinary artist Estévez’s two-year performance series For Art’s Sake. Several arduous and pious pilgrimages enacted by Estévez were conceived as a part of the LMCC’s Workspace Residency Program and the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art.

This series of pilgrimages reverses the relationship between art and religion, modeling his piece after the Catholic El Camino de Compostela in Spain, where devotees travel to the tomb of St James. In this project, religion becomes a tool in the service of art as the artist endures separate journeys that begin in Lower Manhattan and conclude at seven museums.

For more information, visit http://www.lmcc.net/art/programs/2006.10.29forartssake/index.html