From Artforum.com; An act of nature has destroyed Richard Prince’s Second House, an art installation located near the artist’s home in Rensselaerville, New York.
On June 28, lightning hit the building, sparking a fire that reduced the wood structure to ashes. The house, along with the eighty acres surrounding it, were acquired in 2005 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, which committed to keeping the unique project open to the public ten years before transferring its contents to its own collection. One notable component of the work was a suite of eleven Prince sculptures made as casts of actual car hoods, but they were not in the building at the time of the fire, according to the Guggenheim press office. However, all the other items in the installation, which included a joke painting, planters made from old tires, a table made from a basketball backboard, a jewelry cabinet displaying a necklace fashioned from bread fasteners, and a selection of first-edition books about Woodstock from Prince’s library, are presumed to have been lost to the flames.
Photo Above: Second House, 2003. Interior view. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Copyright Richard Prince.