What We Do and Why
Toward opening new possibilities for discovery, thought, and connection, The Flow Chart Foundation explores poetry and the interrelationships of various art forms as guided by the legacy of poet John Ashbery and promotes engagement with his work.
Flow Chart Foundation programs and resources inspire creative thinking, exploration, and transformation.
Through events, exhibitions, and installations that showcase innovative art by creators across disciplines, we feature new work that reflects and engages transformative values, showcasing contemporary artists from a diversity of cultural, ethnic, gender-identified, age, ability, economic, and aesthetic viewpoints. We do so online, through our Flow Chart Space, and with partner organizations dedicated to serving our local community. We also celebrate Ashbery and his art as an inspirational and generative force, inviting engagement with his work through the Ashbery Resource Center, a special collection library and online resource that provides opportunities for deep exploration and scholarship.
Poetry provides a powerful conduit for examining, questioning, and resisting the status quo. By featuring generative, exploratory work that defies simple consumption, we expand our ability to question, to speak, to think, to dream, to accomplish. The Flow Chart Foundation offers new ways to discover and enjoy poetry. Our programs feature the work of artists who help us challenge assumed perceptions of ourselves, one another, and the world. We strive to offer inviting means for productively engaging with poetry and enjoying it. We love artistic work often thought of as “challenging”—as confronting it challenges us to be more engaged with our world.
The Flow Chart Foundation, Inc. is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization raising funds to support its programs with contributions tax-deductible to the full extent provided by law.
Explore our current upcoming public events HERE.
About John Ashbery
Longtime Hudson resident, and widely recognized as one of the most influential American poets of our time, John Ashbery (1927 - 2017) received numerous awards for poetry, including the Yale Younger Poets Prize, Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize for Poetry, Légion d'Honneur of the Republic of France, Grand Prix des Biennales Internationales de Poésie, International Griffin Poetry Prize, National Humanities Medal, and National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and many others. Ashbery received a number of honorary degrees, including, from among others, Harvard and Yale, and was also the first living poet to have his collected poems included in the prestigious Library of America series. His work intersects with the visual arts, theatre, film and other art forms, and continues to inspire countless readers and artists in many different fields.
For a more extensive bio, visit HERE. For even more on John Ashbery, including access to the Ashbery Resource Center online database, visit our Ashbery Resource Center pages.
Brief History of The Flow Chart Foundation
The Flow Chart Foundation, named for Flow Chart, a book length poem by John Ashbery, was initiated in 1998 to encourage the study of interrelationships among various art forms, as well as to facilitate awareness of the roles that an artist's environment can play in the creative process, focusing primarily on exploration of these issues as they are revealed through the various environments that Ashbery created, and through the creation of the Ashbery Resource Center. In early 2017, Flow Chart changed its format from a “supporting organization” to an independent 501(c)3 private operating foundation. In 2018, Flow Chart expanded its mission to explore the interrelationships of poetry and various art forms through public presentations, performances and exhibits, while celebrating Ashbery’s artistic legacy and encouraging continued research and exploration of Ashbery’s work and related materials. Our focus today is on carrying out our mission with a focus on serving our local communities.
Land Acknowledgment
It is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that we are learning, speaking and gathering on the ancestral homelands of the Muhheaconneok, who are the indigenous peoples of the land known today as Hudson, NY. Despite tremendous hardship in being forced from here, today their community resides in Wisconsin and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. We pay honor and respect to their ancestors past and present as we commit to building a more inclusive and equitable space for all.
Song
The song tells us of our old way of living,
Of life in former time. Fragrance of florals,
How things merely ended when they ended,
Of beginning again into a sigh. Later
Some movement is reversed and the urgent masks
Speed toward a totally unexpected end
Like clocks out of control. Is this the gesture
That was meant, long ago, the curing in
Of frustrated denials, like jungle foliage
And the simplicity of the ending all to be let go
In quick, suffocating sweetness? The day
Puts toward a nothingness of sky
Its face of rusticated brick. Sooner of later,
The cars lament, the whole business will be hurled down.
Meanwhile we sit, scarcely daring to speak,
To breathe, as though this closeness cost us life.
The pretensions of a past will some day
Make it over into progress, a growing up,
As beautiful as a new history book
With uncut pages, unseen illustrations,
And the purpose of the many stops and starts will be made clear:
Backing into the old affair of not wanting to grow
Into the night, which becomes a house, a parting, of the ways
Taking us far into sleep. A dumb love.
— from The Double Dream of Spring (© 1970, 1985, 1991, 1997, 2008 by Estate of John Ashbery. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc.)
[ u n t i t l e d ]
And now I cannot remember how I would have had it. It is not a conduit (confluence?) but a place. The place, of movement and an order. The place of old order. But the tail end of the movement is new. Driving us to say what we are thinking. It is so much like a beach after all, where you stand and think of going no further. And it is good when you get to no further. It is like a reason that picks you up and places you where you always wanted to be. This far. It is fair to be crossing, to have crossed. Then there is no promise in the other. Here it is. Steel and air, a mottled presence, small panacea and lucky for us. And then it got very cool.
[This poem was commissioned by the artist Siah Armajani for use on his Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge, built in 1988 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on commission from the Walker Arts Center. The words of the poem are affixed to the upper lintels of the span and run in each direction across the bridge.}
From Hotel Lautréamont (© 1992, 2017 Estate of John Ashbery. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc.)