History

The Flow Chart Foundation was established in 1998 as a private foundation to create the Ashbery Resource Center, a space dedicated to housing and preserving John Ashbery’s personal archive. Named after Flow Chart, Ashbery’s book-length poem, the Foundation also aimed to foster the study of the interrelationships among various art forms and to highlight the role an artist’s environment plays in the creative process. Following Ashbery’s death in 2017, the Foundation made a strategic decision to expand its mission to explore the dynamic interplay between poetry and other art forms through public events, performances, and exhibitions, while celebrating Ashbery’s artistic legacy and encouraging continued research on his work. To support this broader vision, Flow Chart transitioned to a private operating foundation and, in 2018, appointed Jeffrey Lependorf as Executive Director. During his tenure, Lependorf secured critical funding to sustain the Foundation’s work and developed an ambitious, wide-ranging program of activities. These included events at the Flow Chart Space in Hudson, NY, as well as Close Readings in a Virtual Space, a series of participatory “thinking-and-reading-through” virtual workshops launched during the pandemic. Following Lependorf’s departure early in 2025, the board hired Eric Longo as Interim Executive Director from March to September 2025 to guide the organization through a strategic transition, refocusing the work of the Foundation on the Ashbery Resource Center as well as laying the groundwork for the John Ashbery’s Centennial coming up in 2027.

 

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.)