Drop City was one of the first rural communes of the 1960s, and the first to be grounded in art practice.  Their exuberant and imaginative buildings attracted international attention.  Their artwork was exhibited widely, and a Drop City installation was featured in Billy Klüver and Robert Rauschenberg’s landmark exhibition, Experiments in Art & Technology (E.A.T.), at the Brooklyn Museum in 1968.


But the flood of attention led to overcrowding.  By late 1969 all of the long-time residents had departed and the community was abandoned to transients.  By 1973, Drop City had become the world’s first geodesic ghost town. 


A group of former Droppers founded the Criss-Cross artists collective in the early 1970s.  Criss-Cross published a journal and held exhibitions that explored art and theory related to “pattern and structure.”


The early residents of Drop City have gone on to become nationally recognized artists, writers and filmmakers. More than 40 years after its founding, Drop City continues to astonish and inspire people around the world.

The Story

In 1961, Gene Bernofsky, JoAnn Bernofsky and Clark Richert were students at the University of Kansas, where they developed a concept they called “Drop Art.”  Influenced by Allen Kaprow’s "happenings" and new theories and performances by John Cage, Buckminster Fuller, and Robert Rauschenberg at Black Mountain College, they were determined to break art out of the confines of museums and galleries and integrate it with everyday life.


To create a “live-in” work of Drop Art, the Bernofskys and Richert founded Drop City near Trinidad, Colorado in May, 1965.  They were soon joined by another artist, Richard Kallweit. Within a year, a core group of approximately 12 adults and children inhabited the community and began an ambitious project of building and living in domes.

A documentary film by Joan Grossman & Tom McCourt

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