From our newsletter archives — Originally published January 17, 2025. (Edited)
What is included in this Gallery 98 newsletter may well be all that survives of Insure the Life of An Ant, an innovative work of conceptual art by J. Michael Malloy. Shown originally at OK Harris Gallery in April 1972, this provocative example of participatory art was inspired by the behavioralist experiments of B. F. Skinner and other psychologists. Gallery goers entered a space similar to a voting booth where they encountered a metal box containing a live ant. Their dilemma: Should they push a button and kill the ant, or should they allow the ant to live?
Noted art critic Gregory Battcock praised Malloy’s work for breaking new ground at a time when most artists were still “engaged in aesthetic exercises that bear little relation to cultural reality.” Other observers were more negative, with many questioning whether Malloy’s creation should even be called art. A small minority became angry and accused the artist of setting up an immoral situation that involved animal cruelty. The intensity of this reaction shook Malloy. For a short period, he created participatory art works without provocative psychological content; then he abandoned art-making altogether. The “killing chamber” was destroyed and Insure the Life of an Ant was never exhibited again.
Interest in Insure the Life of an Ant was revived in 2010 when Marc H. Miller (founder of Gallery 98) posted a short account of Malloy’s career on his 98 Bowery website. There it caught the attention of art historian Dr. Gerald Silk who discussed it in the context of a panel on Art and Ethics that he organized for the College Art Association in 2012. More recently Silk has published an extended analysis of Malloy’s work that can be viewed in the site of the scholarly journal publication MDPI.
Photos of Insure the Life of an Ant exhibited at OK Harris Gallery, April 1972
Photographs from an article about Insure the Life of an Ant by Gegory Battcock, Arts Magazine, September/October 1972
Artist Mike Malloy fixing his Ant Killing Machine at OK Harris Gallery, 1972. Photo by Marc H Miller.
The Attendant, part of Mike Malloy’s “Insure the Life of an Ant” at OK Harris Gallery, 1972. Photo by Marc H Miller.
Excerpt from Malloy’s two-page letter to Marc H Miller and Carla Ellis asking for help finding the attendant, 1972.
Read the complete letter on our Gallery 98 listing.
Mike Malloy’s typewritten description of Insure the Life of an Ant, 1972
Mike Malloy, Turnstile-Booth Situation #1, an early description of Insure the Life of an Ant, 1972.
“You have the option of depressing the white button and killing the ant or not depressing the white button and not killing the ant.”
Gregory Battcock, “Toward an Art of Behavioral Control: From Pigeons to People,” Arts Magazine, September / October 1972
Photographs reproducing Insure the Life of an Ant from Gegory Battcock’s article in Arts Magazine, September/October 1972
Art critic Gregory Battcock’s lengthy article discussing Insure the Life of an Ant appeared first in the Italian magazine Domus and later in Arts Magazine. The article compares Malloy’s installation to the laboratory apparatus developed by the psychologist B. F. Skinner to study animal behavior. He sees Malloy’s work as part of a trend of “artists advocating behaviorism over aesthetics,” and applauds such efforts as a way in which art can cause people “to observe, analyze, or critique” their own behavior.
