Ever Present: A Moveable Feast of No: No Wave Women with Adele Bertei

Performance in Ever Present series
Black-and-white photo of a group of three sitting in a New York City subway car.

Pat Place, Kiki Smith, and Adele Bertei, New York, 1977. Photo courtesy of Adele Bertei

Sunday, Oct 4, 2026

3pm–9pm

Getty Center

Getty Center Campus

Free

Tickets are free, but required for event entrance. Your event ticket will also serve as your Center entrance reservation. Please note, there is a fee for parking.

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About

BUSH TETRAS, Ikue Mori + Julianna Barwick, MITH (Adele Bertei, Adee Roberson, & Anna Luisa Petrisko), The Maria Schneider Guitar Army, plus words and sounds from special guests.

Adele Bertei opens her new memoir with a powerful assertion that No Wave—the multifaceted eruption of noise, image, performance, and ecstatic refusal that surged through late-1970s and early-1980s New York—did not simply include extraordinary women, but was driven by them in ways rarely acknowledged. This event celebrates the stories of women like Bertei, a former member of The Contortions and star of Lizzie Borden’s film Born in Flames, while bringing together artists across generations around noise, collaboration, rage, experimentation, and the enduring creative force of saying “NO.”

The program features the iconic downtown women-led band BUSH TETRAS, alongside a live set by No Wave icon Ikue Mori of DNA revisiting her experimental collaboration with the hypnotic Julianna Barwick, originally recorded at the storied New York alternative art space White Columns in 2010. In addition to performing with her trio MITH (Mothers in the House), with Adee Roberson and Anna Luisa Petrisko, Bertei leads The Maria Schneider Guitar Army, a roaming collective of guitar-wielding noisemakers paying tribute to women’s rage and resilience across history. Amid these performances, a lineup of contributors, listed below, will gather for pop-up offerings of words and sounds.

Together, these artists revisit, reformat, and extend the spirit of No Wave—not as a fixed historical style, but as an attitude and artistic provocation that continues to reverberate through creative communities today.

SCHEDULE OF PERFORMANCES

3pm: The Maria Schneider Guitar Army
4pm: MITH on the Garden Terrace
4:30pm: Words and Sounds on the Garden Terrace. Featuring: Julia Heyward, Zoe Hansen, Tammy Faye Starlight, Felice Rosser, and Eszter Balint
6 pm: Ikue Mori + Julianna Barwick on the Courtyard Stage
7 pm: BUSH TETRAS on the Courtyard Stage

Know Before You Go

Duration

3pm–9pm

Planning your arrival

Please bring your tickets with you and have them open on your mobile device or printed. Your event ticket is also your entry to the Getty Center and will be checked upon arrival as you go through security before taking the tram or walking up the hill.

Event check-in

Tickets for this event have a timed entry. If you are not visiting the Getty Center prior to your reservation, please arrive as close to your entry time as possible as it helps our security and visitor services staff ensure everyone can be checked in in a timely manner.

Seating

This event is standing room only, with some spots for sitting toward the back of the event space.

Accessibility

Wheelchairs are available for free rental on a first-come, first-served basis at the Lower Tram Station above the parking structure and at the Coat Check Room in the Museum Entrance Hall.

Seating for wheelchair users and their party is available throughout the Museum Courtyard. Please let a Visitor Services associate know when you check in and they can escort you to the optimal spot for enjoying the concert.

For more information on how we can support your visit to the Getty Center, learn about accessibility at Getty.

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