The film was never officially released; the girls' mother stopped its 1981 exhibition.
The search for Growing is part of the art itself. Keep looking—but look in the right places. documentary growing 1981 larry rivers download updated
The Museum of Modern Art Library in New York holds a preservation copy. You cannot download it, but you can book a (free with admission) and watch it on a private viewing station. You must request the film 72 hours in advance via their special collections desk. The film was never officially released; the girls'
: Rivers edited the footage into a 45-minute film in 1981, intending to display it as a continuous loop at an exhibition of his work. The Museum of Modern Art Library in New
Growing is not a museum doc. It is a hangover movie. It is watching a brilliant bull in a china shop try to paint the entire history of a people while his life falls apart around him.
Contemporary Relevance and "Updated" Viewing For present-day audiences, Documentary Growing offers a prescient meditation on themes that continue to matter: curated personas, media mediation of private life, and the instability of artistic legacy. In an era of social media self-construction and retrospective reappraisals of cultural figures, Rivers’s film anticipates questions about who gets to narrate a life and how historical artifacts are repurposed. An “updated” viewing might pair the film with recent scholarship on Rivers, exhibition catalogues, or interviews that recontextualize his work in light of shifts in art-historical priorities (e.g., postmodern critique, identity politics, and market dynamics).
. However, after one of his daughters spoke out about the trauma and lack of consent regarding the tapes, NYU returned the "Growing" series to the foundation. Restricted Access: