Reconstructing Exhibitions in Art Institutions 0367234211, 9780367234218

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Reconstructing Exhibitions: Global Perspectives On Art Institutions, Communities, and Activism
Part 1 Institutions
1 When Competition Becomes Form: Exhibition Reconstructions and the Limits of Institutional Self-Critique
Competition and Self-Critique Within the Neoliberal Museum
Institutional Self-Critique, Within What Limits?
Towards a Deeper Critique: Pirici and Pelmus’ “Immaterial Retrospective”
Notes
2 Other Primary Structures and the Theatricality of Re-Staging Exhibitions
“Who Could House Works of This Scale?”: Kynaston McShine’s Primary Structures
Other Primary Structures: Enlargements and Miniatures
Fried’s Theatricality: Encountering the Others
Notes
Part 2 Communities
3 The “Remembering Exhibitions” of South African Community Arts: Re-Appraising the Art of Resistance in (Trans)national Contexts
Re-opening the Archives of Anti-Apartheid Art
“Remembering Exhibitions”: Un-Forgetting Community Arts
Labour and Love: The Personal and the Political in Community Arts
Conversations Through Artworks
Rethinking Community Arts
Conclusions
Notes
4 The Reflexive Riff: Revisiting Contemporary Negro Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art
The 1939 Project: Context
CNA and Black Art at the Museum Before 2018: Exhibiting and Collecting Black Art at the BMA
Remembering the Exhibition Contemporary Negro Art
1939 Project: Curatorial Challenges and Narrative
The 1939 Project: Interpretation and Audience
Notes
5 The Making of Tucumán Arde (1968), 1997–2012
Introduction
Two Contextual Narratives for Tucumán Arde
Tucumán Arde as Exhibition
Reconstruction as Recovery
Tucumán Arde Rematerialised
Tucumán Arde as Art Documentation
Becoming Archive
Rules of Engagement
Conclusion: Exhibition as Museum Piece
Notes
Part 3 Restaging Modernisms
6 15 Polish Painters (MoMA, 1961) Fifty-Five Years Later
“15 Polish Painters” in 1961
Repetition—Dissemination—Visibility
“15 Polish Painters, 1961” in 2016
Notes
7 Provenance Research: A New Perspective On Exhibitions From the Past
Twentieth Century German Art
A New Perspective: Provenance Research
The Results of a Provenance-Based Investigation
A Provenance-Based Reconstruction for Berlin
A Provenance-Based Reconstruction for London
Evaluating the Provenance-Based Approach
Notes
8 Copy as Container, Original as Content: “The Making of Modern Art” at the Van Abbemuseum
Modernist Curiosities and the Challenge of De-Articisation
The Nested Museum: Horizons of Expectations and the Wreckage of History
Conclusion
Notes
Part 4 Counter-Narratives
9 Reading Between the Lines: Locating the Politics of Lucy Lippard’s Six Years
Notes
10 Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum”
Introduction: “Times of Interregnum”
The Forgotten of (Art) History: The Embodied Spectator
Richard Hamilton’s Growth and Form (1951)
“An Exhibit” – ICA 2014 Reconstruction
When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013
Experience Economies 1990s–2020s
Other Primary Structures
Reconstructing Exhibitions in Times of Interregnum
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Reconstructing Exhibitions in Art Institutions

Reconstructing Exhibitions in Art Institutions spans exhibition histories as anti-​ apartheid activism within South African community arts; collectivities and trade unions in Argentina; Civil Rights movements and Black communities in Baltimore; institutional self-​critique within the neoliberal museum; reframing feminisms in USA; and revisiting Cold War Modernisms in Eastern Europe among other themes. An interdisciplinary project with a global reach, this edited volume considers the theme of exhibitions as political resistance as well as cultural critique from global perspectives including South Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, USA and West Europe. The book includes contributions by ten authors from the fields of art history, social sciences, anthropology, museum studies, provenance research, curating and exhibition histories. The edited volume finally examines exhibition reconstructions both as a symptom of advanced capitalism, geopolitical dynamics and social uprisings, and as a critique of imperial and capitalist violence. Art historical areas covered in the book include conceptualism, minimalism, modern painting, global modernisms, archives and community arts. This volume will be of interest to a wide range of audiences including art historians, curators, gallery studies and museum professionals, and also to scholars and students from the fields of anthropology, ethnography, sociology, and history. It would also appeal to a general public with an interest in modern and contemporary art exhibitions. Natasha Adamou is a senior lecturer in Art History at the BA Culture, Criticism and Curation, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Previously she was a research fellow in Sculpture at the Henry Moore Foundation –​British School at Rome (2015–​2016), and an early career research fellow in Critical and Historical Studies at Kingston School of Art (2016–​2018). Natasha specialises in modern and contemporary art, including exhibition histories, with an emphasis on histories of decolonisation and immigration. Her research focuses on neo-​conceptual art and the lives of diasporas in Britain, especially with regard to conceptions of race, diversity, ecology and health. Michaela Giebelhausen is an independent scholar and associate lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art since 2020. Between 2014 and 2020, Michaela was a course leader at the BA Culture, Criticism and Curation, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and a senior lecturer in Art History at the School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex, until 2014.

Routledge Research in Art Museums and Exhibitions

Routledge Research in Art Museums and Exhibitions is a new series focusing on museums, collecting, and exhibitions from an art historical perspective. Proposals for monographs and edited collections on this topic are welcomed. Contemporary Curating, Artistic Reference and Public Reception Reconsidering Inclusion, Transparency and Mediation in Exhibition Making Practice Stéphanie Bertrand Exhibiting Italian Art in the United States from Futurism to Arte Povera ‘Like a Giant Screen’ Raffaele Bedarida Displaying Art in the Early Modern Period Exhibiting Practices and Exhibition Spaces Edited by Pamela Bianchi Cold War American Exhibitions of Italian Art and Design Antje Gamble Curating the Contemporary in the Art Museum Edited by Malene Vest Hansen and Kristian Handberg Curating with Care Edited by Elke Krasny and Lara Perry Reconstructing Exhibitions in Art Institutions Edited by Natasha Adamou and Michaela Giebelhausen For more information about this series, please visit: https://​www.routle​dge.com/​Routle​dge-​ Resea​rch-​in-​Art-​Muse​ums-​and-​Exhi​biti​ons/​book-​ser​ies/​RRAM

Reconstructing Exhibitions in Art Institutions Edited by Natasha Adamou and Michaela Giebelhausen

Cover image: © Josh Hawley / Getty Images First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Natasha Adamou and Michaela Giebelhausen individual chapters, the contributors The right of Natasha Adamou and Michaela Giebelhausen to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​23421-​8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​52473-​3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​429-​27977-​5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/​9780429279775 Typeset in Sabon by Newgen Publishing UK

Contents

Lists of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements

Introduction –​Reconstructing Exhibitions: Global Perspectives on Art Institutions, Communities, and Activism

vii xi xv

1

N ATA S H A A DAMO U

PART 1

Institutions 1 When Competition Becomes Form: Exhibition Reconstructions and the Limits of Institutional Self-​Critique

9 11

D AV I D H O D G E

2 Other Primary Structures and the Theatricality of Re-​Staging Exhibitions

29

K ATH RY N M . FL O YD

PART 2

Communities

49

3 The “Remembering Exhibitions” of South African Community Arts: Re-​appraising the Art of Resistance in (Trans)national Contexts

51

KSENIA ROBBE

vi  Contents 4 The Reflexive Riff: Revisiting Contemporary Negro Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art

72

M O R G A N D OWTY, GAMYN N E GUIL L O TTE , A ND J E N N I F E R P. KIN GSL E Y

5 The Making of Tucumán Arde (1968), 1997–​2012

95

I S O B E L W H I T E L E GG

PART 3

Restaging Modernisms

109

6 15 Polish Painters (MoMA, 1961) Fifty-​Five Years Later

111

M A G D A L E N A MO SKA L E WICZ

7 Provenance Research: A New Perspective on Exhibitions from the Past

126

L U C Y WA S E N STE IN E R

8 Copy as Container, Original as Content: “The Making of Modern Art” at the Van Abbemuseum

153

M I L E N A TO MIC

PART 4

Counter-​narratives

169

9 Reading between the Lines: Locating the Politics of Lucy Lippard’s Six Years

171

B E TH A N N E LA URITIS

10 Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum”

183

N ATA S H A A DAMO U

Bibliography Index

207 220

Figures

1.1 Detail from the exhibition “When Attitudes Become Form,” Bern 1969. Dennis Oppenheim, Directional Cuts, 1968; Annual Rings, 1968 1.2 Detail from the installation view of “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013” in Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice 2013 1.3 Detail from the installation view of “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013” in Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice 2013 2.1 Installation Photograph of Primary Structures, The Jewish Museum, New York, 1966 2.2 Installation photograph of Other Primary Structures, The Jewish Museum, New York, 2014 2.3 Architectural model of Primary Structures at Other Primary Structures, The Jewish Museum, New York, 2014 2.4 Detail of the architectural model of Primary Structures at Other Primary Structures, The Jewish Museum, New York, 2014 2.5 Installation photograph of Other Primary Structures showing photographic supports (far right), The Jewish Museum, New York, 2014 3.1 Artworks from the WKM’s archive exhibited alongside the invoices and receipts issued for their purchase 3.2 A sculpture from the WKM’s archive exhibited with an inventory number around its neck 3.3 Installation view of A Labour of Love at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2017 4.1 Overall view of installation, 2018 4.2 Case with archival materials, 2018 4.3 Title Wall, 2018 4.4 Chart of exhibitions of African-​American art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 1939–​2017. Note that the timespans have been deliberately modified at two points so as to make visible the gaps between 1949–​1971 and 1989–​1992

24 25 26 41 42 43 44 45 67 68 68 85 86 87

88

viii  List of Figures 4.5 Chart of acquisitions of works by African-​American artists at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Note that the spike in the 1970s is due to the acquisition of a portfolio of James van der Zee photographs in 1975. Their unique accession numbers mean that each photograph of the portfolio is counted individually 6.1 Installation view of 15 Polish Painters, 1961 at Zachęta—​ National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, May 2016 6.2 Porter McCray’s lecture at Zachęta—​National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, May 14, 2016 7.1 Poster for the exhibition Twentieth Century German Art, New Burlington Galleries, London 1938. Private collection 7.2 Ewan Phillips, View of the exhibition Twentieth Century German Art, New Burlington Galleries, London 1938, with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s painting Stafelalp Raod (upper left), Max Beckmann’s tryptich Temptation (middle), Wassily Kandinsky’s painting Murnau, Landscape with Tower (upper right) 7.3 Ewan Phillips, View of the exhibition Twentieth Century German Art with Max Liebermann’s paintings Concert at the Opera (lower left), Potato Gatherer (middle), Going to Church, Laren (right), Self-​Portrait, 1928 (hidden) and The Parrot Man, Study (far right) 7.4 Lotte Jacobi, Max Liebermann in his studio in Wannsee, ca. 1932 7.5 View of the Exhibition London 1938. Mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler, Liebermann-​Villa am Wannsee, Berlin 2018–​19, with paintings (from left to right) by Max Liebermann (Harry Graf Kessler in Uniform, ca. 1916, pastel, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach) and Paula Modersohn-​Becker (Landscape with Three Children, 1902, oil on card, LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz; Old Workhouse Woman, 1906, oil on card, Hessisches Landesmusem Darmstadt) 7.6 View of the Exhibition London 1938. Mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler with paintings (from left to right) by Paula Modersohn-​Becker (Still Life with Oranges, Bananas, Lemon and Tomato, 1906, oil on card, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe) and Max Liebermann (Going to Church, Laren, 1882, oil on card, Saarlandmuseum Saarbrücken, Stiftung Saarländischer Kulturbesitz; Professor Albert Einstein, 1925, oil on canvas, The Royal Society, London (facsimile); Concert at the Opera, 1922, oil on canvas, private collection)

89 118 122 137

138

139 140

141

142

List of Figures  ix 7.7

7.8

7.9

7.10 7.11 7.12 7.13 8.1

8.2

View of the Exhibition London 1938. Mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler with a sculpture by Benno Elkan (Alfred Flechtheim, 1912, bronze, Museum Ostwall im Dortmunder U, Dortmund) and paintings (from left to right) by Lovis Corinth (In Bordighera, 1912, oil on canvas, Museum Folkwang Essen), Max Slevogt (The Panther, 1931, tempera, private collection and The Garden in Neukastel with the Library, 1930–​31, oil on canvas, Landesmuseum Mainz) View of the Exhibition London 1938. Mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler with paintings (from left to right) by Oscar Kokoschka (Self-​Portrait of a “Degenaretd Artist”, 1937, oil on canvas, private collection on long-​term loan to the National Galleries of Scotland), Helmut Kolle (Young man with a Coloured Scarf, ca. 1930, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz –​Museum Gunzenhauser, Stiftung Gunzenhauser) and Emil Nolde (The Young Academic, 1918, oil on canvas, Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen) View of the Exhibition London 1938. Mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler with paintings (from left to right) by Paul Klee (Poison, 1932, watercolour and pencil on paper, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern), Jacoba van Heemskerck (Sailing Picture, circa 1915, watercolour and ink on paper, on wood, 48 × 63 cm, Moderna Museet, Stockholm) and Wassily Kandinsky (Untitled Improvisation II, 1914, oil on canvas, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam) Front cover of the exhibition catalogue Twentieth Century German Art, New Burlington Galleries, London 1938 Extract from the exhibition catalogue Twentieth Century German Art, New Burlington Galleries, London 1938 View of the Exhibition Defending “Degenerate” German Art, Wiener Library, London 2018 View of the Exhibition Defending “Degenerate” German Art, Wiener Library, London 2018 with various exhibit reproductions, and Max Slevogt’s tempera The Panther, 1931 Installation view, The Making of Modern Art (2017–​2021), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Copyright photo Peter Cox. Curated by Christiane Berndes, Charles Esche and Steven ten Thije in collaboration with the Museum of American Art, Berlin Walter Benjamin, Mondrian ‘63–​‘96’. Lecture held in 1986 as part of a series of lectures titled “Art at the End of the Millennium” at Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, organised by the Marxist Center and Galerija Škuc, Ljubljana

143

144

145 146 147 148 149

164

164

x  List of Figures 8.3 Installation view, The Making of Modern Art (2017–2021), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Copyright photo Peter Cox. Curated by Christiane Berndes, Charles Esche and Steven ten Thije in collaboration with the Museum of American Art, Berlin 8.4 Installation view, The Making of Modern Art (2017–​2021), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Copyright photo Peter Cox. Curated by Christiane Berndes, Charles Esche and Steven ten Thije in collaboration with the Museum of American Art, Berlin 9.1 Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, September 14, 2012 through February 17, 2013 9.2 Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, September 14, 2012 through February 17, 2013 9.3 Installation view of c. 7,500, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, May 12–​14, 1973; organized by Lucy R. Lippard 10.1 Detail from the installation view of “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013” in Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice 2013 10.2 Detail from the installation view of “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013” in Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice 2013 10.3 Detail from the installation view of Richard Hamilton’s An Exhibit 1957 10.4 Book cover of D’Arcy Thompson’s “On Growth and Form.” (Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, Essays on Sculpture 70, 2014) 10.5 Book cover of Exhibition, Design, Participation: An Exhibit 1957 and Related Projects, Elena Crippa and Lucy Steeds (eds.), Afterall Books, Exhibition Histories, Vol. 7, (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2016). Front cover image: Installation view, “An Exhibit,” Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1957, with Richard Hamilton (far left) and Terry Hamilton (far right). The artists’ estates 10.6 Detail from the installation view of “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013” in Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice 2013 10.7 Detail from the installation of “When Attitudes Become Form,” Bern 1969. Lawrence Weiner making A 36” × 36” Removal to the Lathing or Support Wall of Plaster or Wallboard from a Wall, 1968

165

165 178 179 180 198 199 200 201

202 203

204

Contributors

Natasha Adamou is a senior lecturer in Art History at the BA Culture, Criticism and Curation, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Previously she was a research fellow in Sculpture at the Henry Moore Foundation –​British School at Rome (2015–​2016), and an early career research fellow in Critical and Historical Studies at Kingston School of Art (2016–​2018). Natasha specialises in modern and contemporary art, including exhibition histories, with an emphasis on histories of decolonisation and immigration. Her research focuses on neo-​conceptual art and the lives of diasporas in Britain, especially with regard to conceptions of race, diversity, ecology and health. Morgan Dowty is an artist and art historian based in Baltimore, Maryland. From 2015 to 2021, she was a curatorial assistant for the Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Prior to that, she completed her BFA at Washington University in Saint Louis, graduating in 2015 with a concentration in Printmaking and second major in Art History and Archeology. At Washington University, Morgan received the Belle Cramer Award in Printmaking as well as an Arthur Greenberg Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship, through which she co-​ curated the exhibition, Neither Here Nor There: Borders and Mobility in Contemporary Art. Currently, Morgan is a Program Management Specialist for the Department of American Studies at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Kathryn M. Floyd is an associate professor of Art History at Auburn University. She holds a PhD from the University of Iowa (2006) where her research focused on the history of modern and contemporary art and art exhibitions, in particular the series documenta (Kassel, Germany). Her recent publications include: “ ‘d’ is for documenta: institutional identity for a periodic exhibition,” On Curating 33 (June 2017): 9-​19; and “Exhibition Views: Toward a Typology of the Installation Shot,” Revista de História da Arte 14 (2019): 93-​109. In 2017 she served as a guest editor for a special issue of Dada/​Surrealism (21) on “Exhibiting Dada

xii  List of Contributors and Surrealism” and contributed “Dada Unshelved: Dada Publications from Library to Museum, 1936-​1978” to the journal’s “Dada Futures” issue (23) in 2020. Her current book project focuses on the history of installation shots and the historical and contemporary mediation of art exhibitions in photographs, films, catalogues, and other publication formats. Michaela Giebelhausen is an independent scholar and an associate lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art since 2020. Between 2014 and 2020, Michaela was a course leader at the BA Culture, Criticism and Curation, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and a senior lecturer in Art History at the School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex, until 2014. Gamynne Guillotte is Chief Education Officer at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where she is responsible for the strategy and realization of interpretive projects, educational resources, public programs, and community engagement. From 2006 to 2012, she was a designer and project manager at Narduli Studio, an interdisciplinary design studio with commissions in public art and architecture. Previously, she oversaw education and public program initiatives at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture from 2000 to 2003. Guillotte currently serves on the Affiliates Board for the Program in Museums and Society at Johns Hopkins University, the Board of the Association for Art Museum Interpretation (AAMI), and is a project contributor to the Museums as a Site for Social Action (MASS Action) initiative. Guillotte holds an MArch from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-​Arc) and a BA with a concentration in Art History David Hodge is an independent art historian. From 2014 to 2019 he was Head of Art History, Theory and Contextual Studies at the Art Academy, a fine art school in London. David completed his PhD on the work of Robert Morris at the University of Essex in 2015. In collaboration with Hamed Yousefi, David recently co-​edited a book on the Iranian-​American artist Siah Armjani. Jennifer P. Kingsley is an associate teaching professor at the Johns Hopkins University where she directs the interdisciplinary Program in Museums and Society. Her scholarship encompasses the arts of the medieval world and its museumification as well as museology more broadly –​especially in relation to processes of canon formation in art history. Her current project investigates the motivations and impact of women of varied social and racial positions and identities who shaped early public collections of modern art in regional US markets such as Baltimore. Kingsley also writes on project-​driven pedagogy and community-​based learning. She is a contributor to Engaged Art History –​a community of practice aimed at supporting and strengthening socially engaged work in the field.

List of Contributors  xiii Beth Anne Lauritis received BA in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. She received an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History from the University of California, Riverside, and a PhD. in Contemporary Art History and Critical Theory from the University of California, Los Angeles. Lauritis is currently a senior lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art History and Theory at Clemson University. Her broader research interests include theories of spectatorship and subjectivity (modern and postmodern), historiographies and theories of the avant-​garde, gender and postcolonial studies, exhibition histories and theories, performance art, social practice art, surveillance art, and eco-​art. Lauritis’ recent research investigates the politics underpinning the production, display, reception, and distribution of women’s conceptual art in exhibitions involving the American art critic and curator Lucy Lippard. These concerns extend to the ambiguity of language as a formal or conceptual device in a chapter entitled “In the Words of Susan Hiller and Annette Messager: Conceptualism and Feminism in Dialogue,” published in Feminism Reframed: Reflections on Art and Difference. Lauritis has presented at regional and international conferences in the US, UK, and New Zealand. Magdalena Moskalewicz is an art historian, curator, and editor who specializes in Eastern European art of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with a focus on Poland. Currently Assistant Professor, Adj. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she published internationally on Socialist Realism, Eastern European neo-​avant-​gardes, circulation of modern art during the Cold War as well as contemporary art practices. As a curator, Moskalewicz collaborates with living artists to examine the postsocialist condition and its parallels with postcoloniality. Ksenia Robbe is a senior lecturer in European Culture and Literature at the University of Groningen. Her work interfaces research in postcolonial/​ postsocialist entanglements, memory and temporality, and gender and feminism. Her current research examines memories of the 1980–​1990s “transitions” in South African and Russian literature, film, and visual art. She is leading a NETIAS collaborative project entitled “Reconstituting Publics through Remembering Transitions: Facilitating Critical Engagement with the 1980-​90s on Local and Transnational Scales.” Milena Tomic is an instructor at Ontario College of Art & Design University (OCAD) and the University of Toronto. She completed her PhD in art history at University College London and is currently writing a book on copies and appropriation in former Yugoslavia that is based on research she conducted as a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at McGill University. Lucy Wasensteiner studied law at the universities of Bristol and Oxford and holds PhD in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her

xiv  List of Contributors research focuses on modern art in German-​speaking Europe from 1871, National Socialist cultural policy and its international implications and provenance research. She was previously an associate lecturer at the Courtauld Institute and a lecturer at the University of Bonn in the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation Centre for Provenance Research, Art and Cultural Heritage Law. She recently published “Sites of Interchange: Modernism, Politics and Culture between Britain and Germany, 1919–​1955” (2021). From 2015 to 2018 she worked in the curatorial team of the Liebermann-​Villa am Wannsee in Berlin. In 2020 she became the director of the Liebermann-​Villa. Isobel Whitelegg is an art historian, curator, and director of Postgraduate Research at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. After specializing in the history and theory of Latin American art at the University of Essex she co-​devised two collaborative projects addressing the circulation and reception of art from Latin America: “Latin American Art & the UK” and “Meeting Margins Transnational Art in Europe & Latin America.” Her present research focuses on the relationship between institutional memory and the historiography of Brazilian art during the military regime. Exhibitions curated include “Signals: If you like I shall grow” (kurimanzutto at Thomas Dane, London, 2018) and the mid-​career retrospective “Cinthia Marcelle: A Conjunction of Factors” (MACBA, Barcelona, 2022–​23).

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Acknowledgements

This volume is the result of a collaborative effort with many participants along the way. The editors would like to thank the authors of the present volume for their enthusiasm, hard work, patience, and commitment to the project over the last few years. Before taking the form of an edited book, this project inaugurated with the conference panel The Return of History: Reconstructing Art Exhibitions in the 21st Century at the Association of Art Historians 2016 Conference at the University of Edinburgh (organised by Natasha Adamou, Michaela Giebelhausen and Michael Tymkiw); and continued with an international workshop titled Reconstructions, Restagings, Re-​ enactments: Revisiting Seminal Art Exhibitions in the Twenty-​First Century, Futuro House, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London (UAL) (organised by Natasha Adamou and Michaela Giebelhausen). Our heartfelt thanks go to the participants at the conference panel at Association for Art History (AAH), and the invited speakers and moderators at the workshop at Central Saint Martins (CSM) who enthusiastically responded to out invitation. These include Charlotte Bonham-​ Carter, Elena Crippa, Charlotte Frost, Zanna Gilbert, Hugh Govan, Alison Green, Samantha Lackey, Fran Lloyd, Anna Lundström, Lauren Mackler, Annebella Pollen, Valentina Ravaglia, Gráinne Rice, Jana Scholze, Catherine Spencer, Michael Tymkiw, and Victoria Walsh. Special thanks to Billy Kiosoglou from Brighten the Corners for the inspired website design. The Kingston School of Art (Kingston University London) generously supported the early stages of the research project with a Research Development Fund for the workshop. Thank you to Central Saint Martins, UAL for providing the unique venue for this event (the Futuro House, a spaceship mobile house designed by Matti Suurone in the 1960s, and brought to the Central Saint Martins rooftop by artist Craig Barnes, housing special events, gigs, exhibitions, lectures and residencies for over two years). The editors are also grateful to the BA Culture, Criticism, and Curation at CSM, UAL, for granting them respective academic research leave in order to put together this volume.

Introduction Reconstructing Exhibitions: Global Perspectives on Art Institutions, Communities, and Activism Natasha Adamou

Reconstructing Exhibitions in Art Institutions is the first comprehensive study on revisiting past exhibitions. This edited volume is developed as an interdisciplinary, collaborative endeavour that explores the recent curatorial practice of restaging paradigmatic exhibitions from previous decades. A few prominent examples include When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013 (Fondazione Prada, 2013); Richard Hamilton’s Growth and Form, 1949/​1951 (Tate Modern, 2014); and Other Primary Structures (Jewish Museum, 2014). However, the book also looks at experimental exhibition models engaging activism and diverse communities from around the globe. The motivations behind these and other reconstructions are diverse, ranging from an interest in critically examining the legacy of seminal exhibitions to an attempt to promote alternative histories “from a global point of view” (as Other Primary Structures sought to do). The growing interest in reconstructing exhibitions signals a “self-​reflexive” turn in exhibition-​making, one in which revisiting historical exhibitions becomes a form of “protest against forgetting,” as Hans Ulrich Obrist has suggested by drawing on an idea from historian Eric Hobsbawm. This project probes the art-​historical, theoretical, and political implications of restaging paradigmatic exhibitions. At stake is a nuanced understanding of how the reconstruction of historically significant exhibitions contributes to interrogating the role of art institutions in rewriting their own histories, while renegotiating national, racial, and cultural identities. The edited volume aims to advance the emerging scholarship on exhibition reconstructions by bringing together art historians, curators, artists, and other museum professionals to share their diverse viewpoints from the fields of art history, curating, museology, art practice, and cultural heritage. The book presents new scholarship that emphasises the collaborative aspect of restaged exhibitions. A crucial theme that has emerged in the book advocates the emergence of alternative and non-​western art historical narratives. Another dynamic line of enquiry explores ways in which to reconcile the spaces of activism with archival research and exhibition-​making. DOI: 10.4324/9780429279775-1

2  Natasha Adamou Despite the increasing popularity of this phenomenon that has been allocated the status of a new genre, the “remembering exhibitions,” by Reesa Greenberg (Tate Papers, 2009 –​endnote), there is currently very limited scholarship addressing their complexity and motivations. In order to address this gap in scholarship, Natasha Adamou and Michaela Giebelhausen therefore inaugurated a collaborative research project that kick-​started with a conference panel (Association of Art Historians Conference, Edinburgh, April 2016), followed by an international workshop (Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, March 2017). Significant issues that emerged during these preliminary discussions included the following: negotiating a critical vocabulary: re-​ staging, reconstruction, re-​ enactment, revisiting, sequel, replication, revival, re-​creation, and iteration (unpacking how each one of these formulations brings its own theoretical, ideological, and practical challenges); the role of reconstructions for museums and art institutions in rewriting their own histories; the role of photographic and other archives in exhibition reconstructions; the contemporary critical currency of reconstructions; failures of restagings (i.e. fetishisation); the educational role of reconstructions; the relationship between exhibition histories and art history; a critique of cultural colonialism; a critique of archives as ideological structures; audience experience: remembering and mis-​remembering, or from remembered to experienced; and restaging exhibitions as media events. Reconstructing Exhibitions in Art Institutions develops interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks for examining the model of the reconstruction as a dynamic interface between institutional archives and audience experience, activism and critical analysis. Among other themes, the book argues that exhibition reconstructions serve as the primary space for the reconciliation between the archive and the phenomenological experience of the visitor in the gallery space. Moreover, through the lens of reconstructions, it interrogates the place of contemporary art institutions in the wider context of the “experience economy” and the creative industries. This is a crucial endeavour, especially as the model of full or partial reconstructions was becoming standard practice in survey, retrospective, monographic and group exhibitions in the years preceding the coronavirus disease (COVID) pandemic (until the sudden disruption of staging physical exhibitions due to lockdown regulations in many countries around the world). The scope of this edited volume is interdisciplinary and cross-​cultural. It bridges curatorial practice and the fields of museum and heritage studies, exhibition histories, and art history while bringing into the conversation exhibition practices from diverse geographical regions. The research methodology is grounded in archival research, the analysis of exhibitions and their technologies of display. The analysis of these primary sources has been instrumental in formulating a solid theoretical framework which explores the potentials and limitations of reconstructions in contemporary art institutions. Finally, the reconstruction of past exhibitions is examined in the broader context of the self-​historicising practices of contemporary art museums.

Introduction  3 In its scope as an inter-​disciplinary, trans-​national project, Reconstructing Exhibitions in Art Institutions spans exhibition histories in their manifold forms: as anti-​apartheid activism within South African community arts; collectivities and trade unions in Argentina; Civil Rights movements and Black communities in Baltimore; competition and institutional self-​critique within the neoliberal museum; reframing feminisms in the 1960s and 1970s USA; revisiting Cold War Modernisms in Eastern Europe; and exhibition histories in times of crisis. It considers the theme of exhibitions as political resistance as well as cultural critique from global perspectives including South Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, USA, and West Europe. The book includes contributions by ten authors from the fields of art history, social sciences, anthropology, museum studies, provenance research, curating and exhibition histories. The edited volume finally examines exhibition reconstructions both as a symptom of advanced capitalism, geopolitical dynamics, and social uprisings, and as a critique of imperial and capitalist violence. Art historical areas covered in the book include conceptualism, minimalism, modern painting, modernisms, archives, and community arts. This volume is organised into four sections addressing issues related to institutions, communities, restaging modernisms, and counter-​narratives. The first section looks at how art institutions employ exhibition reconstructions from the past in order to revisit their own histories. It addresses how the model of the reconstruction offers valuable critical reflections on curatorial practice while also reinforcing institutional power. With the use of theatricality, replication, and other display technologies, reconstructions are used strategically in the formation of institutions, constructing their identities, values, and significance in history. In the first chapter of this volume, entitled When Competition Becomes Form: Exhibition Reconstructions and the Limits of Institutional Self-​ Critique, David Hodge argues that the exhibition reconstruction is a characteristic form of institutional self-​critique, which tends to reinforce institutional power even as it questions curatorial practices. Crucially, the chapter places the rise of the exhibition reconstruction in the context of growing professional competition amongst curators in capitalist economies. It argues that exhibition reconstructions offer curators two crucial means for marketing their shows: both the prestige of canonical exhibitions and the promotional value of cutting-​ edge curatorial self-​ critique. The chapter acknowledges that exhibition reconstructions offer insightful critical reflections on curatorial practice and its significance in different historical contexts. However, it concludes that in many cases this is limited by a lack of critical focus on the market context which prompts such critical reflection in the first place. In the second chapter, Other Primary Structures and the Theatricality of Re-​Staging Exhibitions, Kathryn M. Floyd examines Jens Hoffmann’s Other Primary Structures, a new staging of artworks by Asian, African, and Latin American minimalists. Floyd focuses on the unique mise-​en-​scène for Other Primary Structures, a revival from a global perspective of the monumental

4  Natasha Adamou 1966 exhibition Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors curated by Kynaston McShine. Drawing intertwined notions of scale, display, and theatricality, this chapter analyses the particular “theatricality” of Other Primary Structures’ tableaux of shifting scales. The second section of the book analyses how communities employed art and organised exhibitions in order to negotiate their identities, revisit and re-​ imagine their histories, raise questions about race and class, but also challenge the art historical canon with ground-​breaking aesthetic interventions. The three chapters in this section draw on case studies from different parts of the world, including the Global South, such as 1980s community arts in South Africa; an interdisciplinary project by artists, activists, social scientists, students and trade unionists in Argentina; but also, exhibitions showcasing Black American artists from diasporic communities in the USA. In the third chapter, The ‘Remembering Exhibitions’ of South African Community Arts: Re-​appraising the Art of Resistance in (Trans)national Contexts, Ksenia Robbe examines recent practices of revisiting works produced within the contexts of the 1980s community arts in South Africa by the younger generation of curators and artists in national and transnational settings. Robbe argues that the work of exploring the archive and designing these shows went beyond an act of homage and turned into a process of remembering through “reviving” the archive. This involved exploring the meanings of the archive in the present and expanding it with contemporary works. The chapter examines the conceptual underpinnings and practices of staging the exhibitions, and, ultimately, the significance of re-​appraising community arts and everyday resistance that they convey from (trans)national perspectives. The fourth chapter in the book, The Reflexive Riff: Revisiting ‘Contemporary Negro Art’ at the Baltimore Museum of Art, by Morgan Dowty, Gamynne Guillotte, Jennifer P. Kingsley, examines the “Contemporary Negro Art” (CNA) exhibition organised at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in 1939, one of the earliest large-​scale exhibitions in a USA art museum to feature Black American artists. Nearly eighty years later the BMA paid tribute to this exhibition with “1939: Exhibiting Black Art at the BMA” (June 13–​ October 28, 2018). Revisiting “CNE” in 2018 had obvious resonance for Baltimore, MD, a majority black city in the United States. The chapter poses critical questions about remembering exhibitions in the context of museums’ reflexive impulses in the present, asking who such exhibitions are for and what memory work they perform. In the fifth chapter, The Making of Tucumán Arde (1968), 1997-​2012, Isobel Whitelegg examines Tucumán Arde (1968), an interdisciplinary project involving artists, activists, social scientists, students, and trade unionists, which aimed to reveal an acute social and economic crisis in the province of Tucumán, Argentina. Now cited internationally as an exemplar of both activist art and Latin American conceptualism, parts of Tucumán Arde have been reiterated across multiple art exhibitions internationally since the late

Introduction  5 1990s. Through this reiterative and distributed process of reconstruction, the distinct aesthetic strategies of its exhibitions have been transformed into art documentation, and Tucumán Arde has now settled into a stable art world existence as replica archive. This chapter addresses how this material and aesthetic change has operated in parallel with a search for an appropriate re-​ contextualisation for Tucumán Arde, as an event whose sociopolitical importance and status as common heritage exceeds its institutionalisation as art. The third section, Restaging Modernisms, examines the role of exhibition reconstructions in suggesting new curatorial paradigms of arranging collections in the art museum. It also problematises reconstructing exhibitions by examining the conditions under which a historical exhibition can be brought into the present. In the sixth chapter, 15 Polish Painters (MoMA, 1961) Fifty-​Five Years Later, Magdalena Moskalewicz discusses the intentionally imperfect restaging of the exhibition “15 Polish Painters” (MoMA, 1961) in Warsaw fifty-​five years later in 2016. The exhibition is examined within the context of cultural diplomacy during the Cold War, specifically importing Eastern European art into North America. The chapter problematises the 2016 show providing a reflection on reconstructing exhibitions that revolves around the issues of dissemination and visibility. Moskalewicz asks if, and how, a historical exhibition can be brought into the present while simultaneously avoiding art history’s imperative to make the past visible. In the seventh chapter, Provenance Research: A New Perspective on Exhibitions from the Past: Twentieth Century German Art, London 1938, Lucy Wasensteiner discusses the uses of provenance research, that is, research into the ownership histories of artworks. Along its use in the context of restitution, Wasensteiner argues that provenance research can also be used to investigate exhibitions, to reconstruct not only what was shown, but also where the exhibits came from, how they were sourced, and their paths onwards following an exhibition’s closure. It thus offers an entirely new perspective on exhibitions from the past: on the motivations for their staging, their form, and their impact. The chapter examines the 1938 London exhibition Twentieth Century German Art, a show that has long been recognised as an important statement against the National Socialist propaganda exhibition Degenerate Art. The eighth chapter, entitled Copy as Container, Original as Content: ‘The Making of Modern Art’ at the Van Abbemuseum by Milena Tomic considers the role that exhibition reconstructions play in tracing a possible future for the art museum beyond the existing paradigms of chronology and aesthetic value. Drawing on the “The Making of Modern Art” (2017–​2021) at Eindhoven’s Van Abbemuseum, an exhibition that combined works from the collection with copies arranged into replicas of historical exhibits, this chapter examines how the temporal relationship between copy and original was translated into spatial terms through strategies of anonymity, parafiction, and the lecture performance.

6  Natasha Adamou The fourth and final section explores the counter-​narratives developed through the model of reconstructions. In the ninth chapter, Reading between the Lines: Locating the Politics of Lucy Lippard’s Six Years, Beth Anne Lauritis probes the very notion of what constitutes an exhibition. Lauritis examines the case of “Materializing ‘Six Years’: Lucy Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art,” an exhibition that took place at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in 2012–​2013. The reconstruction is not based on a brick-​and-​mortar exhibition but on a book chronicling conceptual art activities from 1966 to 1973 that were collected and annotated by the art critic, curator, artist, and activist Lucy R. Lippard. The chapter examines how the Brooklyn museum reconstruction amplifies a counter-​narrative of women’s overlooked contributions to conceptual art that infiltrated Lippard’s own text. This chapter considers what motivated the curators of the reconstruction to reinstate these politics and the relevance of their efforts for current curatorial practice. In the tenth and final chapter, Reconstructing Exhibitions in ‘Times of Interregnum,’ Natasha Adamou explores the phenomenon of reconstructions as a symptom of a specific historical moment that followed the financial crisis of 2008. It argues that it is far from coincidental that reconstructions emerged as a discreet exhibition model around 2010, in the wake of the 2008 crisis, hailed as the deepest one since the Great Depression in the United States in 1929, when the global financial system came to the verge of collapse. Its repercussions were felt worldwide and demanded a closer look at the past in the hope of learning from historical precedent. While it doesn’t claim that there is a strict causal relationship between the 2008 crisis and the emergence of the reconstructing exhibitions model, this chapter argues that the crisis offers a constructive framework in order to discuss this decisive turn towards the past. Finally, it looks at the reconstruction of past exhibitions as a model that seeks to scrutinise and re-​stage the past, offering an opportunity to reflect on how social and political demands, related in particular to the representation and inclusion of historically under-​represented communities, emerge with a renewed urgency in “times of interregnum.” In this sense, reconstructions can be developed as a way to enact a dialectical relationship between the historical and the contemporary while advocating agency and visibility for previously marginalised communities. Finally, the research project that culminated in this edited volume has been investigating the emerging practical and theoretical concerns regarding the reconstruction of past exhibitions. It enabled the exchange of diverse skills and ideas between academics and art professionals with different institutional roles, working towards the common goal of sharing their research with both specialised and general audiences through international conferences, student workshops, and this publication. The aim of these exchanges is twofold: first, reconsidering, challenging, and expanding art history as a discipline by setting it against the more recent field of exhibition histories as well

Introduction  7 as curatorial practice; and second, enabling art institutions to rethink their exhibition practices and audience engagement strategies. In terms of impact, the aim is to communicate the knowledge generated from this research and to test the emerging theoretical frameworks in order to inform, not only new exhibition practices in the museum, but also institutional policies and strategies regarding museum audiences.

Part 1

Institutions

1 When Competition Becomes Form Exhibition Reconstructions and the Limits of Institutional Self-​Critique David Hodge

In 2013, the Prada Foundation in Venice hosted a reconstruction of When Attitudes Become Form, an exhibition originally curated by Harald Szeemann at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1969. This restaging drew considerable attention, since the original exhibition –​featuring conceptual and process-​based work from across the North Atlantic –​is widely viewed as a major art historical landmark.1 Attitudes featured pieces by numerous era-​defining artists, including Eva Hesse, Joseph Beuys, Robert Morris and Yves Klein. Presenting these cutting-​edge works in an enliveningly haphazard fashion, the show aptly captured the radical zeitgeist of the late 1960s (Figure 1.1). Equally, it can also be seen as a milestone in the history of curating. Szeemann is now commonly cited as the first superstar curator and this was arguably his first seminal show.2 Alongside these historical factors, interest in the 2013 reconstruction was also piqued by its own starry trio of curators –​the art critic and curator Germano Celant, the artist Thomas Demand and the architect Rem Koolhaas. Beyond simply offering a prestigious set of names, this list also evokes certain associations. Celant was himself highly influential in the late 1960s, when he was closely connected with the Italian artists featured in Attitudes. His inclusion therefore immediately gave the reconstruction an air of historical authenticity. However, Demand’s involvement suggested a very different slant. His artistic practice centres on uncanny recreations of photographic images, designed to question the nature of representational “truth.” These works sharply challenge the very idea of a historically faithful restaging –​quite a provocative outlook for the co-​curator of an exhibition reconstruction. This combination of backgrounds and interests provides just one hint of a contradictory dynamic running throughout the 2013 show. At the Prada Foundation, reverent fidelity to art history constantly mixed with critical reflection on the artificial quality of all re-​enactment. In many respects the Venice exhibition was a meticulous facsimile of the original show (Figure1.2). The curators built copies of the Kunsthalle’s rooms inside the Prada Foundation, using photographs of the installation at Bern to position exhibits in precisely identical arrangements. Where works could not DOI: 10.4324/9780429279775-3

12  David Hodge be sourced, outlines were drawn on the floor to indicate their original location. In line with the impromptu feel of Szeemann’s exhibition, the first iteration of Attitudes did not have labels by any of the works. The curators stayed true to this, but were apparently also concerned that viewers should be able to place the exhibits historically, since all rooms contained a small diagram with a plan of the space and details of each piece. Amidst the forensic precision of the exhibition’s layout, this encouraged a rather scholastic process of to-​ing and fro-​ing between the works and their documentation. Unlike the exciting directness of the original show, at times this experience bordered on the archival. In an especially excessive move, the curators even duplicated radiators and electrical plugs from the Bern exhibition.3 Such fastidious care surely went unnoticed by most visitors, but did allow for painstaking academic comparisons between images in the accompanying catalogue. Despite this concern for historical accuracy, the Venice show was in fact not an entirely “straight” reconstruction. The Prada Foundation is housed in a historic palazzo, which is very different from the twentieth-​ century Kunsthalle of the original exhibition. The curators chose to make this difference visible, deliberately leaving jarring disjunctions between their fabricated gallery spaces and the palazzo’s own features. These peculiar juxtapositions are emphasised by a series of photographs in the exhibition catalogue, which were taken by Demand and hone in on meeting points between the palazzo’s architecture and the reconstructed Kunsthalle rooms (Figure 1.3). Equally, they are also clearly visible in the most official image of the show. Disrupting an otherwise painstakingly faithful reconstruction, the incongruous fractures raised critical questions about the anachronism and artifice of re-​staging. Much like Demand’s work, they induced an alienation effect. Consequently, when taken as a whole, the show ultimately appeared as a contradictory, ambivalent exercise. It comprised both an extremely precious simulation of the past and a critical reflection upon this very act. In the end, one might equally view the curators’ highly mannered exactitude either as an earnest concern for historical loyalty or as self-​conscious satire. In all likelihood it was probably both. Since the Prada Foundation show invited viewers to reflect upon the dynamics of historical re-​ staging, it can be understood as an exhibition reconstruction about exhibition reconstructions. This was made explicit in its accompanying catalogue. As well as essays discussing the original Bern show, its contents and its place within curatorial history, the catalogue also includes a series of essays on the history and theory of exhibition re-​ enactment. Written by well-​known figures, including Boris Groys and Claire Bishop, these continually foreground the vogue for the reconstruction format in the early twenty-​first century, analysing the complex temporal dynamics of such shows. Additionally, the catalogue also features a bibliography covering literature on the history of re-​staged exhibitions. This voluminous book thus sets itself up almost as a manual on the history of the genre, while

When Competition Becomes Form  13 the exhibition was positioned as an intervention into contemporary curatorial discourse and practice. A meta-​commentary was developed as viewers were invited not only to revisit a landmark in the history of curating, but also to reflect more broadly upon the museological construction of historical experience. Despite these academic credentials, it is important to acknowledge that the self-​reflection built into this show ultimately felt deeply contradictory or arguably even hypocritical. On the one hand, the exhibition raised interesting questions about the authenticity of reconstructed experience and our access to historical truth. On the other hand, it simultaneously exploited and reproduced the value of the canon. When Attitudes Become Form is often framed as an epochal show, which condensed key innovations of the late 1960s, heralded the birth of the superstar curator and opened the door onto contemporary art.4 Its reconstruction quite naturally drew significant attention, only amplifying the aura of this canonical moment. As such, for all its self-​awareness, the Venice show was still entirely bound up within well-​ established art historical narratives. Celant explored some of these tensions in his own catalogue essay, which presented the project as an attempt to interrogate the effects of canonisation. His text reflects ambivalence regarding the historicisation of When Attitudes Become Form, acknowledging its importance while also rueing its transformation from an open-​ended, febrile moment, into a reified placeholder.5 He wrote that, when originally mounted in 1969, Attitudes had been “profoundly linked to an unshackling and liberating vitality, based on ephemeral and fluid interventions.” Since then, he argued, it had “taken on the posthumous dimension of a myth.”6 The curators sought to spark debate about such an art historical reification, but they did so by distinctly contradictory means. As Celant himself wrote, the reconstruction itself risked being a “fetishistic celebration.”7 It questioned institutional fetishisation by anointing its own fetish. Was this an act of subversive affirmation, or simply having one’s cake and eating it?8 This chapter will consider the Prada Foundation show both as a prominent example of the exhibition reconstruction format and as an instance of institutional self-​critique. Through examining this show as a case study, we will begin to unpack the broader relationship between these two phenomena. At the Prada Foundation, an exhibition reconstruction was framed not only as a live experience, but also as a discursive intervention, examining the theory and practice of exhibition making. In this sense it was not untypical, since many other recent shows in this format have also been centrally concerned with critical reflections upon curatorship and the art institution. Indeed, the reconstruction process offers much to curators interested in raising questions about the nature of their own practice, enabling them to shine a light on the history of exhibition making itself. However, this chapter demands that we must be careful in our assessment of such institutional self-​critique, which

14  David Hodge itself always operates within the circuits of institutional value production. As exemplified by the Prada Foundation show, institutional critique launched from within the institution inevitably carries a scent of complicity. We must consider what effect such entanglements have upon the nature and extent of curators’ critical engagement. Here we will situate the reconstruction format within the broader socio-​economic landscape of contemporary art. We will also consider precisely what kind of critique tends to emerge within these shows. What do they focus on and what might they exclude? What is the object of their critique, and what is passed over in silence? We will identify a risk that at times the reflective thinking at work in these shows may primarily serve a discourse of professional legitimation, supporting rather than truly challenging the political economy of our present international artworld. The phrase “institutional self-​critique” is used here to evoke a certain art historical turning point. Since the 1990s, critics have commonly used the label “institutional critique” to describe a category of artworks, which probe the social and economic conditions of institutional display.9 As Benjamin Buchloh, amongst others, has observed, this strategy can be seen to have emerged out of conceptual art during the 1960s, at a time when many artists sought to challenge or even dismantle the art establishment.10 However, by the time the phrase “institutional critique” was popularised during the 1990s, the institution was itself increasingly active in fostering its own self-​ critical projects. In some instances this has meant inviting artists with a reputation for critical engagement to probe institutional practices and collections. For instance, in the early 1990s Maryland Historical Society invited Fred Wilson to re-​arrange its collection displays. The resulting work –​Mining the Museum (1992–​93) –​famously exposed the Historical Society’s under-​ representation of oppressed peoples, as well as the intertwinement of its collection with histories of slavery. While this could easily be viewed as a source of embarrassment, the museum in fact supported Wilson’s work, demonstrating a commitment to self-​reflection. Around the same time, curators themselves also began mounting projects which questioned the history and politics of exhibition making. Exhibition reconstruction provided one significant foil for this, allowing curators to emphasise the exhibition making process in and of itself. Many different shows might be offered as evidence of this relationship between exhibition reconstruction and institutional self-​critique since the 1990s. One key early instance came in 1991, when the Los Angeles County Museum of Art revisited the Degenerate Art exhibition, which was originally organised by the Nazi regime in Munich in 1937. The Degenerate Art show combined modernist works with art made by Jews and people of colour, fostering a racist narrative around notions of cultural disintegration.11 At Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the curator Stephanie Barron very explicitly targeted these ideological constructions, undermining associations forged in the original show. Moreover, while its historical reference point was very specific, her exhibition also raised broader questions about curators’ capacity to

When Competition Becomes Form  15 encourage violent perspectives, reinforce pernicious stereotypes and thereby support murderous regimes. LACMA thus invited viewers to look critically upon the story telling which is always at work in any exhibition. Another, more recent example is Art Interrupted, which travelled between various American university museums between 2012 and 2014. This was a reconstruction of Advancing American Art, a group show sponsored by the American state department in 1946. Advancing American Art was designed to tour internationally, functioning as a “soft” weapon within the Cold War.12 By revisiting this moment in curatorial history, Art Interrupted sought to address the political function of “American art” and curating during the Cold War. However, it also opened up much more general questions about the politics of arts funding, the geopolitics of canon formation and the museum’s role in constructing national cultures. Again, here is an example of the art institution inviting questions about its own political function. Clearly there is value in the fact that art institutions now regularly promote critical engagement with their own histories and procedures. However, there is also a risk that this can become insular, even verging into self-​promotion. It is surely no accident that the rise of exhibition reconstructions and the emergence of institutional self-​critique have both broadly overlapped with the professionalisation of curatorship and the creation of curatorial studies. Indeed, the self-​reflective exhibition reconstruction might be seen as a kind of hands-​on equivalent to the academic study of curatorial history. When we attend restaged shows, as well as simply viewing a collection of works, we are also asked to reflect upon the work of curators and the dynamics of the institution itself. Offering a kind of institutional self-​display, such shows contribute towards a growing professional discourse around curatorship. By presuming and reproducing the historical value of canonical moments from the history of exhibition making, reconstructions add legitimacy to this discourse, supporting the advancement of the profession. As such, this chapter will argue that exhibition restagings and their acts of self-​critique are inextricably enmeshed with the demands of our present professional culture. My concern here is not simply to write off institutional self-​critique on the basis that it is “complicit.” In an age when the artworld has become increasingly institutionalised and professionalised –​a condition which few of us can avoid –​such broad condemnations risk self-​defeat by simply ruling out critical forces in advance. Instead, I am interested in tracking the socio-​economic entanglements of critical exhibition reconstructions and considering how this affects the particular kinds of critique in which they are engaged, as well as any blind spots with which they may be afflicted. Crucially, I will argue that, while they can raise interesting questions, exhibition reconstructions very often do so at the level of an insular professional discourse, without also probing the socio-​economic conditions associated with professionalisation itself. This risks obscuring the very real human costs of our highly competitive, neoliberalised artworld. My aim here is to pierce through abstract questions about the nature of curatorship, highlighting connections between

16  David Hodge shifting exhibition formats and the political economy of curatorial labour. If institutional critique is at risk of becoming a tool for professional legitimation, then it must urgently be placed back on its feet. Competition and Self-​Critique within the Neoliberal Museum The rise of institutional self-​critique in recent decades must partly be understood as a result of pressure from radical artists. John Roberts suggests this, arguing that radical practice, including institutional critique, threatens to undermine the legitimacy of established institutions, demanding a response.13 Institutional self-​critique can be seen as one attempt to address and contain the challenges which artists have cannily levelled. However, it must equally be viewed amidst the shifting coordinates of artworld economics. Since the 1990s many museums and other institutions have faced major funding cuts under the banner of neoliberalism. This has been accompanied by a growth in the number of museums worldwide.14 Consequently, art institutions have increasingly been forced to compete for private income, including donations, grants, corporate sponsorship and paying visitors.15 Within this context, branding and market positioning have become vitally important. As such, since the late 1990s, a whole academic sub-​discipline has emerged around “museum marketing.”16 While this can take different forms, innovation is a key factor, since institutions which previously took their existence for granted are now under ever greater pressure to show that they remain relevant in a changing world. As Terry Smith puts it, each art institution “aspires to be more innovative” than its competitors, struggling to “keep on changing in order to remain alive.”17 This process of continual change requires the museum to question its own historically engaged practices and, most importantly, to be seen doing so. Consequently, a demand for institutional self-​ critique is built into the competitive dynamics of our contemporary artworld. Beyond the macro level of competition between institutions, similar issues also confront individual curators. During recent decades, curators have increasingly become key actors in the international artworld.18 It is often argued that the curator-​as-​auteur has usurped the commentating role traditionally held by critics and historians, perhaps even encroaching upon the creative role of artists themselves.19 This is significant for the rise of exhibition reconstructions during the same period, since this format tends to place special emphasis on the cultural and political impact of curatorship itself. In that sense it is a perfect foil for the new centrality of the exhibition organiser. However, while there has been much critical discussion about the increasing authority of star curators, I want to stress the other side of this equation, which has often been ignored. For most curators, professionalisation under neoliberal conditions has induced intense competition and precariousness. In reality, the supposed “ascent” of this profession has only granted power to a small minority. Just like other arts sector workers today, highly unstable conditions demand that aspiring curators must constantly be willing and able

When Competition Becomes Form  17 to market themselves.20 As such, while the rise of concept-​led, curator-​focussed shows (including exhibition reconstructions) certainly suggests the increasing importance of curatorship, it also expresses growing professional demands and anxieties. A culture of self-​marketing demands that curators must place special emphasis on their own concepts and frameworks, emphasising these at least as much as the artworks themselves. Conceited as it can sometimes seem, it is important to remember that such self-​promotion only very thinly veils a deep-​seated uneasiness stemming from institutionalised competition and the harsh realities of precarious labour. This neoliberal professionalisation of the arts has led to a wide range of negative effects, including financial insecurity, rampant exploitation, growing class divides and damaged mental health. These consequences are unevenly apportioned, with oppressed groups and individuals from low-​ income backgrounds consistently bearing the brunt. Nonetheless, within certain limits, these dynamics have also catalysed a rise in self-​reflexivity, innovation and critique amongst art institutions and curators. Insofar as the curatorial turn is tightly bound up with neoliberalisation, professionalisation and competition, so too is the emergence of institutional self-​critique. Discussing the rise of auteur-​curators in 2016, Boris Groys claimed that today: [...] every curatorial project has the goal of contradicting the previous, traditional art-​historical narratives. If such a contradiction does not take place, the curatorial project loses its legitimacy. An individually curated exhibition that merely reproduces and illustrates the already known narratives simply does not make any sense.21 Groys’ description of contemporary exhibition making sharply expresses the pressures confronting curators in an age of hyper-​competition. Exhibitions lack weight as professional achievements unless they can somehow demonstrate innovation, idiosyncrasy and some critical challenge towards established tradition. Consequently, while some commentators argue that “criticality is sidelined” within the neoliberal museum, I instead contend that certain kinds of critical reflection are in fact demanded by the professional and institutional demands at work in these contexts.22 Neoliberal institutions constantly produce critique as a key source of value. While they are important, reflexivity and critique are not the only marketing tools available to museums and their employees. The authority of history equally remains a vital resource, not to be overlooked. With this in mind it is interesting that the rise of institutional self-​critique since the 1990s has also coincided with a growth in number of crowd-​pleasing blockbuster exhibitions. A show such as the immensely successful Claude Monet retrospective at the Art institute of Chicago in 1996, which attracted a colossal 965,000 visitors, gains its cultural capital not only from the quality of work on display, but also more importantly from the surety of the art historical canon. As Corinne Kratz and Ivan Karp put it, historical blockbusters seek

18  David Hodge to meet “audience and revenue goals” through “tried-​and-​true” topics.23 For our purposes it is vital to notice that these two seemingly contradictory impulses –​towards reproducing and challenging traditional narratives –​in fact often appear together within the very same institutions. For instance, in recent years Tate Modern in London has consistently sought to establish a kind of “balanced portfolio,” with works by lesser known artists (often from the Global South) commonly displayed alongside more starry names, both within their exhibition schedule and the permanent collection. While on the surface this might appear contradictory, in fact it is not. The tried-​and-​true and the strikingly new are both values upon which institutions can draw for self-​promotion. This returns us to exhibition reconstructions. One major factor motivating the increasing popularity of this format in recent years is that it perfectly combines these two distinct values, offering both historical authority and cutting-​edge critique. Exhibition reconstructions enable institutions to question their own practices and challenge the assumptions of academic art history, while simultaneously deploying and reproducing the reified aura of the past. Particular cases may tend more towards the former or the latter and perhaps “criticality” should be thought of not as a binary state but as a spectrum. Some reconstructions are certainly more sharp and thoroughgoing in their reflections, while others simply wear a thin patina of critique. However, in either case, through the very act of memorialising landmark shows, reconstructions always inevitably assume and thereby re-​entrench the authority of history. In this sense, they might helpfully be compared with Hollywood reboots. The latter offer a readymade brand, while also affording fresh and often controversial changes, which generate interest and discussion. In both cases, we find a combination of the tried-​and-​tested with the new and challenging. Moreover, in both cases these contradictory artistic dynamics are conditioned by commercial and competitive concerns. The ambivalence of institutional self-​critique primarily stems not from the hypocrisy of individuals, but from the force of underlying economic imperatives. Institutional Self-​Critique, within What Limits? I have argued that growing economic competition within the contemporary artworld helps to elicit institutional self-​ critique, with exhibition reconstructions providing one significant outlet. Now we must probe this claim more thoroughly. What specific kinds of critique do exhibition reconstructions perform and what might they exclude? Within what limits does institutional self-​critique take place? This section argues that exhibition reconstructions are often at risk of foregrounding critical questions about curatorial practice itself, while neglecting or even obscuring the broader social conditions within which curators and their employers are enmeshed. Exhibition reconstructions might be seen as a kind of professional self-​reflection, within which curators consider the ramifications of

When Competition Becomes Form  19 their own activities, without necessarily also investigating the conditions and consequences of professionalisation itself. Exhibition reconstructions always inevitably confront their organisers with questions about the practice of curating. Curators working on such shows specifically set out to reflect upon the history of their vocation, analysing the approaches of particular exhibitions from the past. Clearly, this is very likely to raise questions regarding their own day-​to-​day work. As curators become more critically aware of the particular frameworks created by their forebears and the contexts within which these arose, it is natural that many will also scrutinise their own choices more carefully. As Reesa Greenberg argues, reconstructions invite us not only to question particular historical shows, but also to reflect upon the exhibition form in general.24 The Prada Foundation reconstruction of When Attitudes Become Form is a very clear example of curators restaging an exhibition in order to ask broader questions about the nature and history of curating. The original 1969 show primarily focussed upon process-​based works, in which artists allowed materials free rein. In his catalogue essay accompanying the reconstruction, Celant praised the fact that these pieces generally lacked “precise or definable boundaries,” palpably sharing the visitor’s environment.25 He appreciatively wrote that the Bern show was organised in such a care-​free manner that works were sometimes even “trampled on and destroyed.”26 Celant’s essay compares this with the preciousness of many contemporary exhibitions, where “safety measures taken to protect” works often create a markedly less direct experience. He connected this shift with “the emergence of a mass public for art,” in the intervening period, “with the consequent necessity of a controlled circulation defined by routes and divisions.”27 While acknowledging that the earlier era represented by When Attitudes Become Form might be seen as “elitist,” featuring “reduced and limited participation,” overall Celant nonetheless projected a romantic and nostalgic image of this period, in contrast with the “spectacular and consumption-​oriented” nature of contemporary art.28 His text implies that the Prada Foundation reconstruction may help to raise tricky questions about accessibility, the commodification of experience and how curators should respond to growing market pressures. Despite this air of critical awareness, Celant’s catalogue essay notably ignores connections between the demands of intense competition and the reconstruction format itself. The opening of the Prada Foundation show was timed to coincide with the beginning of the Venice Biennale, arguably the most prestigious event in the international art calendar. For an institution situated in Venice, such as the Prada Foundation, the biennale offers a crucial opportunity to attract international visitors, as they flock into the city. However, it is also a very competitive period in which they must vie for attention.29 In this context, the Foundation’s employment of star curators, their recourse to a canonical exhibition and their deployment of curatorial self-​reflection all served as vital means of institutional marketing. Because

20  David Hodge When Attitudes Become Form is commonly framed as a pivotal moment within the history of post-​war art, the reconstruction automatically became a “must-​see” for many of the artworld cognoscenti, who flock to Venice for the biennale. Anecdotally, I can confirm that when I visited this show during the biennale’s week-​long opening it was by far the busiest exhibition I saw, with queues lasting well over half an hour. Indeed, on this particular day the reconstruction was so busy that staff members led visitors round in groups, setting a very fast pace to quickly rush people through, without really leaving time to see the work or read accompanying texts. This created a very tense atmosphere, with several heated confrontations between visitors and staff members (one woman shouted repeatedly at a guard –​“you’re ruining the art!”). My personal experience of the reconstruction thus very precisely confirmed Celant’s points about the commodification and massification of contemporary art, albeit in ways which he may not have intended. While the works on display nostalgically evoked a less marketised period, the show itself was very much involved in the economy of the contemporary artworld, with the reconstruction format itself serving as a key strategy. The emphasis on direct physical presence, which was so central to When Attitudes Become Form, might equally be seen as a boon to the Prada Foundation’s competitive “offer.” As Reesa Greenberg notes, one major appeal of exhibition reconstructions is that they allow viewers to experience art historical moments directly, rather than simply through documents or textual accounts.30 Bishop connects this aspect of reconstructions with the rise of the “experience economy” and hence implicitly with cultural tourism.31 Indeed, an appeal to physical presence has become ever-​more important for art institutions, which must now tempt an increasingly global art crowd to travel over great distances. As Peter Osborne writes, the international biennial scene has become so crowded that every other year now comes round “almost twice a week.”32 Against this hectic global schedule, physical presence is one thing that the art crowd cannot achieve by viewing shows remotely. The Prada Foundation show combined this general impetus with the specific nostalgia that Celant identified within When Attitudes Becomes Form. Once transplanted into the 2013 Venice Biennale, the air of ephemerality and presence attached to these historic works functioned seamlessly within the very same marketised logic which Celant hoped they might disrupt. Above all, what I especially want to stress here is that the Prada Foundation show generated a debate about the rights and wrongs of curatorial practice, without directly tackling the broader socio-​economic ecosystem within which its own organisation was entangled. Though Celant did aim to confront marketisation, he purely did so at the level of curatorial practice and spectatorial experience, holding all broader questions at arm’s length. Rebecca Coates has pointed out that the reconstruction of When Attitudes Become Form required “vast power, influence and wealth, not least to obtain

When Competition Becomes Form  21 the cooperation and consent of so many artists, collectors and galleries.” The Prada Foundation show therefore expressed “the power of the private collector, patron and foundation,” forming “the ultimate status good.”33 Moreover, within the competitive dynamics of the biennale and the contemporary artworld as a whole, the Prada Foundation show provided a kind of trump card, founded upon institutional wealth and power. What might this have meant for other, less well-​appointed participants? In Celant’s essay, such issues regarding the financial apparatus surrounding the Prada Foundation show itself are covered over by less contentious questions about exhibition making and the practice of reconstruction in general. Questions about his own curatorial entanglements and their consequences are replaced by an abstract discourse around Curatorship with a capital “C”. The prestige attached to the Prada Foundation reconstruction was significantly enmeshed with professional pressures incumbent upon arts sector workers. Artworld professionals flock to Venice during the biennale, not only to enjoy the art, but also to network, gather material and build their portfolios. Since the biennale is considered such a major event in the international art calendar, there is significant value in visiting it and being able to comment. In this case, “being there” offers not just a touristic experience, but also a precious nugget of cultural capital. However, this opportunity is not equally available to all. Some artworld insiders will have their fares and other expenses covered and may even be paid to attend. Meanwhile, workers lower down the ladder might have to choose between visiting Venice and other financial priorities. Consequently, this opportunity to gain professional advantage depends upon wealth and status, even before we consider the geopolitical contingencies of the passport lottery. Following the trails of the international art circuit has increasingly become a necessity for anyone hoping to engage meaningfully with contemporary art, but not everyone in our field has the means or liberty to do so. Indeed, I must reflect that this essay could not realistically have been written without the privilege of being sent to Venice in 2013, while working for the BBC. The experience of “being there” has its flipside, which confronts those without such opportunities. Clearly, not being able to visit a certain show in Venice is not a marker of gross underprivilege. Nonetheless, we should not ignore the fact that, by drawing upon the power of presence, this exhibition did participate in a professional economy which fosters aspirations only to create major inequalities and status anxieties. For all its supposed self-​awareness, the show placed the aura centre stage, reproducing engrained discursive, professional and socio-​ economic hierarchies. Towards a Deeper Critique: Pirici and Pelmus’ “Immaterial Retrospective” Having discussed one example of an exhibition reconstruction which fails to address the socio-​economic and political conditions with which its own format is entangled, I will conclude by considering another project, which

22  David Hodge was much more successful in this regard. The display in question is Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmus’s work An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale, which was the sole exhibit in the Romanian Pavilion at Venice in 2013. This means that it was staged in Venice at the same time as the Prada Foundation’s reconstruction of When Attitudes Become Form. Pirici and Pelmus’s work was a performance piece, running on constant rotation throughout the show’s opening hours. It involved a group of Romanian performers, who used their bodies to collectively depict a selection of works from previous iterations of the biennale. A wide variety of different works were mimed, in numerous mediums and from many different countries. However, though an overall list was provided, the re-​enacted pieces were nonetheless always very difficult to identify from the performer’s movements, allowing viewers to play a kind of guessing game. To some extent this experience seems tailor-​made for artworld insiders who flock to Venice and usually have significant knowledge of art history. However, Pirici and Pelmus’s piece may in fact have frustrated such spectators, or left them underwhelmed. Though it offered a restaging of the biennial’s history, any real access to these historical works was highly mediated, or ultimately even denied. Viewers could hardly discern one reference point from another, let alone really experience any of the cited pieces. Consequently, the kind of auratic encounter which proved so pivotal at the Prada Foundation was strikingly missing here. Other than performers and spectators the space was entirely empty, giving this work a distinctly minimal quality. As Pelmus states, it deliberately offered a “low key and simple aesthetic.”34 Both artists have said that, in leaving the space so bare, they consciously intended to contrast their work against the large, spectacular installations and audio-​visual displays on show in some other pavilions, largely those of wealthier nations.35 We might equally compare this minimal presentation with the “status symbol” simultaneously on show across the city at the Prada Foundation. As Raluca Voinea writes in a guide accompanying Pirici and Pelmus’s show, their work “didn’t require any production: no expensive electronic equipment was necessary, no heavy materials to be transported by boat, no logistics or safety regulations to be respected, no storage necessary, no customs paperwork.”36 Remembering that the national pavilions at Venice are involved in a competition for Golden Lions and global prestige, Pirici and Pelmus’s work directed visitors towards the financial conditions underlying this contest. While Immaterial Retrospective may not have allowed viewers to bask in the aura of history, it did provide a different kind of presence –​namely, that of performing bodies. It is interesting to reflect upon how different this experience was from my trip round the Prada Foundation, where security guards were shouted at and accused of obstructing the precious art objects. In the Romanian Pavilion, by contrast, the art consisted of nothing other than bodies in motion. Pirici has stated that to a large extent this was a deliberate attempt to focus viewers on questions around artworld labour.37 Like other “delegated performances” (to use Bishop’s term), the work raised

When Competition Becomes Form  23 questions about power dynamics between different workers involved in staging an exhibition.38 Crucially, these questions go beyond the professional discourse of curatorship alone, also considering relations and hierarchies between different types of arts workers. Pirici notes that exhibits at the Venice biennale are often constructed by a crew of labourers, or even “a whole factory,” without this collective labour or its economic conditions being made visible. By contrast, in their project she and Pelmus were “not interested in covering up the ‘work’ or the ‘employment.’ ”39 Moreover, by specifically foregrounding the labour of Eastern European performers, Immaterial Retrospective equally recalled Venice’s dependence upon a “large immigrant workforce, predominantly Romanians, Moldavians, and Albanians —​ people who came to Italy for economic reasons but predominantly live in precarity.”40 In this sense, it highlighted the biennale’s placement within a broad web of socio-​economic and political conditions. Far from enclosing itself within a narrowly professionalised bubble, the show emphasised the economics of exhibition (re)construction, stressing the political economy bound up with such work. In addition to raising these critical questions, Pirici and Pelmus also sought to offer an alternative economic model, cutting across the exploitative conditions of their surrounding environment. Ninety per cent of the exhibition’s budget was used to pay and accommodate the performers.41 Sandra Teitge therefore argues that, in avoiding excessive material costs and instead investing “in the labor of human bodies,” these artists found a more human-​centred approach.42 Rather than primarily seeking value in curatorial discourse or the canon, above all Pirici and Pelmus found it in creative workers themselves. Though this decision is not necessarily “more self-​reflective” than the efforts of Celant, Demand and Koolhaas at the Prada Foundation, and it could be argued that such self-​critique was similarly motivated by institutional demands, what I want to stress here is that the object of Pirici and Pelmus’s critique and its social consequences were very distinctly different. Instead of simply further inflating a discourse of professional legitimation, Pirci and Pelmus actively sought to set alternative priorities in a way which might help rebalance inequalities between different art workers. Their reconstruction helped us to imagine an alternative future. Finally, as well as this focus on the labour and political economy involved in artistic (re)production, Pirici and Pelmus’s “retrospective” equally raised questions regarding the power which large institutions can potentially wield over the framing of history. Both artists have argued that in this work “the history of the most prestigious biennale in the artworld was claimed in the pavilion of a so-​called less central and more peripheral country or culture.”43 In this sense they declared their own “right to write history.”44 Voinea notes that though the “retrospective” re-​enacted a broad range of pieces and was not a “corrective” account of the biennial’s history per se, its combination of “mainstream and forgotten artists” did invite thoughts about what should be included in such a historical account, what might be left out and who

24  David Hodge should get to choose.45 At the same time, by emphasising the modest financial outlay involved in their exhibition, Pirici and Pelmus equally considered the institutional and economic conditions attached to the mounting of historical shows. The commissioners of the Romanian Pavilion almost certainly did not have sufficient resources to stage a grander, “material” retrospective, along the lines of the Prada Foundation show. Even if they had, their space was much too modest, being far from scale of a Baroque-​style palazzo. Pirici and Pelmus thus suggested that the resources of art history are not equally open to all, since some are in a better position to capitalise on these than others. Far from continuing an inward-​looking discourse of professional legitimation, their work instead demanded confrontation with the social, economic and geopolitical conditions upon which artworld power structures are founded. Ultimately less a reproduction than an appropriation, Pirici and Pelmus’s work urged viewers to consider whose history we are constructing and who has the right to build it.

Figure 1.1 Detail from the exhibition “When Attitudes Become Form,” Bern 1969. Dennis Oppenheim, Directional Cuts, 1968; Annual Rings, 1968. Photo by Natasha Adamou from the exhibition catalogue “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​ Venice 2013” in Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice 2013, p. 193.

When Competition Becomes Form  25

Figure 1.2 Detail from the installation view of “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013” in Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice 2013. Photo by Natasha Adamou from the exhibition catalogue, p. 602.

26  David Hodge

Figure 1.3  Detail from the installation view of “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013” in Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice 2013. Photo: Thomas Demand. Photo by Natasha Adamou from the exhibition catalogue, p. 398.

Notes 1 On the original show and its reception, see Christian Rattyemeyer et al., “Exhibiting the New Art: ‘Op Losse Schroeven’ and ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ 1969,” Afterall Books, London, 2010. 2 See Charles Green and Anthony Gardner, Biennials, Triennials, Documenta, Wiley, Chichester, 2016, pp. 19–​48. 3 Rebecca Coates, “Curating Histories and the Restaged Exhibition,” Interdiscipline: AAANZ Conference 2013, December 2014, 7, http://​aaanz. info/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2014/​12/​Coat​es_​C​urat​ing-​histor​ies.pdf, accessed 27 June 2018. 4 Again, see Rattyemeyer et al., “Exhibiting the New Art.” 5 On ‘reification,’ see Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1967, pp. 83–​222. 6 Germano Celant, “A Readymade: When Attitudes Become Form,” When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969 /​Venice 2013, exh cat, Progetto Prada Arte, Milan, 2013, p. 389. 7 Celant, “A Readymade,” p. 390.

When Competition Becomes Form  27 8 On “subversive affirmation,” see Inke Arns and Saskia Sassen, “Subversive Affirmation: On Mimesis as a Strategy of Resistance,” in IRWIN, East Art Map, Afterall Books, London, 2006, pp. 444–​455. 9 See: Andrea Fraser, “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique,” Artforum, 4, 1, September 2005, pp. 100–​106. 10 See: Benjamin Buchloh, “Conceptual Art 1962-​ 1969: From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of Institutions,” October, 55, Winter 1990, pp. 105–​143. 11 Stephanie Barron (ed.), Degenerate Art ― Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-​ Garde in Nazi Germany, exh cat, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991. 12 Jennifer McCormas, “Reconstructing Cold War Cultural Diplomacy Exhibitions”, Stejdilijk Studies, 2, Spring 2015, www.stede​lijk​stud​ies.com/​jour​nal/​rec​onst​ruct​ ing-​cold-​war-​cultu​ral-​diplom​acy-​exhi​biti​ons/​, accessed 11 June 2018. 13 John Roberts, The Intangibilities of Form, Verso, London, 2007, p. 187. 14 See: Katja Lindqvist, “Museum Finances: Challenged Beyond Economic Crises,” Museum Management and Curatorship, 27, 1, February 2012, pp. 1–​15. 15 Claire Bishop, Radical Museology: or, What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art? (2013), pp. 5, 9. 16 For example, see: Fiona McLean, Marketing the Museum, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 1997; Ruth Rentschler and Anne-​Marie Hede (eds.), Museum Marketing, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2007; Margot Wallace, Museum Branding, 2nd edition, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 2016. 17 Terry Smith, “Mapping the Contexts of Contemporary Curating,” Journal of Curatorial Studies, 6, 2, October 2017, p. 174. 18 See: David Balzer, Curationism, Pluto Press, London, 2015. 19 For a review of such claims, see Paul O’Neill, “The Curatorial Turn” in Judith Rugg and Michèle Sedgwick (eds.), Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance, Intellect Books, Bristol, 2007, pp. 13–​28. 20 On neoliberal labour conditions within the arts, see Angela McRobbie, Be Creative, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2016. 21 Boris Groys, In The Flow, Verso, London, 2016, p. 28. 22 Emma Mahony, “The Uneasy Relationship of Self-​Critique in the Public Art Institution,” Curator: The Museum Journal, 59, 3, July 2016, p. 219. 23 Corinne A. Kratz and Ivan Karp, “Introduction” in Ivan Karp, Corrine A. Kratz, Lynn Szwaja and Tomás Ybarra-​ Frausto (eds.), Museum Frictions, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2006, p. 11. 24 Reesa Greenberg, “ ‘Remembering Exhibitions’: From Point to Line to Web,” Tate Papers, 12, Autumn 2009, www.tate.org.uk/​resea​rch/​publi​cati​ons/​tate-​ pap​ers/​12/​reme​mber​ing-​exhi​biti​ons-​from-​point-​to-​line-​to-​web, accessed 12 June 2018. 25 Celant, “A Readymade”, p. 402. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 On the broader role of competition at the 2013 Venice Biennale, see Nicholas J Cull, “Africa’s Breakthrough: Art, Place Branding and Angola’s Win at the Venice Biennale, 2013,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 10, 1, February 2014, pp. 1–​5. 30 Reesa Greenberg, “Remembering Exhibitions,” accessed 12 June 2018.

28  David Hodge 31 Bishop, “Reconstruction Era,” p. 433. 32 Peter Osborne, “Every Other Year is Always This Year”, Making Biennials in Contemporary Times, Biennial Foundation, 2015, 25, https://​issuu.com/​icco​art/​ docs/​wbf_​bo​ok_​r​5_​is​suu, accessed 12 June 2018. 33 Coates, “Curating Histories,” 9, accessed 27 June 2018. 34 Diana d’Arenberg, “Manuel Pelmus in Conversation,” OCULA, 16 Feburary 2016, https://​ocula.com/​magaz​ine/​conver​sati​ons/​man​uel-​pel​mus/​, accessed 18 June 2018. 35 Ibid; Alexandra Pirici, Manuel Pelmus and Raluca Voineia, “History Like Stretching Body,” Concreta, 30 May 2014, accessed 28 June 2018. Works by Ai Weiwei and Anri Sala in the German and French pavilions at the 2013 Venice Biennale provide apt comparison regarding these questions of scale and expense. 36 Raluca Voinea, “One Hundred Years of History In a Day, Every Day,” in An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale, exh cat., Romanian Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale, 2013, n.p. https://​issuu. com/​an_​i​mmat​eria​l_​re​tros​pect​ive/​docs/​sho​rtgu​ide, accessed 28 June 2018. 37 Sandra Teitge, “Alexandra Pirici,” The Third Rail, 2, 2014, http://​thi​rdra​ilqu​arte​ rly.org/​san​dra-​tei​tge-​alexan​dra-​pir​ici/​, accessed 18 June 2018. 38 Claire Bishop, Delegated Performance, October, 140, Spring 2012, pp. 91–​112. 39 Teitge, “Alexandra Pirici”, http://​thi​rdra​ilqu​arte​rly.org/​san​dra-​tei​tge-​alexan​dra-​ pir​ici/​, accessed 18 June 2018. 40 Ibid. Also see: Voinea, “One Hundred Years,” accessed 28 June 2018. 41 Sandra Teitge, “Alexandra Pirici,” The Third Rail, 2, 2014, http://​thi​rdra​ilqu​arte​ rly.org/​san​dra-​tei​tge-​alexan​dra-​pir​ici/​, accessed 18 June 2018. 42 Ibid. 43 D’Arenberg, “Manuel Pelmus,” accessed 18 June 2018. 44 Teitge, “Alexandra Pirici,” http://​thi​rdra​ilqu​arte​rly.org/​san​dra-​tei​tge-​alexan​dra-​ pir​ici/​, accessed 18 June 2018. 45 Voinea, “One Hundred Years,” n.p., accessed 28 June 2018.

2  Other Primary Structures and the Theatricality of Re-​Staging Exhibitions Kathryn M. Floyd

“This exhibition has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to include Others.” The epigraph from the title page of the Jewish Museum’s Other Primary Structures (New York, 4 March–​3 August 2014) catalogue mimicked statements alerting TV viewers that a film’s aspect ratio has been rescaled to fit the smaller screen. In this case, the notice communicated that curator Jens Hoffmann’s restaging of Kynaston McShine’s 1966 Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors (27 April–​ 12 June 1966) was no one-​to-​one reconstruction. Instead, the boldly designed and globally inclusive Other Primary Structures significantly “modified” McShine’s “original” in a series of meaningful expansions, contractions, enlargements, and miniaturizations in its concept, design, and contents. Itself an innovative, complicated, and wide-​ranging blockbuster of minimalism held at the same venue almost fifty years earlier, Primary Structures had, in the intervening decades, been distilled into a kind of historical synopsis of its complexities (Figure 2.1). Monumentalized as a landmark exhibition, it is also primarily remembered as the event that popularized a narrow set of artists like Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Morris as canonical minimalism. Other Primary Structures celebrated this legacy while reconsidering and revising its impact. The starting point for the 2014 project was a speculative enlargement aimed at inclusion: to imagine “what [artists] might have been included in the original exhibition if the art world of the 1960s had been as global as it is today.”1 To this end, Hoffmann replaced McShine’s original roster of American and British artists with twenty-​ eight sculptors associated with Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central Europe, including prominent figures like Rasheed Araeen, Lygia Clark, Yoshida Katsuro, Gego, and Lee Ufan. In the 1960s, these artists, often overlooked by European and American art institutions, constructed abstract and minimalist forms similar to those of their more widely exhibited counterparts. But despite formal correspondences with the elemental shapes, hard geometries, and slick surfaces on view at Primary Structures, their work was often the result of conceptual solutions or historical traditions beyond “Western” modernism. DOI: 10.4324/9780429279775-4

30  Kathryn M. Floyd Other Primary Structures brought “mainstream” and “othered” minimalisms of the 1960s into dialogue with one another in a dramatic mise-​ en-​scène in the Jewish Museum’s second floor galleries. Mounted on scaffold-​ like structures, wall-​sized installation photographs documenting McShine’s 1966 displays became striking backdrops for Hoffmann’s new selection of three-​dimensional, often-​colourful, sculptures (Figure 2.2). In each gallery, the juxtaposition of these black-​and-​white photographic enlargements with actual sculptural objects constructed an illusionistic stage set linking past and present: the “Others” seemed to appear in the 1966 galleries while Primary Structures haunted the here and now. At the same time, the contrasts between backdrops and objects –​especially the uncanny absence of the “othered” works of the 1960s from the archival photographs –​rendered the illusion of synthesis and inclusion tenuous and incomplete. Experienced comparatively through Hoffmann’s unique reconstruction strategy, the 1966 exhibition and its 2014 “modification” evoked unspoken questions about why and how histories of minimalism have been, and often still are, so minimally defined. The juxtaposition tacitly suggested the need for a global-​sized expansion of art historical awareness and imagined the possibility of revision, even rejection, of entrenched, modernist narratives that centre European and American artists. Hoffmann’s mirage-​like vision of a global minimalism might have remained Other Primary Structures’ most engaging encounter, if not for the revelation-​in-​miniature that was its final act. The last gallery revealed a stunning, full-​colour reproduction of Primary Structures in the form of a ¾-​inch scale model of the museum. Replete with detailed replicas of the 1966 objects, the tiny, but accurate reconstruction was physically the exhibition’s smallest rescaling, but proved to be its most engrossing (Figures 2.3 and 2.4). Art historian Rachel Wells, following Deleuze, reminds us that scale, as opposed to size, refers specifically to the comparison of dimensions between two (or more) like things, for example, an automobile on the road and a toy car, a museum gallery and its architectural model, or even an exhibition and its subsequent reconstruction.2 Other Primary Structures’ internal strategies of reconstruction were fundamentally comparative and often based on shifts of scale: dramatic enlargements and miniaturizations as well as visual collisions of past and present, absence and presence, two and three dimensionality, grey scale and colour, fragment and whole, original and reconstruction, and insider and “other.” The installation created an animated, affecting environment whose constant fluctuations of binaries flooded the spectator’s field of vision and demanded attention. Hoffmann’s dynamic design also expressed his experiential approach to exhibitions as “theatre” whereby the diverse subjectivities of artists and audiences meet on a stage prepared by the curator. Instead of offering didactic art historical arguments about global minimalisms or pointed critiques of modernist historiography, Other Primary Structures created an environment in which visitors could subjectively encounter the complexities of these issues, witnessing processes of inclusion, expansion, magnification, miniaturization, and reconstruction while being introduced

Other Primary Structures  31 to artists and objects likely unfamiliar to many. And while this “theatrical” approach fulfilled Hoffmann’s speculative goal of imagining a globally revised 1966, I argue here that Other Primary Structures might also enact the “theatrical” in other, equally relevant ways that contain within them the potential to shift its effects in another direction. In his 1967 essay “Art and Objecthood,” Michael Fried critiqued certain types of abstract work, especially the “specific objects” and “primary structures” theorized and constructed by minimalists like Morris and Judd, as “a plea for a new genre of theatre.”3 The particular character of this “literalism,” as he called it –​shapes and scales that were large, unitary, anthropomorphic, and confrontational vis-​à-​vis the body of the perceiving viewer –​created conditions in which the proximate circumstances of an object’s display (including a scale-​based comparison to the viewer’s body itself) became fundamental to the experience of the object. The encounter with literalism’s “stage presence” gave spectators an uncomfortable awareness of themselves as an object’s subject, as its “other.” This chapter considers whether Other Primary Structures’ comparative aesthetics of rescaling also embodied a sort of Friedian theatricality whereby the viewer’s experience became focused on the exhibitionary framework –​and on the pleasures and powers of exhibition reconstruction itself –​rather than on the individual works of art introduced by the show. Ultimately, I wish to raise some perhaps unanswerable questions about exhibition reconstruction more broadly. Does the practice, a kind of miniaturization of an exhibitionary past, divert attention away from its purported subjects and re-​centre the forces and institutions that create, house, and sustain (or not) their value and significance? “Who Could House Works of This Scale?”: Kynaston McShine’s Primary Structures In 1966, Kynaston McShine (1935–​2018), the Trinidad-​born, Dartmouth-​ educated, New York curator –​and one of the first Black curators at a major U.S. museum –​compressed a range of artists, objects, and concepts related to new trends in three-​dimensional abstraction into one blockbuster survey. As exhibition historian Bruce Altshuler observes, the event has mostly “come down to us as a founding exhibition of austere American minimalism centred on the work of Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Carl Andre, and Sol LeWitt.”4 But Primary Structures was much more complex and diverse than the canon it helped establish. Conceived with Lucy Lippard while McShine was at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition initially was to highlight only this restrained American “ABC” aesthetic described in 1965 by critic Barbara Rose. But when McShine moved to the Jewish Museum that year, his concept had room to evolve.5 The museum’s new white cube galleries, the result of a recent 1963 expansion of its original home in the Warburg Mansion, made the display of more objects and larger works possible. His

32  Kathryn M. Floyd roster grew to forty-​two artists and approximately fifty works of art, adding American sculptors like Robert Grosvenor of the Park Place Gallery, the west coast “finish fetish” cohort of John McCracken and Judy Gerowitz, and a substantial “international” component of British New Generation artists and their teacher Anthony Caro whose colourful, sometimes-​eccentric sculptures were a foil to the strict geometry of Judd and company. Installed on walls, the ceiling, and directly on the floor, McShine’s expanded set of objects created an abstract artscape that easily integrated with the museum’s white cube environment. The exciting display opened with a splashy gala, received extensive media attention, and, as art historian James Meyer describes, impacted art and design beyond its short run. Primary Structures, too, was closely tied to themes of scale, comparative “largeness” and “smallness,” and ontological issues about the relationship of its individual “parts” (the works) to its curatorial “whole” (the exhibition), themes carried over from broader debates in the 1960s about minimalist objects and their siting. Even before its opening, Primary Structures was being promoted as “large-​scale,” a sweeping, ambitious, and ground-​ breaking project made possible by the museum’s expanded gallery space. “Primary Structures,” wrote McShine, is the first, comprehensive exhibition of an important new group of sculptors. The spaces of the Jewish Museum provide a unique opportunity for these sculptors to conduct a dialogue, which up to now has not been possible, largely because of considerations of scale.6 But McShine also noted in both his catalogue essay and in statements to the press the potential of critique and resistance made possible by the relationships of the large works to the museum and its audience. “Since most of these sculptures are made for the indoors, their immense size and assault on intimate scale carry an implicit social criticism,” he wrote.7 Or, more pointedly, he told Grace Glueck of The New York Times: “It’s really anti-​collector and anti-​museum art. In it there’s implied social criticism. Who could house works of this scale?”8 The contents of McShine’s exhibition were difficult to domesticate not only within a gallery space, but also under a coherent theme. While the title “primary structures” belied a uniform curatorial concept, as Meyer recounts, McShine “struggled to articulate a common aesthetic’ to unify his diverse choices and fully capture the minimalist ‘dialogue’.”9 His short but wide-​ranging catalogue essay did not so much delimit a movement but rather offered a sense of the complexity contained by the elementary label. The four-​page text offered abbreviated descriptions of each artist’s strategies and touched briefly on a series of aesthetic problems at work in their practices: abstraction and geometry, the breakdown of media categories, questions of process, colour, surface, scale, the embodiment of complicated theories in simple forms, and the interrelationships of objects, environments,

Other Primary Structures  33 and perceiving viewers. McShine’s final description of Robert Morris’s Floor Piece (1964) could stand in for the expanded, disparate terrain his own exhibition explored: The complex series of experiences generated by this work seem to defy reason and intuition. The interpretation of the visual phenomena remains unfixed and irreducible […] Morris’ uncompromising seriousness and spirit of inquiry are shared by all of the artists in this exhibition […] Their work demands our attention and active participation.10 Despite the web of “unfixed and irreducible” ideas, objects, and experiences Primary Structures interwove, the interpretations of critics like Hilton Kramer, in attempting to make sense of its unruliness and diversity, distilled the show into a cohesive gestalt or whole that flattened, blurred, and miniaturized its complexities. Kramer’s three reviews for The New York Times stressed its presentation of an overall “stylistic tendency” and definition of an art historical period.11 The exhibition’s importance, he wrote “[…] is not to be found in individual masterpieces. Its principle interest lies, rather, in the way it […] conclusively demonstrates, the flourishing existence of an entirely new sculptural esthetics.”12 More to the point, he described the show as “stronger and more interesting in its general principles than in its specific accomplishments.”13 By downplaying Primary Structures’s diversity and elevating it as a unified, consumable whole, such descriptions magnified its power to define a style and author a (future) history of minimalism. But critic Corrine Robins took Kramer and others to task for their refusal, as she put it, to “deal with individual pieces,”14 effectively shutting down the complicated dialogue embodied by the works on view. “Thousands of people,” she wrote, “TV cameras, the press hard at work […] the publicity pictures and releases continue. The importance of the show is never questioned … No one wants to talk about the works.”15 She labelled this approach “an easy way out, an apparent effort at clarity, which consumes space and clouds specific issues raised by the pieces themselves.”16 The reduction of Primary Structures’ complexity and criticality into a clear, consumable image found its visual manifestation in the official black-​and-​ white photographs of the exhibition taken by Ambur Hiken for the Jewish Museum,17,18 likely the “publicity pictures” Robins mentions (and those used by Hoffmann in 2014). Like most installation shots of modernist works in unpopulated white cube galleries, they are taken at a relative distance from the artworks to capture their relationships with each other and with the gallery. This point of view minimizes and smooths over Primary Structures, making a unified composition of its distinctive contents and implicit tensions. The elementary forms of minimalist works easily merge with the hard geometries of modernist gallery architecture, and the unified composition of the black-​ and-​white photograph asserts itself over the individual works it contains. Or, to echo Hilton Kramer, the photographs visualize “general principles”

34  Kathryn M. Floyd not “individual accomplishments,” especially when viewed as small-​scale presentations in newspapers, magazines, and exhibition catalogues. The photographic compression of exhibition and artworks, critic Brian O’Doherty argues, also obscures the power of the modernist gallery environment to turn the “assault” of scale or implicit social critique described by McShine into something else –​valuable commodities. In installation shots the question of scale is confirmed (the size of the gallery is deduced from the photo) and blurred (the absence of the Spectator could mean the gallery is 30 feet high). This scale-​lessness conforms with the fluctuations through which reproduction passes the successful work of art.19 The visual ambiguities of the modernist installation shot blur the machinations of the institutional “art world,” substituting an illusion of harmony, integration, and belonging for any critique or resistance to its powers arising from individual objects. As a kind of permanent, two-​dimensional, “miniature” exhibition space, installation shots ultimately represent what theorist Simon Sheikh describes as the “crucial dichotomy between that which is to be kept outside (the social and the political) and that which is inside (the staying value of art).”20 Other Primary Structures: Enlargements and Miniatures Almost fifty years later, Hoffmann, himself newly arrived at the Jewish Museum, sought to reconsider McShine’s exhibition in global terms and “[signal] a dedication by the Jewish Museum to exploring and presenting the work of artists from all over the world.”21 Despite the ambitious project, the space allotted for Other Primary Structures was reduced relative to the expanded space McShine was afforded in 1966. A further 1993 redesign of the museum had re-​established the French gothic character of the original 1908 building and the reconfigured floor plan disallowed a gallery-​specific reconstruction. Hoffmann’s restaging was instead installed in five small second floor rooms where the heavy gothic framing around doors and windows intensified a feeling of being “squeezed for space.”22 Spatial limitations also necessitated bifurcating the exhibition into two “episodes” structured around the year 1967 to suggest the “influence of the original show.”23 “Others I” (4 March–​18 May) presented works made roughly before Primary Structures from 1960 to 1967. “Others II” (25 May–​3 August) replaced these objects with examples from the late 1960s. After passing through a narrow red and yellow entryway based on Elaine Lustig Cohen’s 1966 catalogue cover, visitors encountered sculptural works directly on gallery floors and framed by Hiken’s black and white photographs of Primary Structures drawn from the museum’s archive.24 Stretching from floor to ceiling, the installation shots, now blown up to gallery scale, better

Other Primary Structures  35 revealed the distinct sculptural objects and various architectural elements of their photographic compositions as they tenuously integrated with the 2014 space. In particular, the museum’s parquet floors in their foregrounds offered viewers a psychic pathway into the two-​dimensional, historical exhibition.25 With an imagined “step” through the panels, they might find themselves inhabiting the 1966 museum (or perhaps shrunken down into the pages of a catalogue or archival file?) (Figure 2.5). The backdrops’ angled supports, designed by the team of Feilden Fowles (with A Practice for Everyday Life and Jens Hoffmann), suggested architectural structures, as well as stage flats, billboards, film and television screens, or even the objects with which they shared space. Inspired by Argentinian artist David Lamelas’s 1993 scaffold-​ like object Untitled (Falling Wall), they became yet another point of potential synthesis between exhibitionary framework and exhibited content. Enveloping spectators’ lines of sight, the enlarged, human-​ scaled photographs created a fragile illusion of a co-​ extensive space linking the present-​day objects, viewers, and galleries to the historical past. The photographs’ unpopulated rooms and abstract compositions beckoned with a neutrality and timelessness that eased and deepened this potential connectivity. But their lack of colour, prominent supports, angled relationships to the walls, and fixed perspectives also disallowed an unvexed fantasy of complete integration. In the small, dark galleries the oversized installation shots even seemed to close in on viewers uncomfortably. Some described them as distracting and overwhelming, noting that they made it difficult to focus on the “real” objects on view. Resonating with Corrine Robin’s 1966 complaint, many reviewers gave only cursory attention, beyond general comments, to the specific artworks in the show, saying little about their individual histories or the diversity of global modernisms they represented. Instead, it was the dramatic mise-​en-​scène that held their focus. The climax of the exhibition arrived in the final gallery not as a fantastic mirage of immersive access or spatio-​temporal integration, but as a vision promising the past as a consumable whole. In the centre of the small fifth gallery, a ten-​foot high, ¾ inch replica of the 1966 Jewish Museum was set at eye level on a table-​like plinth. The extraordinary model designed by architect Aurelie Paradiso in collaboration with six students from Parsons/​The New School for Design’s School of Constructed Environments, presented an accurate, but all-​white, façade of the building. A walk around the minimal (and minimalist) model revealed a cutaway back allowing viewers to see a detailed, full-​colour, miniature installation of Primary Structures inside. Tiny replicas of the show’s original objects, painstakingly constructed by artist Andy Vogt, populated the diminutive gallery tableaux. Like the uninhabited photographic enlargements, these galleries offered no signs of life, only artworks in space. But instead of overwhelming audiences with their complexities, they charmed and delighted with an illusion of holistic connection and comprehensive understanding. Spectators, in a reversal of their previous positions “inside” the immersive backdrops, now loomed over the 1966 exhibition.

36  Kathryn M. Floyd Better oriented to the entire layout, they could now, from a relative distance produced by miniaturization, consume and command an understanding of its internal relationships nearly all at once. Alternately, they could come in close, peer through an opening in the white façade, and lose themselves in a fragment of the show and the model’s fine detail. Or, they could thrill in the “reality” of colour previously withheld by the backdrops, as if Primary Structures had been “colourized” like an old film. The prohibition against visitor photography in the other galleries was loosened here. Many visitors (this author included) became absorbed in reproducing private, miniature installation shots of the historical model, as they fragmented, reformatted, and recreated Primary Structures for themselves with their smartphones. They could take away a souvenir of the experience that promised opportunities for subsequent modification and reformatting, either to further scrutinize the exhaustive details of the model or, if carefully framed, to blur the miniature museum’s scale and vicariously transport themselves, through the image, to a full-​colour 1966.26 Theorist Susan Stewart describes narratives of the miniature, and its opposite, the gigantic, as metaphors of scale whose definition is determined by comparison to other like objects and whose character depends on its relationship with a perceiving subject. Miniatures, for example, vacillate between appearing small or vast depending on the subject’s relative size and distance. At a certain remove –​for example, when holding an installation shot in one’s hand (say, in an exhibition catalogue) or stepping back from an architectural model –​miniatures collapse into a singular whole; the subject takes in the “complete” image or object all at once. But examined up close, like a viewer peering into the window of a tiny museum or scrutinizing photographic details, miniatures can reveal a rich array of detail and intricacy, a “delirium of description,” that makes them simultaneously rich, complex, and significant. This relative and relational character in which an object conceals and reveals its contents finds corollaries not only in discourses around minimalism in the 1960s, for example, Judd and Morris’s interest in simple, unified forms or works that explore relationships of parts to whole, but also in ontological definitions of the art exhibition. Is an exhibition a network of individual, autonomous artworks that temporarily coalesce, a “meta-​object” or image constructed by an auteur-​like curator, or something that drifts back and forth between these two states depending on one’s relative spatio-​temporal perspective? In this sense, Hoffmann’s use of installation photographs, the museum model, and a highly designed mise-​en-​scene points to his emphasis on exhibitions as integrated, holistically conceived “artworks” rather than collections of independent, even contradictory signs and autonomous elements or rehearsals of normative art historical narratives. Originally trained in theatre directing, Hoffman describes this understanding of curating as follows:

Other Primary Structures  37 I conceive of the exhibition as a stage set in which the objects on display are performers. Their interrelationships, and also the meanings these juxtapositions create for a viewer within a highly individualized and subjective time and space, are performers as well…The exhibition as a creative medium, establishes and cultivates a specific nexus between individuals and objects. The curator is the author of this nexus […].27 For Hoffmann, curating is thus a “creative medium” practiced by someone who “limits, excludes, and creates meaning with existing signs.”28 He writes, “the exhibition mirrors the subjectivity of the individual curator, just as each artwork mirrors the subjectivity of the artist who made it.”29 We can therefore read Hoffmann’s fundamental notion of exhibitions, in part, as a concept based on certain metaphors of scale. While the artworks and audience members operate at the same scale, both as “performers” within the exhibitionary setting, the curator functions from beyond the stage as the artist/​director of that situation. His exhibition is therefore a kind of “enlarged” artwork in the sense that it contains other “smaller” (so to speak) subjective positions within itself, including, in the case of Other Primary Structures, the “work” of other curators. In comparison, the sculptures, viewers, photographs, models, other elements of the exhibition become “miniaturized” in comparison with the larger “meta-​object” that contains and subsumes them. What makes Other Primary Structures so complicated and unsettled is that it is a work simultaneously made up of fluctuations and modifications of scale, but also one fundamentally defined by them. With its continual conditions of zooming in and zooming out, Hoffmann’s 2014 “reformatting” created the conditions whereby audiences might experience shifts between these many complicated and unstable relational positions of scale, including understanding Other Primary Structures as an integrated “meta-​work” or as a set of comparable elements. Viewers might variously imagine themselves stepping into a photograph, shrunk down into a tiny gallery, or stretched like a giant, “helicoptering in” as Roberta Smith put it, to tower over the architectural model.30 They might experience themselves in an integrated environment or recognize their own Alice-​in-​Wonderland-​ esque navigation through a landscape of shifting fragments. Other Primary Structures suggested the critical and complicated issues of scale at work in its “original,” while also reformatting McShine’s exhibition/​event into a series of historical distillations. The mise-​en-​scene thus became an activated space of shifting scales and multi-​level ontological conditions that demanded viewers’ attention by asking them to continually recalibrate their positionality, refocus their attention, and redefine their environment (and the status of “exhibition” as form and practice) as they navigated the installation. For Hoffmann, the disjunctions of this experience set the stage not only for subjective individual experiences akin to those produced by other artists and curators, but for the potential of a kind of responsive criticality. He writes,

38  Kathryn M. Floyd for example, of using a diversity of media and materials in his exhibitions in order “to break the narrative or the viewer’s immersion and pleasure, and to create a kind of estrangement or subjectivity.”31 For Hoffmann, this estrangement contains the seeds of critical awareness and action, perhaps in the case of Other Primary Structures, for a questioning of historical modernism’s biases and narrow definitions of itself. But was this the primary response audiences took away? For Michael Fried, however, this kind of estrangement is instead the seed of a kind of presentism that threatens the status of “art” and, here, has the potential to encourage yet another marginalization of minimalism’s Others. Fried’s Theatricality: Encountering the Others In 1967 critic Michael Fried branded the “literalist” work of Judd, Morris, Andre and others seen at Primary Structures as “theatre,” as opposed to “art” in his now-​classic essay “Art and Objecthood.” The provocative ideas suggested in his complicated, subjective analysis of minimalism contributed to an ongoing conversation in 1960s modernist circles about ontology, objecthood, and the perception of artworks. Specifically, Fried called out the literalists’ rejection of compositions made “part by part” in favour of shapes, often large three-​dimensional forms, that expressed “wholeness, singleness, and indivisibility” as an ideological position staked against the autonomy of modernist painting and sculpture (or, for Fried, “art”). Fried understood these simple forms and unitary objects, often positioned directly in the viewer’s space, as “obtrusive” and “aggressive.” They demanded the spectator’s attention, but simultaneously pushed viewers away as only from a distance could the entirety of their gestalt-​like forms be perceived in full. Fried located a similar tension between persistent “presence” and psychic distancing in what he called literalism’s “latent” anthropomorphism, a quality he conferred because both figurative statues and human beings possess a similar wholeness. Not unlike Hoffmann’s likening of artworks and viewers to each other as “performers” on a stage, Fried conceived of literalist objects as bodies, albeit alienating ones. “The entities or beings encountered in everyday experience in terms that most closely approach the literalist ideals of the nonrelational, the unitary, and the holistic are other persons” [original emphasis], he wrote.32 These sculptural entities address the spectator, but the connection is not engrossing or sympathetic but rather disquieting and uncomfortable, almost as though the work has been waiting for [the beholder]… and once he is in the room the work, obstinately, refuses to let him alone –​ which is to say it refuses to stop confronting him, distancing him, isolating him. (Such isolation is not solitude any more than such confrontation is communion).33

Other Primary Structures  39 Literalist objects, for Fried, enact shifting conditions that pull and push at the viewer. They demand attention then require their space. They approach, then recede, address then isolate. Instead of creating an absorbing and transcendent connection between the viewer and the work –​Fried offers the counter-​example of film as an engrossing experience –​the literalist work’s shifting relationships and contingent states force viewers to instead become primarily aware of themselves as bodies and perceiving subjects of the object in the present moment. “The beholder knows himself to stand in an indeterminate, open-​ended, and unexacting relation as subject to the impassive object.”34 This unfixed state, and with it the specific situational and spatio-​ temporal conditions in which it occurs, becomes part of the experience of the literalist object which, in this sense, causes it to exceed its physical boundaries and become “theatre.” For Fried, this condition of theatricality ultimately brings about literalism’s self-​destruction and demise as “art.” Most important for understanding the case of Other Primary Structures, he writes, “the more effective (as theatre) a setting is made,” he writes, “the more superfluous the works themselves become.”35 What can Fried’s critique of “literalism” as theatre offer our understanding of Other Primary Structures? While not entirely analogous –​in many ways, Fried and Hoffmann’s ideas themselves operate on different scales –​Fried importantly makes the case that “indeterminate” and “unfixed” relationships between perceiving subjects and objects can give rise, not to productive criticality and understanding, but to a presentist awareness of the particular conditions of those interactions and to a powerful experience of one’s own experiencing. Put another way, the push and pull within and between the exhibition’s many dynamic elements of scale modification and reformatting and its simultaneous suggestion of itself as both an integrated “work” and as an unsettling of entrenched narratives, meant that Other Primary Structures also contained the potential to move the viewer’s focus away from any kind of communion or understanding of the individual works on view (and the histories they represented) or to see the original “anti-​museum” criticality of McShine’s Primary Structures, despite Hoffmann’s optimistic equalizing of the various performers on his stage. The 2014 installation threatened to become focused on the exhibitionary experience itself –​or, put another way, on the artwork produced by the curator –​not the work of the “othered” minimalists or the complicated event produced in 1966. In the case of the Jewish Museum’s 2014 restaging, no one talked about the works, because all they could talk about was the exhibition. While itself an extreme and multi-​layered ­example –​indeed Other Primary Structures was an extraordinarily rich and evocative exhibition –​the case of Hoffmann’s restaging read through the issues of scale implicit and explicit in Hoffmann and Fried’s notions of theatricality raises the question of whether, in fact, all historical reconstructions may be read as unsettled terrains of scale modifications and exhibitionary ontological vacillations that by definition always contain more than a little potential to shift our attention away from a

40  Kathryn M. Floyd critical understanding of the ideological complexities of past events and onto our own self-​centred subjective experiences. Like the museum model and the installation shot, historical reconstructions offer the exhibitionary past as a kind of miniature, whose confusion of scales and shifting ambiguities may blur the ideological positions (including the criticality and resistance) of the past. These reconstructed images beckon with offers of a rich and immediate experience of long-​gone temporalities. But our knowledge that they are only mirages simultaneously distances and estranges us. Here, Susan Stewart’s caution resonates with Fried’s 1967 discussion: The amusement park and the historical reconstruction often promise to bring history to life, and it is here that we must pay particular attention once more to the relation between miniature and narrative. For the function of the miniature here is to bring historical events “to life” –​to immediacy, and thereby to erase their history, to lose us within their presentness. The transcendence presented by the miniature is a spatial transcendence, a transcendence which erases the productive possibilities of understanding through time. Its locus is therefore nostalgic. The miniature here erases not only labor but causality and effect. Understanding is sacrificed to being in context.36 This sacrifice of understanding, not just of experiencing, the individual works of the artists and of McShine, on view at Other Primary Structures, and with it their specific histories, concepts, and contributions, suggests that the urgent work of critiquing, even dismantling, entrenched Euro-​American narratives of modernism and the institutions that uphold them, is not to be done through exhibition reconstruction. In the view of this author, exhibition reconstruction, even an extraordinarily beautiful, complex, and meaningful restaging like Hoffmann’s, is always implicitly an act that potentially recentres not the history and events purported to be their focus, but the very power of the exhibition format and exhibiting institutions. Exhibition reconstructions are at their core about the pleasures of time travel, nostalgia for ephemeral events, and the power of museums and exhibitions to harness history (or future history) and therefore to manage “value.” Although Other Primary Structures’ well-​meaning and ambitious goal of attempting to reimagine an inclusive and diverse 1960s minimalism, in presenting it through the lens of historical reconstruction, prioritized “experiencing the past,” rather than understanding its histories. Even this author, in offering an analysis of exhibition restaging, has likewise reinscribed the exhibitionary framework, rather than given voice to the work of the artists on view, who like McShine’s original cohort, offer ideas for alternative means of critical intervention, not by merely reconstructing an image of their inclusion but by exploding the model, so to speak. As a conclusion, then, the voice of Rasheed Araeen offers a final corrective:

Other Primary Structures  41 The fundamental prerequisite for an artistic intervention is the position of artists, how they are seen and considered in relation to the society in which they are located, whether or not their historical role or what constitutes agency is recognized within the society’s mainstream transformational processes… .This positionality is not a physical space, but what is perceived by the society as a central role of the artist in its historical developments… .I’m not thinking about a hypothetical situation but referring to the reality of non-​white peoples in the West. What [they] face is not necessarily that of their neglect or a denial of their multicultural role, but their specific positioning outside the historical genealogy of modernism which prevents them from intervening…at its structural level.37 Araeen’s words suggest that intervention in art history necessitates more than mere enlargement of spaces and situations to include the image of non-​white

Figure 2.1  Installation Photograph of Primary Structures, The Jewish Museum, New York, 1966. Photo credit: The Jewish Museum, New York /​Art Resource, NY. Artist: Judd, Donald (1928–​1994) © ARS, NY. Description: Untitled (1966); Robert Grosvenor, Transoxiana (1965). Installation view of the exhibition Primary Structures. April 27–​June 12, 1966. The Jewish Museum, New York. Photo by Rudolph Burckhardt. Location: The Jewish Museum/​New York, NY/​U.S.A.

42  Kathryn M. Floyd

Figure 2.2  Installation photograph of Other Primary Structures, The Jewish Museum, New York, 2014. Photo credit: The Jewish Museum, New York /​Art Resource, NY. Description: Installation view of the exhibition Other Primary Structures, March 14–​May 18, 2014. Photo by: David Heald. Location: The Jewish Museum/​New York, NY/​U.S.A.

artists performing the representation of the “multicultural.” In the place of a “hypothetical” image of inclusion, a theatre of subjecthood, or a spectacle of historical re-​staging and re-​writing, “othered” artists must be able to integrate themselves “at the structural level” into the complexities of art’s vast networks not as objects on view, but as the constructors of new histories, images, and frameworks.

Other Primary Structures  43

Figure 2.3 Architectural model of Primary Structures at Other Primary Structures, The Jewish Museum, New York, 2014. Photo credit: The Jewish Museum, New York /​Art Resource, NY. Description: Installation view of the exhibition Other Primary Structures, March 14–​May 18, 2014. Photo by: David Heald. Location: The Jewish Museum/​New York, NY/​U.S.A.

44  Kathryn M. Floyd

Figure 2.4 Detail of the architectural model of Primary Structures at Other Primary Structures, The Jewish Museum, New York, 2014. Photo credit: The Jewish Museum, New York /​Art Resource, NY. Description: Installation view of the exhibition Other Primary Structures, March 14–​May 18, 2014. Photo by: David Heald. Location: The Jewish Museum/​New York, NY/​U.S.A.

Other Primary Structures  45

Figure 2.5  Installation photograph of Other Primary Structures showing photographic supports (far right), The Jewish Museum, New York, 2014. Photo credit: The Jewish Museum, New York /​Art Resource, NY. Description: Installation view of the exhibition Other Primary Structures, March 14–​May 18, 2014. Photo by: David Heald. Location: The Jewish Museum/​New York, NY/​U.S.A.

Notes 1 Jens Hoffmann, “Another Exhibition,” in Other Primary Structures (New York: The Jewish Museum, 2014), n.p. 2 Rachel Wells, Scale in Contemporary Sculpture: Enlargement, Miniaturisation and the Life-​Size, (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 5–​11. 3 Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood” in Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews, by Michael Fried (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 153. 4 Bruce Altshuler, Biennials and Beyond –​Exhibitions That Made Art History, 1962-​2002 (London: Phaidon, 2013), p. 53. 5 McShine was hired as a curator in 1965 and subsequently became an acting director at the Jewish Museum. In 1968 he returned to MoMA as an associate curator and remained there as chief curator at large until his retirement in 2008. 6 Kynaston McShine, Primary Structures, New York: The Jewish Museum, New York, 1966, n.p. 7 Ibid., n.p. 8 Grace Glueck, “Anti-​Collector, Anti-​Museum,” The New York Times, 24 April, 1966, p. X24.

46  Kathryn M. Floyd 9 James Meyer, Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 22–​24. 10 McShine, n.p. 11 Hilton Kramer, “Art: Reshaping the Outermost Limits,” New York Times, 28 April, 1966, p. 48. Kramer, “Primary Structures: The New Anonymity,” New York Times, 1 May, 1966, p. 147. Kramer, “An Art of Boredom,” New York Times, 5 June, 1966, p. 145. 12 Kramer 1966b, p. 48. 13 Kramer 1966c, p. 147. 14 Corrine Robins, “Object, Structure, or Sculpture: Where Are We?”, Arts Magazine 40: 9, September–​October, 1966, p. 33. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Remi Parcollet, “(Re)producing the Exhibition, (Re)thinking Art History. On the Visual Archives of Primary Structures,” Critique d’Art 46, Spring–​Summer, 2016, p. 3. https://​journ​als.open​edit​ion.org/​criti​qued​art/​21192. Accessed 25 January 2019. 18 As art historian Alex Potts discusses, installation shots were important for artists, critics, and art institutions in the 1960s because they provided visual evidence for the ways proximate conditions affected a work’s meaning and simultaneously the way a work impacted its adjacent surroundings. They helped to define the significant notion of site-​specificity by further forcing the viewer to “recognize that the siting of the work…was a major factor in its conception.” Alex Potts, “The Minimalist Object and the Photographic Image,” in Sculpture and Photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension, ed. by Geraldine A. Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 182. 19 Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, Expanded Edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 42. 20 Simon Sheikh, “Public Spheres and the Functions of Progressive Art Institutions,” 2004. Transversal/​eipcp, http://​eipcp.net/​tran​sver​sal/​0504/​she​ikh/​en. Accessed 30 January 2019. 21 Hoffmann, “Another Exhibition,” n.p. 22 Roberta Smith, “Minimalist Show, Minimally Revised,” New York Times, 10 April, 2014, p. C23. 23 Hoffmann, “Another Exhibition,” n.p. 24 The London firm A Practice for Everyday Life designed the exhibition, including the red and yellow graphics and double catalogue, which included a facsimile copy of the original and a new edition based on its cover and layout. 25 Kathryn Floyd, “Exhibition Views: Toward a Typology of the Installation Shot”, Revista de história da arte. 14, 2019, pp. 92–​109. 26 Laura C. Mallonee describes a further significant relationship between looking at miniature galleries and installation shots thusly: “Looking at doll-​sized art,’ she writes, ‘feels a lot like studying a photograph of an exhibition: you long to experience the works on a human scale, but you can’t. That’s also what makes it fun. These small galleries aren’t a replacement for normal ones, but they challenge our thinking about how we experience [real galleries] and by what criteria we dole out value.” Laura C. Mallonee, “Looking at Art in Tiny Galleries,”

Other Primary Structures  47 Hyperallergic, 2014. http://​hypera​ller​gic.com/​157​525/​look​ing-​at-​art-​in-​tiny-​ galler​ies. Accessed 5 November 2014. 27 Jens Hoffmann, Theater of Exhibitions (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2015), p. 28. 28 Ibid., p. 33. 29 Ibid., p. 28. 30 Smith, p. C23. 31 Hoffmann, Theater of Exhibitions, p. 56. 32 Fried, p. 156. 33 Ibid., pp. 163–​164. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., p. 160. 36 Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Duke University Press, 1992), p. 60. 37 Rasheed Araeen, “Art and Postcolonial Society” in Globalization and Contemporary Art, edited by Jonathan Harris (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2011), p. 265.

Part 2

Communities

3 The “Remembering Exhibitions” of South African Community Arts Re-​appraising the Art of Resistance in (Trans)national Contexts Ksenia Robbe Re-​opening the Archives of Anti-​apartheid Art In December 2015, the Weltkulturen Museum (WKM) in Frankfurt opened an exhibition which presented more than 150 works by black South African artists, 28 years after they had been exhibited in the same museum for the first time. The 600 artworks produced between the late 1960s and the mid-​1980s were acquired by the museum in 1986 and formed one of the focal points of its overall collection. The curators, Yvette Mutumba and Gabi Ngcobo, based at the WKM and the Wits School of Art in Johannesburg, respectively, titled the exhibition A Labour of Love. Having encountered the vast archive of works never exhibited since the 1980s, stored in an ethnographic museum in Germany, Mutumba who had just started working as a curator at the WKM was faced with a number of challenges. Among them was how to reflect on the specific historical moment which involved encounters between South African artists and German collectors and audiences. Those encounters involved relationships of inequality but also the shared passions and commitment to anti-​ apartheid struggle refracted through the 1980s exhibition and embedded in the archive. How to do justice to the aesthetic qualities as well as political emotion in these artworks produced in the framework of community art practices, which since the end of apartheid have been considered outdated and out of pace with the world of “contemporary art”?1 The approach that the curators chose was both unique and in dialogue with contemporary tendencies of revisiting and reinterpreting apartheid-​era transnational cultural production and collaborations in the broader Cold War contexts. While not attempting a historical recreation of the original show (for which only limited documentation was available2), they closely reflected on the processes of production, circulation and evaluation of the artworks which involved local and transnational networks. Thus, it was memory rather than historical records that guided the exhibition project. Furthermore, the exhibition had a transnational scope, involving from the beginning a South African curator, a group of young artists and students at the Wits as well as the older generation South African artists and art experts who were interviewed (some video-​recorded interviews were screened as part DOI: 10.4324/9780429279775-6

52  Ksenia Robbe of the exhibition, other were included in the catalogue). One of the artists, Sam Nhlengethwa, was invited for a residence at the WKM; he and the above-​ mentioned younger artists produced new works for the exhibition. The six-​ month show at the WKM in 2015–​16 was followed by a three-​month display at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2017. As a result, the work of exploring the archive and designing the show turned out to be more than an act of homage to the past of international solidarity campaigns against apartheid which engaged art as a weapon of political struggle. It became truly a process of remembering through “reviving” the archive, exploring its meanings in the present, and expanding it with contemporary works. In other words, the focus of this project, as my reading will demonstrate in detail, was a process (of recollecting the past) rather than a product. These processuality and performativity are reflected in the exhibition’s title (“the labour”), which also emphasizes the personal and emotional investment of the participants (“love”); together, these interrelated elements foreground practices of intergenerational conversation, the shaping of renewed connections between Africa and Europe, between the Cold War past and the present, and potentially, of new transnational communities invested in processes of decolonizing anti-​apartheid art and its histories. This chapter examines the curatorial strategies of A Labour of Love with the focus on its reflection on the transnational circulation of art in the context of apartheid and the Cold War and its engagement with an archive of South African community arts. Both of these aspects of South African art and cultural histories –​that were central to the transnational anti-​apartheid activism, both political and cultural (as the two were most often entwined)3 –​ have received renewed attention through research projects, publications and exhibitions in the past decade. In particular, the transnational movement of South African artists (mostly those in exile) and/​or their works has been examined in Louise Bethlehem’s project4, which revised the assumption of South Africa’s cultural isolation during the 1960s–​1980s and highlighted the role of this circulation in the shaping of global anti-​racist agendas and sensibilities.5 Furthermore, at least two edited volumes on related topics have been published in the past few years, one writing a global history of anti-​ apartheid movements, the other focusing on engagements with apartheid and anti-​apartheid in Western Europe.6 The histories of transnational anti-​ apartheid art production have also been a subject of a 2019 exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago featuring its collection of anti-​apartheid posters produced during the 1970s and 1980s by the Medu Ensemble –​a collective of exiled South African artists based in Botswana.7 The transnational focus and method of A Labour of Love which involved close collaborations between the German institution and South African artists, curators and critics ties in with these developments in (art) history and curatorship. The new aspect with which the show contributes to this conversation is its examining of the past and present of South African community arts –​a project that has so far been advanced by local initiatives

The “Remembering Exhibitions” of South African Community Arts  53 (usually, focused on recollecting the work of a single community arts centre in a city or province). During apartheid, community art centres in South Africa played a crucial role in providing black artists with training, materials, work space and the opportunity to exhibit and sell their works. Many of the centres were started by white artists and educators and involved the support of international organizations and missions. While some of the centres, such as Rorke’s Drift Arts and Crafts (from which much of the WKM’s collection comes) or the Polly Street Centre, appeared in the 1960s, the period of the late 1970s to the early 1990s saw the proliferation and increased politicization of community arts8. Particularly after the 1976 Soweto uprising which started as a protest against the colonial nature of “Bantu education”, in John Peffer’s words, “community roughly referred to the residents of black townships, culture was defined as resistance to apartheid, and politics was synonymous with alignment with the liberation movement.”9 Many of the now renowned South African artists of the older generation received training at these centres or contributed to their activities. However, their role in the history and the formation of contemporary South African art remains underexamined and un-​ remembered. Several of the centres ceased to exist after the end of apartheid and others had to scale down or change their profile, due to the decreased interest, on the national and global scales, in the forms and practices which came to be regarded as politically and aesthetically irrelevant, and the resulting lack of national or international funding.10 The archives of these centres, if preserved, are stored at various institutions, in the country and abroad, and are rarely studied or exhibited. An important step in counteracting this neglect has been the People’s Culture Project,11 conducted by Mario Pizzara and the Africa South Art Initiative, which involved digitizing and creating an online archive of artworks produced at community art centres. However, beyond making the works publicly accessible, a major challenge that remains is making them relevant and exploring their potential meanings for contemporary publics, particularly the younger generation without first-​hand experience of the apartheid period. The exhibition, writing and education project Uncontained: Opening the Community Arts Project Archive carried out by Emile Maurice and Heidi Grunebaum set itself exactly this goal. The exhibition took place at a private gallery in Belville (2012) and then at the National Gallery in Cape Town (2013). It did not restage a single show from the past although it might have referred to the many informal community arts exhibitions during the 1980s. As further creative engagement with the artworks of the Community Arts Project that had been stored in boxes at the Mayibuye Archives of the University of Western Cape, the project included the publication of a collection of essays written by artists and other intellectuals in response to the artworks included in the exhibition. Thus, central to the curatorial approach of this project was establishing a dialogue between the archive as a bearer of what Aleida Assmann calls “storage memory”12 and present-​day South

54  Ksenia Robbe African society. In distinction to “functional memory,” “storage memory,” in Assmann’s typology, refers to what is unusable, obsolete, or dated; it has no vital ties to the present and no bearing on identity formation. We may also say that it holds in store a repertoire of missed opportunities, alternative options, and unused material.13 A Labour of Love approached the stored archive of community arts at the WKM in exactly this way. Rather than historicizing it, which would involve, for instance, recovering the exact details of the collector’s interactions with the artists or extensively contextualizing the artworks in terms of their production and reception in the 1980s, the curators chose to tease out meanings of this archive (and let all participants of the project and the viewers do so) from present-​day perspectives. In what follows, I approach A Labour of Love as a project of remembering and examine its conceptual underpinnings, practices of execution and, ultimately, the significance of re-​appraising of community arts from a transnational perspective which this project performs. I situate it in relation to Reesa Greenberg’s typology of “remembering exhibitions”14 and further analyse its strategy by drawing on Ernst van Alphen’s notion of “reanimating the archive.”15 Since this exhibition shares in many ways its mnemonic approach with the above-​mentioned Uncontained, my reading draws a series of parallels between these projects, particularly with regard to their conceptual approaches to dealing with community arts archives. Following a more detailed discussion of the archive, the curators’ framing of the exhibition in terms of remembering, and the theoretical concepts that guide my analysis, the chapter focuses on three interrelated aspects of mnemonic strategies employed in the show: (1) the role of affect in framing interactions with the archive; (2) the ways in which the younger generation of artists entered in a dialogue with these works and their contexts; and (3) the strategies of re-​appraising community arts beyond the narrow understandings of the categories of “protest art” or “social art” in local and global, historical and present-​day contexts. Overall, my reading highlights the ways in which the exhibition creates a living memory of South African community arts by placing its practices in dialogue with present-​day inequalities faced by black artists in South Africa and globally, particularly in light of the erasure or commodification of community arts in post-​apartheid public memory. “Remembering Exhibitions”: Un-​forgetting Community Arts Exhibitions that recall earlier events of displaying an archive and reflecting on historical techniques of such display have by now become an acclaimed genre of “remembering exhibitions.” My reading of A Labour of Love along the lines suggested by Greenberg’s concept, however, requires extending its scope to explore the exhibition’s primary focus on the practices of acquiring,

The “Remembering Exhibitions” of South African Community Arts  55 collecting and translating between different socio-​cultural contexts (rather than exhibiting as such). Furthermore, while Greenberg’s analysis involves examples exclusively from Western exhibition history and contemporary practice, it is worth reflecting on the processes that guide and accompany the exhibition which reflects upon (post-​)colonial power relations. For the exhibition in focus is part of the larger reconsideration of the functioning of ethnographic museums in Western and non-​Western contexts.16 While this type of inquiry is common today, the case of the WKM’s collection is special in that it was assembled and presented as reflecting a contemporary moment in South African people’s struggle (rather than framing them in categories such as “African art,” devoid of time and disconnected from European or global present). The context of these works’ acquisition is treated as a significant aspect in the exhibition’s reflection on solidarities and personal friendship as well as inequalities in the context of transnational anti-​ apartheid resistance. The collection was acquired by Reverend Hans Blum as a representative of WKM, a West-​German museum, at the time of the UN-​supported cultural boycott of South Africa (in this sense, the museum was acquiring the works against the policies of the German state, which can be seen as a political statement as such17). WKM’s director Josef Franz Thiel came across some items from Blum’s private collection which he had assembled during his 15-​year stay in South Africa as a missionary. With a budget from the museum, Blum travelled to South Africa in 1986, in the midst of the “state of emergency” declared by the apartheid government, and, guided by local curators, gathered a collection of linocut prints as well as drawings, paintings, collages and wooden sculptures. The political urgency which was emphasized by the 1987 exhibition at the WKM titled Botschaften aus Südafrika (Messages from South Africa) lent the works of South African community art the quality of “the contemporary” even before the “global turn” and the emergence in the early 1990s of what is commonly periodized as “contemporary art.”18 The ways in which A Labour of Love re-​approaches the “forgotten” archives of community arts and their transnational contexts involve direct engagement with the (re)shaping of the global art market in the early 1990s as part of post-​ Cold War globalization. After the groundbreaking political transformations in South Africa (and Germany) in the early 1990s, the collection was deemed dated and irrelevant to the contemporary art scene and social context. The case of community arts works and practices being codified as an artefact of “the apartheid past” and thus disconnected from what is perceived as the present is symptomatic of the post-​apartheid socio-​ cultural imaginary which renders the 1990s democratic transition as “point zero” from which the “new South Africa” has emerged. The mainstream memory culture underpinned by this imaginary tends to include only those practices from the past that allow for the narratives of “overcoming” apartheid and speaking about its “legacies” rather than persisting structures.19 According to Heidi Grunebaum (2018),

56  Ksenia Robbe [i]‌n the temporal framing marking “past” from present that was being shaped during the 1990s, memory came to be viewed as a commodity, ossified and brittle, and best curated in the domain of public history through the museum and heritage industry, or what Ciraj Rassool incisively names “the South African memorial complex.”20 By engaging the archives of community arts, which have not been included in this “memorial complex,” Uncontained (on the national scale) and A Labour of Love (on transnational scale) turn their past into living memory, relevant for the contexts of contemporary racism and inequality, locally and globally. For examining memory practices employed by these projects, Greenberg’s theorization of “remembering exhibitions,” although requiring conceptual expansion in the outlined postcolonial/​post-​apartheid contexts, is of much value. According to her, remembering exhibitions “attest to a belief in a dynamic, rhizome-​like notion of history where past and present are interwoven”21. In contrast to linear constructions of traditional historiography, these exhibitions re-​spatialize the past by “making memory concrete, tangible, actual and interactive,” thus serving as “catalysts for changing perceptions and practices”22. Moreover, remembering exhibitions seek to re-​spatialize existing constructions of aesthetic performance and value as inscribed within art history discourses by exploring how the same objects and constellations might speak about the past and present in new ways. Compared to art historical projects that have engaged in rethinking categorizations of South African art, such as the four-​volume Visual Century: South African Art in Context, 1907-​2007 (2011), the two exhibitions practice a more performative approach towards the past, staging dynamic links between generations of artists and curators and between the artworks and the publics by employing affect, as I outline in the following sections. As such, they are examples of remembering rather than memorialization (the creation of the “memorial complex”). The type of remembering exhibitions outlined by Greenberg which is most relevant for the two discussed projects is what she calls a “riff”23 –​an improvisation on themes of an earlier exhibition which “produc[es] a distinct version” of the original. This improvisation involves dwelling upon and reconfiguring connections between past and present within the visual and discursive event. In the case of A Labour of Love, such reconfiguration involved the nexus of postcolonial archives and Western museum spaces, attempting not only to reconstruct interactions between them during the 1980s, but also to reflect on their relationships and power dynamics now. This reflection was embedded in the very structure of the project which involved South African artists and institutions. The exhibition itself was structured as a juxtaposition of artworks from the 1987 collection and those produced for the current project, which were placed next to of facing each other. Similarly, it created a dialogue between archival materials and the recordings of conversations between the older and younger South African artists and short video essays

The “Remembering Exhibitions” of South African Community Arts  57 by the curators and other younger contributors (running on the screens attached to the walls of the exhibition rooms) who ponder the questions of postcolonial inequalities in the art world. This dialogic composition is an example of “re-​animating the archive” –​ the memory practices in contemporary art which “foreground … exclusions from the archive by presenting them as yet another archive”24. Within this practice, “artists highlight this residue of the archive by collecting images that were until then not considered to be “archivable,” that is, of any value or importance. These images excluded from the archive are still there but cannot be looked at because according to the accepted discursive rules they do not show or articulate anything worth knowing.”25 While the entire archives of artworks produced in the frameworks of community arts can be considered in terms of cultural exclusion, the exhibitions’ reflection on the practices of community arts that were inherent to the production of these artworks re-​animates the archives most directly. An important part of A Labour of Love show comprised the various memorabilia from Blum’s archive –​photographs of artists, curators and places he visited in South Africa; clippings from South African and German newspapers with reports on human rights violations, on the role of community arts in anti-​apartheid resistance, and on Blum’s exhibitions (e.g., Passion in Südafrika from 1984) as engagements with apartheid injustice; inventories of the artworks he acquired, with cheques and signatures. The active employment of these paraphernalia in the exhibition –​the display of the cheques and inventories along with the artworks or printing and image of an artwork on a newspaper –​constitutes re-​animation by making the viewers reflect on the material frameworks and contexts of producing and evaluating (post)colonial art (Figures 3.1 and 3.2). The use of re-​ animating strategies in the two exhibitions should be considered within the interrelated local and global contexts of decreased interest towards the forms and practices of politically engaged community arts. Uncontained was an important predecessor to A Labor of Love in confronting this bias. In particular, the writing project that was a part of Uncontained was conceived as an invitation to rethink “the social, cultural and political scripts inherited from apartheid’s administrative reason” and as “a provocation to reflect on how the CAP [Community Arts Project] artworks may help us to think about society, politics, the aesthetic imagination, the question of the subject and the horizons of human life in the postapartheid.”26 Furthermore, part of the Uncontained and its reflective practice of building bridges between apartheid past and post-​apartheid present were the education programmes which included a series of linocut and community outreach print-​making workshops conducted by former CAP artists as well as workshops visiting public and private high schools in Cape Town and an exhibition of student artworks “Voices of the Youth” at the South African National Gallery.27 In a similar vein, A Labour of Love sets out to recover the voices and imaginations that have been excluded –​from the apartheid-​era canon, due

58  Ksenia Robbe to the racial bias, as well as “contemporary art,” when seen as thematically outdated and aesthetically unsophisticated (even though more recently this vision clashes with the growing interest in prints and the value of imperfection). By bringing the artworks and memories of the two generations in conversation, the exhibition not only gives new life to the visual culture of a distinct historical period; it also questions the ideas behind conventional periodizations and the temporality of apartheid versus post-​apartheid as well as the geo-​politics of “here” and “there.” Reconstructing “the sense of the present”28 at the time of anti-​apartheid struggle that was shared by communities in and outside of South Africa, and that involved many particular and personal narratives, constitutes a driving force behind the exhibition. The accent on the personal and emotional determines its temporality: it intertwines the re-​constructed past, the present and the future with today’s sense of the present as perceived and expressed by young artists in South Africa. Labour and Love: The Personal and the Political in Community Arts The principle of cross-​cultural and trans-​generational encounters underpinned the entire remembering project of A Labour of Love, which was marked by a meeting –​after almost three decades –​of Sam Nhlengethwa and Hans Blum, at the WKM. This meeting between the two protagonists in the story to be recollected by the exhibition is framed as a turning point that initiates the remembering process. Mutumba’s introductory essay opens with this scene, recounting it as a “touching moment,” with the conversation “alternating between an account of historical events, emotional memories and affectionate anecdotes”29. The personal encounter sets in motion the flow of memories which is encouraged and tentatively steered but never interfered with by the organizers-​witnesses. It puts into a conversation personal and political, as enacted in both past and present, while refusing to produce any finalized interpretation of the relations between the artists, collectors and artworks. A similar affect is mediated when Mutumba recounts, in a later talk, how the project began when she and Ngcobo decided to re-​approach the collection stored in the museum’s basement: “It was really in a true sense unpacking these boxes.”30 The metaphor of unpacking conveys an embodied encounter with the materiality of community arts practices and their neglect since the 1990s; it also mediates fascination, curiosity and care experienced by those of the younger generation when discovering the “forgotten” work performed against the odds of apartheid prohibitions on cross-​racial collaboration. These emotionally charged narratives clearly convey the curators’ overall approach of “re-​animating” the archive through personal(ized) memories. According to Silke Arnold-​de Simine, this is one of the key strategies of “the new museums” in which

The “Remembering Exhibitions” of South African Community Arts  59 […] representation of the past is intended to generate a sense of belonging which requires emotional investment and identification (Cubitt 2007: 11), sometimes to the extent that it suggests the imaginative living through events in order to develop strong forms of affective engagement. […] The aim is not only to pass on mediated memories of eyewitnesses to future generations, but to encourage visitors to experience the past vicariously and supply them with “prosthetic memories.” (Landsberg 2004)31 In A Labour of Love, such generation of “prosthetic memory”32 encourages younger people as well as people from other societies who do not have first-​ hand memory or other knowledge of anti-​apartheid activism to develop a personal connection to this past. This project is politically significant given the dominant framing of community arts and their role in the democratization of art in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s as things of the past. In search for the ways to re-​link past and present, the curators approached the archive of anti-​apartheid art through an unconventional angle, that is, the works’ expressions of intimacy, and considered their ambiguous evocations of the individual and the common. By approaching this archive through “the subject of love,” this project, in Ngcobo’s words, contributes to “an emerging chapter in South African memory recall.”33 Most importantly, the exhibition interlinks the personal and political, imaginary and material meanings of “love”: it reflects on the labour involved in establishing community arts centres as intercultural hubs during apartheid and the risks involved in exporting works by black artists; at the same time, it frames the interactions between the artists, teachers and collectors as “labours of love,” for the sake of future freedom. As Ngcobo explains, this project also intervenes in the still prevalent vision of anti-​apartheid art as being “only” a weapon against the regime, devoid of other themes and aesthetic properties. This vision became established after the 1989 speech by prominent activist and judge Albie Sachs, in which he urged writers and artists to stop regarding their productions only as “weapons.” “What about love?” was his rhetorical question to the audience. Focusing on the “labours of love,” then, offered the curators a way to consider how the artworks in the WKM collection, in a sense, “contradict Sachs’ […] lament” by revealing that “[a]‌partheid can never be a love story, even though many love stories can be told through the cracks found within its grand narratives.”34 The works included in the exhibition rarely address politics directly, but their depiction of black peoples’ everyday life cracks open any neat separation between the private and the political. John Muafangejo’s linocuts, for instance, include expressions of love and affection such as the one depicting a man and a woman facing each other accompanied by the text “the love is approaching but too much of anything is very dangerous,” thus reflecting on the difficulties that may overshadow a love relationship. The political

60  Ksenia Robbe circumstances of love in times of apartheid are more clearly conveyed in Muafangejo’s other linocut representing a black woman and a white man hugging each other titled “they are meeting again at home.” It relays the politics of interracial love and the concomitant dangers, yet introduces the viewers to a space of intimacy and reassures them that the lovers will “meet again” despite the precarious context. Framing these works beyond the private and the banal shows how the ordinary acts of living, loving and producing art during apartheid were political in their defiance of the un-​dignifying and depersonalizing politics of apartheid. The ambiguities of politics and private life are also explored in the artists’ reflections and conversations. An intriguing example of this is the interview of Lionel Davis by Farzanah Badsha. When asked whether his art deals with the traumas of forced removals and destruction of communities, he recalled Sachs’ speech as indicating a transition from the necessity of making art with a political message to the possibility of “talk[ing] about your own anxieties, your own desires, your own weaknesses.”35 The curator, however, observed a contradiction between Davis’ periodization of his work (and the general “transitions” in South African art) and his own pieces such as the 1982 print Confined which was part of the exhibition. The print depicts a close-​up of a man whose face radiates with agony and angst; behind him, against the dark background, we see the white shape of a door. The picture is framed as an oval surrounded by a black background (according to Davis, this represents a peephole through which a prisoner is observed by a ward).36 This work, thus, oscillates between the private (the intimacy of one’s home and personalized expression of fear) and the public (one’s being under the surveillance of the apartheid state, the political context of the person’s anxiety). In addressing Davis’ suggestion that South African artists have moved from the confinements of “political art” to more private expression, Badsha argued: For me, the argument that during apartheid people had to make art that was political and then after 1994 they could make work that was about identity and other themes is not strictly true. You made this work in 1982, which was the height of apartheid. In many ways you are dealing with something very personal. […] If one didn’t know that the work was a self-​ portrait and you hadn’t told me it was about house arrest, I could have imagined that it was about depression, about physical confinement due to disability, emotional confinement, etc.37 By showing how, on the one hand, anti-​apartheid art mediated personal emotions and how, on the other hand, post-​apartheid art is often deeply political and continues addressing racialized violence, the interviewer and the curators convey the relevance of community arts and their political-​aesthetic practices today. This approach strongly resonates with the perspective and structure of Uncontained. Many of the works included in the exhibition and

The “Remembering Exhibitions” of South African Community Arts  61 explored within the writing project are focused on the spaces, figures and practices of the ordinary. Furthermore, by placing works that refer to political events alongside scenes of everyday life and by employing generalized categories for the book’s sections (“Time,” “Subjectivity” and “Space”), the project reconfigured conventional divisions between the political and the personal. In the words of Desiree Lewis who contributed an essay “Women at Work,” “[a]‌lthough produced in a collective committed to art as a ‘weapon of struggle’, [the CAP artworks] also testify to a complex nexus of individual artistic imagination, aesthetics and politics.”38 Regarding Ricky Dyaloyi’s linocut Washing Day she notes that “[r]ather than representing the woman as a symbol, […] the artist conveys the intensely personalised suffocation of her private gendered circumstances.”39 Compared to the popular images of militant women on anti-​apartheid posters during that time, this portrait concentrates on the domestic sphere and the “insignificant” monotonous work of a mother (a child is depicted next to her) doing the washing. Yet, the woman’s pose with her hand with the washing frozen in mid-​air and her gaze penetrating the space in front of her (the space of the viewer) turn this quotidian scene into a space of the political that encompasses collective defiance and resistance to racialized exploitation but partakes of it by other means. Finally, the title and the corresponding outlook of A Labour of Love involved both drawing upon and critical re-​reading of Passion in Südafrika and Botschaften aus Südafrika. While taking up the element of “passion,” they re-​route its religious meanings to emphasize an impassioned and affective approach to the past. Their exploratory engagement with the multiplicity and paradoxes of love at the times of anti-​apartheid struggle was reflected in a list of meanings associated with this word which was placed on a wall as part of the exhibition. While these include “struggle” and “empowerment,” other associations are “retreat” and “a bridge” (Figure 3.3). By expanding the meanings of community arts beyond the categories of either “the local and the ordinary” or “international and political,” the exhibition creates an opening for younger artists and audiences from different countries to tap into this and similar archives for aesthetic-​political practices that may be of relevance in responding to contexts of racialized violence and inequality today. Conversations through Artworks The works of the four young artists, including Ngcobo herself, were an inherent part of the project and resulted from a series of workshops and conversations at the Wits School of Art. In what follows I read three of these works as examples of the “riffing” mnemonic technique. Ngcobo’s Prototype enters a conversation with Muafangejo’s linocut “They are shaking their hands because they are longing each other” which depicts a black and a white woman facing and reaching towards each other. Ngcobo’s piece depicts the image of the black woman on black copy paper (the figure, thus, appears

62  Ksenia Robbe as a grey shade and a reverse image, facing right instead of left in the original). Next to it is a list of notes describing the artist’s working process: between/​ within Note taking drawing (from) copying -​> tracing printing learning inscribing discipline duplicating cheating re-​possess a language The practice of copying in print-​making is doubly explored in this work –​ through literally duplicating the image by using copy paper and conceptualizing this process as a practice of “tracing,” i.e., walking in the steps of her predecessor, unravelling the meanings of his work and imagining it as a starting point for one’s own art-​making. This process, following the notes, is self-​educational as it involves “learning,” “note taking” and “discipline”; but it also contains an element of playfulness and improvisation (the “cheating” involved in copying). This learning process, then, culminates in “re-​possessing a language” –​a phrase that accentuates not only acquisition of a skill, but the enabling aspect of “possession” that implies an ability to use this repertoire creatively. Thus, by re-​tracing the production process of an older generation black artist, Ngcobo re-​creates a “prototype” that provides a “tradition” and a grounding for her future work. In addition, the title engages the archive of representing black women within which the artist inscribes the copied image as a “prototype” for her characters and her own self. Another riff on Muafangejo’s work –​his Giraffe in 1979 –​is a linocut by Chad Codeiro, a student at the Wits School of Arts, titled -​1 Giraffe in 2014. Similar to the original piece, we see the entwined bodies of two giraffes, but instead of a natural habitat, they are depicted as being driven away by a truck; instead of a curious and questioning gaze, the present-​day giraffes are blindfolded. The neck of the one on the right is wrenched backwards, exposing a gaping dark wound. Thus, the sense of vulnerability transmitted by the 1979 piece has transformed into a perception of captivity and loss of agency. “Minus one giraffe” 35 years later involves, possibly, not only an ecological reading of the older artwork, but also a reflection on community and intimacy (a major theme in Muafangejo’s art), and the conditions of possibility for free, autonomous thinking and being. In Codeiro’s piece, this reflection most probably involves young people’s disillusionment with the present and future of the “new” South Africa compared to the past when the objectives and terms of resistance were clearer and broadly shared.40 In this

The “Remembering Exhibitions” of South African Community Arts  63 neoliberal present, the subjects (giraffes) appear as blind(ed) to each other’s experience, and any vision of a different future seems to be precluded. Nathaniel Sheppard’s Ke-​Dezemba Boss paralleling Johannes Phokela’s 1986 linocut Ama-​ Swazi Traditional Dance expresses similar critique regarding the commodification of traditional practices in South Africa. Phokela’s piece represents a caricatured image of a stereotypical “African” painting –​using a yellow-​brown palette to sketch a desert-​like landscape, with an ecstatic figure of a musician playing the drum at the foreground and of exoticized half-​naked women dancing against the setting sun. The caption “Ama-​Swazi Traditional Dance” is written in an advertisement style across the upper part of the picture, signifying commercial nature of the image of the Swazi practices and the work of a visual artist. Sheppard’s linocut takes over the image of a desert and the pose of the musician against it, but instead of the drum he is holding an open box that collects banknotes flying into it from the sky. The eagle hovering over the corner from which the money seems to be streaming might be alluding to the imperial power of the US/​Western capital over South Africa and its cultural production. “Ke-​Dezemba Boss” replacing the “Ama-​Swazi” caption is a reference to a recently viral phrase among the South African youth that conveys the beginning of the festive December season and proclaims exuberant entertainment and consumption as permitted. By engaging Phokela’s earlier critique of self-​commoditization, Sheppard’s riff underscores continuities between the 1980s and today and thus reveals the lack of socio-​cultural transformation in post-​apartheid South Africa, despite the changing techniques of exploitation. Rethinking Community Arts Part of the conceptual inquiry of A Labour of Love are the art historical terms and discourses employed to describe black South African art of the 1960s–​1980s. As Mutumba observes, art produced during this period is habitually lumped together using terms such as “township art” or “transitional art”; hence, the curators’ aim was to “break [these frameworks] open” and “give space to the singular individual artists within this bigger narrative” of struggle against apartheid.41 Since most of the works were produced by artists who were active within the community arts initiatives across South Africa (Rorke’s Drift, FUBA, CAP, etc.), the term “community arts” also deserves critical scrutiny, which the exhibition implicitly invokes. In his contribution to the catalogue, Ciraj Rassool charts a history of black South African art in which he emphasizes the role of community arts projects since the 1970s in producing innovative work as well as initiating conceptual inquiry into “the ways in which art by black artists had been separated from the mainstream by white critics.”42 This happened, for instance, when black art was “framed as ‘neglected’, its knowability only made possible through processes of discovery, recovery and revelation, through specially curated exhibitions or significant collections.”43

64  Ksenia Robbe Focusing on the archive of a single community arts centre, Uncontained is more explicit in its project of rethinking the frameworks through which we perceive the art of the 1970s–​1980s today. Hence, it engaged in remembering the ways in which the art of that period had been conceptualized by its practitioners rather than providing “simply an account of the place of the community arts in the history of art in South Africa.”44 This approach foregrounds meaning-​ making through memory and affective engagement and calls for rethinking conventional boundaries between art as either aesthetic or educational or political practice, conceptualizing works of the CAP as being all that at once. It urges the viewers and readers “to re-​visit the very political crisis out of which we emerged as South Africans,”45 thus making them see and sense this art (practices) as immediately relevant for present-​day identities and struggles. Questions regarding the relevance of recollecting community arts practices after the legislative end of apartheid have been raised since the early 2000s, when South African art started to become increasingly commercialized.46 After the end of apartheid, as Ashraf Jamal observes, even despite the “increased visibility” of black artists whose works were included in major exhibitions and projects on “resistance art,” their reception was still “circumscribed because it was based on classifying them by ethnic categories, thus positioning them outside the art-​historical canon.”47 In his close study of the Thupelo workshops which during the 1980s set up collaborations between South African community artists and US artists and educators, John Peffer interrogated the ideas of community arts being either “local” or “universal,” merely “social” or only “political.”48 In contrast to these restraining interpretations, he suggested that we recall how during the last decade of apartheid aesthetic practices in “black” South African art were not separate from or secondary to its political messages and contexts of production. On the contrary, art and specifically community arts practices were a platform for engaging in political activism. And vice versa, the aesthetic innovation of the Thupelo artists (e.g. non-​representational abstract forms) and their transnational collaborations were tightly related to the politics of non-​racialism and cultural openness that ANC politicians (many of whom were familiar with the artists in question) promoted during the transitional and early post-​ apartheid period. In Peffer’s words, during this period “the struggle for art was the vanguard, not the reflection, of the spirit of revolution. Is it still?”49 This question that closed Peffer’s dissertation and opened his readings towards the present and future of South African art is still pertinent today, and its critical potential needs to be unravelled. It is exactly this point that Same Mduli, South African art historian and critic, stresses in her contribution to the exhibition’s catalogue noting that […] few have considered the prospects of a liberated society by imagining a new purpose for art. It was just this act of imagination, though, that was a key component in the stylistic modes of expression in the work of black

The “Remembering Exhibitions” of South African Community Arts  65 artists working from the 1970s to the early 1980s which led to a variety of schools of creative thought such as the Federated Union of Black Artists (FUBA) or the Thupelo Workshops.50 Re-​invigorating this perspective on art as a practice of education, collaboration and communication that creates new socialities is a plea underlying both A Labour of Love and Uncontained. Given the intensity and interconnectedness of their inquiry into the relevance of the democratizing practices and ethos of community arts, they can be regarded as representing a present, and perhaps a future, tendency. A Labour of Love, however, avoids using the term “community arts” in framing the exhibition, which resonates with the curators’ aim of breaking open conventional categories. The term “community,” however central it was to the resistance movements and organizational practices of the 1980s, has been particularly prone to appropriations by government discourses and policies both during51 and after apartheid52, and to essentialization, as involving associations with “authenticity.”53 At the same time, as Rassool observes in the context of community museums with their central features dating back to the 1980s, “community” has also been “a category through which to think about local social history as a means of questioning the teleologies of national history.”54 It is this dimension of community arts that the exhibition both questions and reclaims, as a way of understanding and re-​conceptualizing late-​apartheid “black art” within the transnational contexts that were constitutive of it. Conclusions This reading of the strategies of re-​appraising South African community arts in recent exhibitions, with the focus on A Labour of Love and charting comparisons with Uncontained, has outlined the ways in which these projects of re-​animating archives of late apartheid art in local and transnational contexts employed practices of remembering (rather than historicizing or memorializing). This work of memory involved both situating and careful unbounding of the entire archives and individual works from their original contexts and creating present-​day responses to them. Both exhibitions developed personal and affective engagements with the archives –​ by curators, invited authors and those who participated in the production of artworks and the creation of archives. Furthermore, the exhibitions foreground the role of emotional attachments and everyday life in their framing and interpretation of the artworks, including the ways in which they interpret the emergence of the archives themselves through practices of local and transnational friendship and solidarity. An important part of these remembering projects was the development of present-​ day perspectives on community arts, by older and younger generations; in both cases this involved the production of new texts and artworks. Uncontained involved the writing project which yielded novel

66  Ksenia Robbe interpretations and constellations of the artworks often perceived as dated, along with a series of workshops sharing techniques and reflecting upon the practices of community arts with younger students. In A Labour of Love, re-​ connection and exploration of past, present, and future entailed the production of new artworks which imagine bridges to the community arts tradition. In Ngcobo’s words, this process sought to develop “a grammar for resurrecting historical reference points” and “to examine refreshed entry points in order to activate other possible resistance strategies”55 (my emphasis). This project is of particular significance in the context of the ongoing commodification of anti-​apartheid art and political resistance practices within “the South African memorial complex.”56 An important strategy of creating living memories of community arts and considering their relevance today was breaking down of the categories through which they have been conventionally considered –​“protest art” versus “art for the art’s sake”, “political” versus “social” art; “black” and “white”, “local” and “transnational.” The exhibitions eloquently show how representation of the apartheid everyday as well as the practices of producing and circulating art by black artists were political. At the same time, reducing them to having been only instruments of fighting apartheid freezes the works and practices surrounding them as objects of the past and of local significance, denying the ways in which they laid a ground for the present, and in which their aesthetics can inspire new art practices in South Africa and globally. While placing community arts from the Global South within both local and transnational contexts of their production and reception, the projects also reflected on past and present ideas of the communal and community. Considering the 1980s art in South Africa as a historical precedent, they focused on the role of socially conscious art in conceiving new socialities before more formalized and top-​down transformations took place. As these projects demonstrate, practices of rethinking and forging new understandings of arts-​based resistance in the 1980s as genealogical beginnings of the present can be a starting point for developing innovative and locally grounded ways for social and political action through art. Some examples of this can be seen in more recent projects such as the above-​ mentioned exhibition of anti-​ apartheid posters by the Medu Ensemble, but also in works of young South African artists, many of them university students, during the nation-​wide student protests against colonial education practices, #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall, in 2015–​2016. These artists were drawing on anti-​apartheid approaches and visions of art from the 1970s–​1980s in creating current art of protest including installations on campuses and exhibitions.57 Many tropes from anti-​apartheid visual culture of that period were also invoked and appropriated by the protesters.58 In his reflection on the relevance of the Medu Ensemble today, South African critic Ashraf Jamal mentions art practices that were part of the recent protests and argues that

The “Remembering Exhibitions” of South African Community Arts  67 [t]‌hese interventions highlighted once again how the relationship between arts and praxis cannot be left to the well-​heeled and hallowed spaces of arts fairs, galleries and museums, and that art can yet expand the emancipatory project that organizations such as Medu began.59 If we consider the outspokenly political art by Medu and community art from the same period together, as varied anti-​apartheid practices, Jamal’s interpretation speaks directly to and with the visions promoted by the discussed exhibitions.

Figure 3.1 Artworks from the WKM’s archive exhibited alongside the invoices and receipts issued for their purchase. Photo credit: Esther Schreuder.

68  Ksenia Robbe

Figure 3.2 A sculpture from the WKM’s archive exhibited with an inventory number around its neck. Photo credit: Esther Schreuder.

Figure 3.3 Installation view of A Labour of Love at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2017. Photo credit: Contemporary And (C&).

The “Remembering Exhibitions” of South African Community Arts  69 Notes 1 Yvette Mutumba, “The Moment and the Time: A Museum Collection as A Labour of Love,” in A Labour of Love: Kunst aus Südafrika. Die 80er Jetzt, edited by Yvette Mutumba and Gabi Ngcobo (Berlin: Kerber Art, 2016), pp. 11–​12. 2 Gabi Ngcobo, “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” in A Labour of Love: Kunst aus Südafrika. Die 80er Jetzt, edited by Yvette Mutumba and Gabi Ngcobo (Berlin: Kerber Art, 2016), p. 21. 3 John Peffer, Art and the end of apartheid. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009; Hagg, Gerard. “The State and Community Arts Centres in a Society in Transformation.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 13, no. 2, 2010, pp. 163–​184. 4 Louise Bethlehem. “Restless Itineraries.” Social Text 136, 2018, pp. 47–​70. 5 Stefan Helgesson, Louise Bethlehem and Gül Bilge Han. “Cultural Solidarities: Apartheid and the Anticolonial Commons of World Literature,” Safundi 19:3, 2018, pp. 260–​268. 6 Anna Konieczna, and Rob Skinner (eds.). A Global History of Anti-​ Apartheid: ‘Forward to Freedom’ in South Africa. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019; Knud Andresen, Sebastian Justke and Detlef Siegfried (eds.) Apartheid and Anti-​Apartheid in Western Europe. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 7 For a brief outline of the exhibition, see www.artic.edu/​exhi​biti​ons/​9039/​the-​peo​ ple-​shall-​gov​ern-​medu-​art-​ensem​ble-​and-​the-​anti-​aparth​eid-​pos​ter 8 Zayd Minty, “Post-​apartheid Public Art in Cape Town: Symbolic Reparations and Public Space.” Urban Studies 43.2, 2006, pp. 424–​425. 9 Peffer, Art and the end of apartheid, xviii. 10 Hagg, “The State and Community Arts Centres.” 11 Available at https://​asai.co.za/​peop​les-​cult​ure/​. 12 Aleida Assmann. Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Arts of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 119–​134. 13 Ibid., p. 127. 14 Reesa Greenberg, “’Remembering Exhibitions’: From Point to Line to Web,” Tate Papers 12. 15 Ernst Van Alphen, “The Politics of Exclusion, or, Reanimating the Archive,” The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 49–​50, 2015, pp. 118–​137. 16 Another example of postcolonial self-​ reflection by ethnographic museums in Europe is the Tropenmuseum in The Netherlands (for documentation of discussions regarding the museum’s ‘dealing’ with its colonial past and restructuring its profile see the symposium report “Tropenmuseum for a Change! Present between Past and Future”, edited by Daan van Dartel. https://​frame​rfra​ med.nl/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2011/​08/​TROPE​NMUS​EUM-​FOR-​A-​CHA​NGE.-​ A-​SYMPOS​IUM-​REP​ORT-​2009.pdf). 17 Mutumba, “The Moment and the Time,” p. 14. 18 Ibid. p. 11. 19 Heidi Grunebaum, Memorializing the Past: Everyday Life in South Africa after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. New York: Transaction, 2011; Paul Gready, Paul, The Era of Transitional Justice: The Aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and Beyond. New York & London: Routledge, 2011.

70  Ksenia Robbe 20 Heidi Grunebaum, “Debates on Memory Politics and Counter-​Memory Practices in South Africa in the 1990s,” Education as Change 22.2, 2018, p. 10. 21 Greenberg, “Remembering Exhibitions”. 22 Ibid. 23 The example Greenberg discusses in detail is Michael Glasmeier’s 2005 exhibitions marking the 50th anniversary of the first documenta, which took place in the regular documenta locations in Kassel and included both signature and less well-​known pieces from the previous eleven exhibitions. 24 Van Alphen, “The Politics of Exclusion,” p. 118. 25 Ibid., p. 123. 26 Heidi Grunebaum, “Uncontained and the Constraints of Historicism as Method: A Reply to Mario Pissarra,” Third Text Africa 3:1, 2013, 91. 27 Grunebaum, “Uncontained and the Constraints of Historicism,” p. 86. 28 Mutumba, “The Moment and the Time,” p. 12. 29 Ibid., p. 10. 30 Yvette Mutumba, “The Visibility of Contemporary Art from African Perspectives,” Public talk at Framer Framed, Amsterdam, 2017. 31 Silke Arnold-​de Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 12–​13. 32 Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture, Columbia University Press, 2004. 33 Ngcobo, “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” p. 19. 34 Ibid., p. 22. 35 Farzanah Badsha, “’It’s about Being Able to Create’: A Conversation between Lionel Davis and Farzanah Badsha, Muizenberg, Cape Town, August 2015,” in A Labour of Love: Kunst aus Südafrika. Die 80er Jetzt, edited by Yvette Mutumba and Gabi Ngcobo (Berlin: Kerber Art, 2016), p. 60. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Desiree Lewis, “Women at Work,” in Uncontained: Opening the Community Arts Project Archive, edited by Heidi Grunebaum and Emile Maurice (Belville: Centre for Humanities Research Publication, 2012), p. 153. 39 Ibid. 40 This sense of disorientation is discussed by Nathaniel Sheppard, Codeiro’s collaborator and also a student at the Wits, in the conversation of the young artists with Bongi Dhlomo-​ Mautloa, an artist and arts administrator who helped Blum establish contacts with artists and centres around South Africa during his visit in 1986. Dhlomo-​ Mautloa, Bongi, Gabi Ngcobo, Michelle Monareng, Nathaniel Sheppard and Chad Codeiro.“ ‘They Couldn’t See the Immediacy of Visual Language as a Driver to People’s Social Consciousness for a Long Time’: A Conversation between Bongi Dhlomo-​Mautloa, Gabi Ngcobo, Michelle Monareng, Nathaniel Sheppard and Chad Codeiro, Wits School of Arts, Johannesburg, August 2015,” in A Labour of Love: Kunst aus Südafrika. Die 80er Jetzt, edited by Yvette Mutumba and Gabi Ngcobo (Berlin: Kerber Art, 2016), p. 44. 41 Mutumba, “The Visibility of Contemporary Art,” 18:00-​19:00. 42 Ciraj Rassool, “South African Art and Apartheid,” in A Labour of Love: Kunst aus Südafrika. Die 80er Jetzt, edited by Yvette Mutumba and Gabi Ngcobo (Berlin: Kerber Art, 2016), p. 28.

The “Remembering Exhibitions” of South African Community Arts  71 43 44 45 46 47

Rassool, “South African Art and Apartheid,” p. 26. Heidi Grunebaum et al, “Uncontained: Itineraries of Thought,” p. 29. Ibid., p. 30. Hagg, “The State and Community Arts Centres,” p. 170. Ashraf Jamal, “Common Sympathies: Six Asides about Resistance Art,” in The People Shall Govern! Medu Art Ensemble and the Anti-​Apartheid Poster, 1979-​ 1985, edited by Antawan I. Byrd and Felicia Mings (Chicago IL: Art Institute of Chicago, 2020), p. 48. 48 Peffer, The Struggle for Art at the End of Apartheid. 49 Peffer, The Struggle for Art, p. 281. 50 Same Mduli, “Memories of How We Speak It,” in A Labour of Love: Kunst aus Südafrika. Die 80er Jetzt, edited by Yvette Mutumba and Gabi Ngcobo (Berlin: Kerber Art, 2016), p. 32. 51 Belinda Bozzoli, “Class, Community and Ideology in the Evolution of South African Society,” in Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives, edited by Belinda Bozzoli (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987), p. 5. 52 Hagg, “The State and Community Arts Centres,” p. 167. 53 Ciraj Rassool, “Community Museums, Memory Politics, and Social Transformation in South Africa: Histories, Possibilities, and Limits,” in Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/​Global Transformations, edited by Ivan Karp et al. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 311. 54 Ibid., 312. 55 Ngcobo, “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” p. 22. 56 Ciraj Rassool, “Human Remains, the Disciplines of the Dead, and the South African Memorial Complex,” in Derek Peterson, Kodzo Gavua, and Ciraj Rassool, eds., The Politics of Heritage in Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 57 Ksenia Robbe, “Erinnerung als Waffe der Dekolonisierung: Kunst und StudentInnen-​ Bewegung im heutigen Südafrika,” trans. by Gerhard Hauck and Reinhart Kössler. Peripherie 144 (2016): 432–​454; “Confronting Disillusionment: On the Rediscovery of Socialist Archives in Recent South African Cultural Production,” Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 19:4, 2018, pp. 398–​415. 58 Kylie Thomas. “Decolonization if Now: Photography and Student-​ Social Movements in South Africa.” Visual Studies, 33:1, 2018, pp. 98–​110. 59 Jamal, “Common Sympathies: Six Asides about Resistance Art,” p. 49.

4 The Reflexive Riff Revisiting Contemporary Negro Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art Morgan Dowty, Gamynne Guillotte, and Jennifer P. Kingsley In February 1939, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) opened Contemporary Negro Art (CNA), one of the United States’ (US) first group exhibitions of art by black artists in a public art museum. From June 12, 2018 to October 27, 2018 the museum revisited CNA with the exhibition 1939: Exhibiting Black Art at the BMA. The exhibition 1939 featured 15 prints and drawings from the museum’s permanent collection by 7 of the 29 black artists who showed work in the original exhibition (Figure 4.1)1. It also displayed archival materials from the CNA project (Figure 4.2) and included interpretive materials—​ an in-​ gallery brochure and student-​ authored website—​ that highlighted the absence of CNA artworks in 1939. On the title wall, a prominent pull quote drawn from Alain Locke’s foreword to the CNA catalog cued visitors to read the museum’s revisiting of CNA against a decidedly contemporary conversation about racial equity and representational justice in American art museums. It stated “Art in a democracy should above all else be democratic, which is to say that it must be truly representative” (Figure 4.3). By such means 1939 juxtaposed exhibitions past and present, artists present and absent, and did so in dialogue with the narratives art institutions tell themselves about themselves. In its form 1939 corresponds to the riff type of remembering exhibition described by Reesa Greenberg.2 But 1939 displayed a reflexive impulse that surfaces critical questions about how we should understand the memory work performed by remembering exhibitions. Remembering exhibitions have been variously linked to a historiographic turn in art history, the maturation of curatorial studies as a discipline, and a growing preoccupation with the history of exhibitions and curators among art theorists, curators, and critics.3 They also speak to a renewed academic interest in museums as sites for producing disciplinary knowledge,4 and evoke the artistic practice of institutional critique, which has often expressed itself using museum forms.5 Indeed the practice of remembering exhibitions brings with it the opportunity to interrogate canon formation, and in their virtual space may even, as Greenberg claims, multiply narratives to the point where canonicity is itself challenged as a concept.6 At the same time, by elevating select exhibitions DOI: 10.4324/9780429279775-7

The Reflexive Riff  73 as worthy of public and scholarly consideration, and by excavating and documenting them in ways that require deep archival engagement and documentation, remembering exhibitions participate in shaping their own canon, that of influential modern art shows (and curators), in ways that must be understood to have racial dimensions and impact.7 A growing body of scholarship on the history of exhibiting black history and culture in the US confirms the extent to which American exhibition history parallels the trajectory of American racial politics.8 It is no great stretch to presume a similar connection with exhibitions that revisit that history, or to consider that remembering exhibitions more broadly tangle with cultural and identity politics and related institutional memory work. Using 1939 as a springboard, this chapter blends the perspectives of academic scholarship and museum practice to model a methodology for investigating the institutional motivations and purposes of remembering exhibitions and their impact on visitors. We pose critical questions about remembering exhibitions in the context of museums’ reflexive impulses in the present, asking who such exhibitions are for and what memory work they perform. We contextualize the reception and afterlife of CNA up to the present, and go behind the scenes to interrogate the curatorial and interpretive decisions at work in 1939. The 1939 Project: Context Instigated under newly arrived museum leadership in late 2016, the project that culminated in 1939 brought this chapter’s co-​authors together as collaborators: Morgan Dowty, curatorial assistant in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the BMA and the exhibition’s curator; Gamynne Guillotte, chief education officer and responsible for interpretative planning and realization; and Jennifer Kingsley, director of the Program in Museums and Society at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) who engaged her undergraduate students in the development of interpretive materials for 1939. The project launch coincided with the unveiling of a plan to radically transform the BMA “to become the most socially engaged in the country,” a phrase intended to manifest the BMA’s commitment to becoming more relevant and accessible for local communities, and which signaled more specifically a commitment to racial equity, diversity, and inclusion.9 Revisiting CNA had obvious resonance for Baltimore, a majority black city that in 2015 witnessed significant protests in the wake of the death of Freddie Grey while in police custody, and in 2017 saw its Confederate monuments removed in response to racist violence in Charlottesville, VA–​including the statues of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee on horseback that stood across the street from the museum.10 Moreover, the concept for 1939 evolved against the background of several high-​profile curatorial moves at the BMA to engage with black art. As co-​commissioner of the 2017 U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the museum presented the work of black abstract painter Mark Bradford and would reprise his installation in the museum’s galleries in fall-​winter 2019

74  Morgan Dowty, Gamynne Guillotte, and Jennifer P. Kingsley (Tomorrow Is Another Day). In spring-​summer 2018 the museum would exhibit the never-​ before-​ shown sculptural practice of the black abstract painter Jack Whitten that explored his connection to West African and Aegean art (Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963–​2017). Concurrently the BMA was garnering international attention for its de-​accessioning efforts and a commitment to collecting work by artists of color, women, and other individuals underrepresented in the museum’s holdings.11 The exhibition 1939 thus operated within a larger field of activity that appeared to be staging the start of rapid institutional movement toward racial equity at an unprecedented scale. At the same time, 1939 made visible a moment in the museum’s past that could be understood as a precedent of sorts for the future imagined by the present. Indeed at its opening in 2018, museum leadership framed 1939 in both retrospective and prospective terms. The director stated, “this exhibition centers on a decisive moment in the BMA’s history and highlights the value of the museum responding deliberately to community needs and desires with ground-​breaking art exhibitions...I am very pleased to present the work of my predecessors as we look toward the future of this great museum”12 This invocation of CNA as both precedent and foil to the present continued in some ways a late-​twentieth century pattern of the BMA using CNA to fashion itself as a home for black art, but its elision of the recent past signaled important differences in contemporary racial politics and in the impact envisioned by the museum’s present. CNA and Black Art at the Museum before 2018: Exhibiting and Collecting Black Art at the BMA CNA brought together BMA curator and later Director Adelyn Breeskin and Vivian Cook, a black activist in Baltimore affiliated with the art committee of the Cooperative Women’s Civic League (CWCL). In concert with several prominent black Americans, including her CWCL colleague Sara Fernandis, Cook served on the committee that recommended CNA to the museum. Subsequently, Cook stayed engaged in museum affairs through regular contact with Breeskin. Their exchanges reveal the labor both women put into maintaining the visibility of black art at the BMA in the 1940s. In 1940, the BMA hosted the CWCL’s art contest and exhibition,13 and in 1948 Adelyn Breeskin, by then director of the BMA, answered Vivian Cook’s request that the BMA participate in Negro History Week by organizing the exhibition Contemporary Negro Painting.14 Other all-​black exhibits at the BMA in these years included two originating in D.C.: the American Federation of Arts’ Creative Art of the American Negro (1942) curated by Holger Cahill, the national director of the Federal Art Project; The G. Place Gallery’s New Names in American Art (1944) organized by gallery directors Caresse Crosby and David Porter with help from Alain Locke (also involved in CNA) and James V. Herring, the director of the Howard University Gallery; a showing of Jacob Lawrence’s “War Series” (1948) that debuted at the New Jersey

The Reflexive Riff  75 State Museum; a solo show of Haywood “Bill” Rivers organized by Adelyn Breeskin that came on the heels of him winning a prize in the museum’s non-​segregated annual exhibitions of Maryland and regional artists.15 The impetus for these exhibitions reveals how much they depended on a vulnerable combination of persistent CWCL activism met by support from Breeskin as well as the availability of traveling shows. But the activities of the 1940s did little to change pervasive segregation in Baltimore (or in the art world at large).16 Although Baltimore had an active and politically organized black middle class, black and white urban communities were still closely tied to rural migrant cultures and racial traditions that tend to be associated with the “deep” South.17 By 1950 black artists showed only sporadically in the museum’s galleries, and only as part of the BMA’s Maryland exhibitions.18 Nationwide, persistent racial oppression illustrated to black artists the futility of depending on recognition from white galleries and museums even as a few select black artists were achieving success in New York’s white-​run galleries. Norman Lewis, for instance, exhibited consistently at Willard Gallery in New York and Charles White at ACA Galleries. Broader social and cultural shifts at work in the US of the 1950s should also be acknowledged as a probable contributing factor. Although African-​Americans in Maryland and across the country were starting to gain legal ground against discrimination and segregation, the impact of these gains was being undermined by white flight (the massive movement of white residents to US suburbs supported by housing and transportation policies), and the strengthening of extra-​official segregation. In biographical accounts many black artists cite this combination of ongoing racial oppression and growing McCarthyism (which targeted black organizations as “communist”) as motivating them to seek work abroad in Mexico and Europe after World War II. For those who remained in the US, historically black colleges and universities and self-​organized collaboratives provided essential support. By way of an example, Hale Woodruff launched the Atlanta University Annual Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture, and Prints by Negro Artists in 1947 and Robert Blackburn founded his print workshop in New York City in 1948, working closely with Will Barnet, Jacob Lawrence, and Romare Bearden in a black-​organized interracial environment. Closer to Baltimore, the Howard University Art Gallery in Washington D.C. remained an important venue for regional artists, as did the commercial Barnett Aden Gallery. Both were founded by James Herring. Also in D.C. Lois Mailou Jones (Professor at Howard University, 1930–​1977) started the “Little Paris Group” which met in her home in the late 1940s. Within Baltimore, the period from 1940 to 1960 frames the heyday of black-​ organized cultural activity in Penn-​North, an area that in 2019 was designated as Pennsylvania Avenue Black Art & Entertainment District. Many of the nation’s top black performers found adoring, mixed-​race audiences at the Royal Theatre on Pennsylvania Ave, for example, but the area does not seem to have included venues for exhibiting visual arts. Other than ongoing and

76  Morgan Dowty, Gamynne Guillotte, and Jennifer P. Kingsley pervasive racial discrimination during this period, it is unclear what specific local factors caused the change in BMA exhibition and acquisition practices after 1950, although the activities of the 1940s clearly depended on vulnerable factors: the availability of traveling exhibits, the willingness of black artists to participate in segregated shows, and the work of two women with broader responsibilities and agendas beyond bringing black art into the museum. It would not be until the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and resulting unrest in many American cities, including Baltimore, that the BMA would renew its curatorial engagement with black artists. In 1972 Adelyn Breeskin, by then curator of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture at the National Collection of Fine Arts (later to become the National Museum of American Art) sent the BMA her show Paintings and Drawings of William H. Johnson, which she dedicated to Miss Mary Brady and Mrs. Evelyn Brown Younger of the Harmon Foundation, one of the organizers of CNA.19 Subsequently, the BMA hosted in quick succession six more shows focused on black artists. These curatorial efforts would be short-​lived, waning in favor of using museum programs as the main strategy for increasing diversity in the galleries.20 Black-​ themed exhibits would start up again in the 1990s, related to efforts by US museums to respond to debates around multiculturalism. A mix of group and solo shows, these brought visibility to black artists while maintaining the systemic separation of black art from the modern art narrative (Figure 4.4). Acquisitions at the BMA follow a similar pattern and engage some of the same actors (Figure 4.5). The first pieces by black artists to enter the museum’s collection came under varied circumstances in the 1940s. Vivian Cook, along with the Art Committee of the CWCL, organized and financed the purchase of a watercolor by Dox Thrash in 1941 and one by Jacob Lawrence in 1946—​again in close collaboration with Adelyn Breeskin.21 The Federal Works Progress Administration gave the BMA prints by Samuel J. Brown, Sargent Johnson, Charles L. Sallee Jr. and Dox Thrash on long-​ term loan in 1943, as part of a larger-​scale distribution of its holdings to public institutions. Adelyn Breeskin would also orchestrate the purchase of paintings by Haywood “Bill” Rivers in 1948.22 In the 1950s and 1960s, however, the BMA stopped collecting black American art, at the same time as the collections massively expanded due to a wave of significant bequests in European, African, and regional decorative arts, for which the museum constructed three additional wings that virtually doubled its gallery space. Seventeen years would pass before the next acquisition of black art. These would become more regular at the BMA after 1984, cotemporaneous with the growing demand in the US to introduce greater ethnic diversity of content into mainstream curricula.23 Remembering the Exhibition Contemporary Negro Art Between 1950 and 1980 the individuals and institutions involved in CNA’s production ignore or overlook it. Although initially quite pleased with CNA,

The Reflexive Riff  77 and working hard to publicize it,24 Cook, Fernandis, Locke, and even the artists exhibited in the show do not mention their participation in CNA in subsequent decades.25 At the BMA the absence of CNA from institutional narratives is especially noticeable in the exhibitions, programs, and publications planned around the BMA’s 50-​year anniversary in 1964. At the museum’s request, Kent Roberts Greenfield, then Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University, wrote the first history of the institution, which came out in the inaugural edition of the Annual of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Greenfield’s essay presents a past suited to the museum’s then sense of a civic mission. After a brief overview of the museum’s first 15 years Greenfield highlights the year 1930 as a turning point that rooted the museum “more firmly in the active life of the community” and carefully narrates the creation of an Education Department at the museum.26 This lays the groundwork for Greenfield to claim “a radical shift” at the museum in response to the social and financial changes brought on by World War I and the Great Depression, a shift that returned the BMA to its founding mission as “a civic enterprise.”27 In that context Greenfield gives reasonable attention to the 1938–​1939 season of “request” exhibitions, which owed their existence to a city-​wide survey of over 200 social, labor, and special interest groups in Baltimore, spearheaded by then Board President Henry E. Treide. Treide sought to discover what Baltimoreans most wanted from a city art museum. Among those request shows, pride of place is given to Labor in Art, the only exhibition cited by name, “whose theme was the workingman in art.” Greenfield groups the other “request” shows together, describing them as “built around Religion, Patriotism, and Sports.” This is significant because CNA had been one of the request shows, but Greenfield’s phrasing omits all mention of CNA and evinces no public acknowledgment of racial politics—​ this in the very year that the US passed a landmark civil rights and labor law outlawing discrimination.28 For its anniversary the museum also organized a celebratory exhibition that aimed to position the BMA as a site principally for modern and contemporary art.29 Coming on the heels of Adelyn Breeskin being invited to curate the US Pavilion for the 1960 Venice Biennale, the BMA show, titled simply 1914, anchored the museum’s founding in the era of the New York Armory show and the opening of the Panama-​Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.30 It featured canonical European modern artists like Max Beckmann, Georges Braque, Paul Klee, and Pablo Picasso. American artists included George Bellows, John Singer Sargent, Georgia O’Keefe, and Max Weber, the latter of whose art only 20 years earlier had been received by art critics as racially other because of his Jewish heritage.31 The show included no works by black artists—​generally suggestive of a connection between the lack of attention to black artists in the art world and the lack of institutional engagement with CNA as a piece of the BMA’s past. While current museum staff who joined the BMA in the 1980s remember internal discussions about CNA during that period,32 the first public reference

78  Morgan Dowty, Gamynne Guillotte, and Jennifer P. Kingsley to CNA after the 1930s comes in a press release for the exhibition The BMA Collects: African American Art (January 21 to March 18, 1990), part of a series of BMA Collects exhibitions from that year which also included a showing of Surrealist drawings, landscape drawings, and recent accessions in the decorative arts. The press release describes Contemporary Negro Art simply as “one of the earliest exhibitions of contemporary African-​American art to be presented at a major American museum.”33 In parallel, however, a sense of the BMA as a site historically engaged with black art was also emerging. A brief description of the BMA in the Baltimore Sun from 1992 states, In the area of collecting, the Baltimore Museum of Art both collects African art and has been collecting African-​American art for half a century, until it now has works by many artists from Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden and James Van Der Zee to Martin Puryear, Roland Freeman, Tom Miller and Joyce J. Scott. The occasion for the article was Baltimore’s hosting of the annual conference of the Association of American Museums, which witnessed artist Fred Wilson’s famed Mining the Museum installation at the Maryland Historical Society—​ an exhibit designed to draw attention to the absence of black American materials in museum collections.34 By 2014, CNA would become a crucial part of the museum’s self-​presentation as an institution that had consistently collected and exhibited the work of black artists. The year 2014 brought the BMA’s 100-​year anniversary celebration. An abstracted presentation of CNA featured prominently in that year’s commemorative performance of the BMA’s history. A press release includes CNA prominently on a timeline of milestones35 and a catalog published for the occasion puts these milestones into context.36 In general, the catalog establishes an institutional identity for the museum based on three characteristics: a commitment to the arts of the present, a debt to dedicated donors—​many of whose names continue to be situated within the architecture of the building itself—​and as a site for engaging and inspiring community activity.37 The catalog aligns 2014 with the museum’s founding, framing the tenure of then Director Doreen Bolger as a return (once more) to the civic commitments of the 1920s and 1930s.38 An introductory essay by Carla Brenner recounts the museum’s history. Rather than offering a strictly chronological account, Brenner organizes the history of the BMA as a walk through the museum’s galleries. The route offered follows a traditional museum narrative. It starts with the museum’s classical revival architecture by John Russell Pope and continues with the historical European collection before turning to the American galleries, modern art, and an excursus on all the museum’s non-​Western collections. The overview concludes with contemporary art. A reference to Contemporary Negro Art comes in the modern art section and serves as an interlude between the

The Reflexive Riff  79 mention of the 1950s donations of American modernist works (by mostly white male painters) and a long discussion of the BMA’s extensive collection of works on paper. The logic governing the author’s decision seems to be the connection of the exhibition to American art and the fact that the majority of the BMA’s collection of works by black artists were prints and drawings. Avoiding direct mention of the exhibition’s historical name—​perhaps out of discomfort with the term “Negro” in the title—​Brenner’s essay explains that an exhibition of black art in 1939 “put the BMA in the forefront of American museums” by launching “an enduring commitment” to “artists of color,” offering as evidence the total number of current holdings (nearly 300 works by black artists in 2014). The emphasis on consistency of engagement and present holdings echoed the phrasing of the 1992 article in the Baltimore Sun. The language and choice of data also results in several generalizations—​not the least of which is the broad reference to “artists of color.” This gives the reader the impression of a relatively large collection developed consistently over time by the institution. Glossed over is the intermittent nature of historical exhibition and acquisition patterns for works by black artists at the museum and their dependence on the efforts of specific individuals, some internal and many external to the institution. This history is essential background for evaluating the 2018 riff on CNA. Excavating that history added interpretive challenges to a remembering exhibition already carrying the weight of both an institutional desire to signal a new (or renewed) commitment to racial inclusion and the need to navigate the interplay between archive and art that is characteristic of the genre. 1939 Project: Curatorial Challenges and Narrative The 2018 restaging of CNA was originally conceived as a pendant exhibition to the much larger Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963–​2017, the first museum exhibition of Whitten’s never-​before-​seen sculptural practice. On one level, CNA related to Whitten because he is of the generation of artists that immediately succeeded the artists who participated in CNA. Of those, Whitten felt a particular connection to Norman Lewis and Jacob Lawrence, both available for the 1939 project by virtue of their representation in the BMA’s holdings. On another level, CNA bore a conceptual relationship with the Whitten retrospective in that it could provide contexts for Whitten’s decision not to share his sculptural work until very late in his life, after he had achieved a certain level of critical and commercial success. Unlike his abstract painting practice, which was in direct dialogue with his New York peers, his sculptural practice connected with the aesthetic and ritual function of African art objects and the African diaspora. Whitten’s decision not to exhibit his African-​influenced sculptures in the US resonated with long-​standing controversies about linking the racial identity of a black artist to the content of his or her art. These are controversies in which Alain Locke’s racial art theories played a prominent role and which shows like CNA fed, in part because

80  Morgan Dowty, Gamynne Guillotte, and Jennifer P. Kingsley they segregated black art, and in part because they prioritized social and educational goals over artistic ones. In other words, exhibitions like CNA deployed black art (and artists) to civic ends, to improve the conditions of black Americans in the US.39 Although museum staff ultimately decided to separate the interpretive project of 1939 from Whitten, consciousness of the risk of instrumentalizing black artists became a significant underlying factor shaping the direction of 1939. An exchange over CNA between Alain Locke and Sara C. Fernandis is illustrative of what was at stake in the exhibition’s restaging. Pleased with the exhibition, Locke and Fernandis were frustrated at the lack of press it had received. Fernandis—​eager to celebrate the role of the city committee and CWCL—​drafted a review of the show in the hopes that Locke would submit it for publication in The Crisis Magazine. Locke respectfully declined her request, noting that the article gave more attention to CWCL than to the artists.40 His solution to their shared interest in promoting CNA was the essay “Advance on the Art Front,” which appeared in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life in May of 1939. Although we have been unable to locate Fernandis’s original draft, her exchange with Locke suggested a desire to give name and voice to the organizers of CNA—​one Locke perceived to be in conflict with the efforts to showcase and define black art. Ultimately, Locke’s caution to maintain focus on the artists resonated with and added weight to the curatorial decision to give interpretive primacy to the artworks and artists. But the exhibition aimed also to take up Fernandis’s desire to recognize the too often invisible labor, and players, that drives exhibition making –​a desire that resonates with the growing scholarly recognition of the impact of social networks on museum collections and with public calls to diversify museum staff and boards.41 Practical considerations further complicated curatorial aims. While the BMA’s first spate of collecting black artists began just after the CNA exhibition, the BMA did not collect any works from CNA and this had implications both logistical and philosophical for the making of 1939. Museum funding for purchases of art was scarce in the institution’s early years and it relied heavily on gifts for collection building. American donors who could afford art tended to focus on collecting historic European art, while Baltimoreans who collected modern art often had conservative tastes.42 Nonetheless, the museum effectively did not invest in the black artists exhibited in CNA,43 and the resulting implications for the 2018 riff on CNA were that none of the original artworks remained in Baltimore. The lead-​time for organizing the show—​just over 8 months—​prohibited the inclusion of loans, thus foreclosing on the possibility of recreating CNA and restricting 1939 to artworks from the BMA’s permanent collection.44 Choice was further limited by the fact that BMA holdings included few works from the 1930s and 1940s. Thus, while some CNA artists not featured in the exhibition were represented in the collection, it was only by the later work for which they are better known today.

The Reflexive Riff  81 The contrast between CNA and the BMA’s collections brought opportunities to host public conversations around the BMA’s acquisition patterns since can—​conversations that started in the university classroom, with students. But an ambitious desire to unpack the organization and context of the historic exhibit and its aftermath in 1939 itself immediately came up against the challenges of presenting a collection-​based, one-​room installation that balanced the interrogation of an existing institutional narrative around CNA against the primacy of the artworks and artists. In the end, the curator and educators developed a visitor journey that began with an often-​reproduced image from CNA of two young black children looking up at Ronald Moody’s wooden sculpture head Midonz from 1937, now in the collection of the Tate Modern in London (Figure 4.3). Taken for a Life Magazine spread that never materialized, the photograph emphasized black children as an audience for black art. It also crafted a dynamic in which the viewer’s body—​and certainly the children’s bodies—​ looks up to the lofty effigy. It was an image that suggested both the idealism of Alain Locke’s New Negro as well as the rather high-​minded unattainability of that vision. It is significant that this is the image that the museum has consistently chosen to circulate about the exhibition. In 1939 the photograph served a dual purpose—​to signal the sensibilities that gave rise to CNA and to mark an assumed distance from them. Adjacent to the image, a short text oriented visitors to the historic exhibition. The partial task of 1939’s introductory text was to situate CNA within the context of the racist practices of state-​sponsored, extra-​legal, and social segregation, while also introducing the museum’s desire to challenge past exclusion of black artists and patrons.45 After learning about CNA, visitors pivoted to the artworks. Late 1930s and early 1940s works by James Lesesne Wells, Hale Woodruff, Albert Alexander Smith, Jacob Lawrence, Dox Thrash, Samuel J. Brown, and Sargent C. Johnson were displayed on the two long walls of the room. Although not part of CNA, a work by Hughie Lee Smith, Artists Life No. 1, was added in a section focused on prints from the World Progress Administration (WPA). The piece was selected for its portrayal of a range of experiences particular to an artist of the late 1930s. At the center of the room two cases shared archival material from the BMA archives, Survey Graphic, Art in America, and the Afro American Newspaper. These press materials had the added benefit of reproducing artworks shown in CNA by Elton Fax, Malvin Gray Johnson, and Archibald Motley while the use of a separate case helped keep the aesthetic experience of original artworks in the present exhibition separate from the archival staging of the past exhibition. Given the historical reception of CNA at the BMA, a contemporary desire to identify and signal factors that contribute to patterns of systemic exclusion in museums, and efforts at the BMA to diversify its staff and board—​the individuals, entities, and relationships that formed and mobilized around CNA became as important a story to tell as the exhibition itself. It was felt that these actors needed to be given a physical presence in the gallery. A panel

82  Morgan Dowty, Gamynne Guillotte, and Jennifer P. Kingsley opposite the title wall introduced the individuals involved in planning CNA: Henry Treide, Charles Ross Rogers, Alain Locke, Mary Beattie Brady, and the members of the Committee of the City who represented Baltimore’s black community, including Sarah C. Fernandis, Vivian Cook, Carl Murphy, Harry T. Pratt, Clarence Mitchell, and Lillie May Carrol Jackson. The panel served not only to recognize the contributions of Baltimore’s black community in instigating this historic exhibition, but also to show the sheer number of people involved in ways that resisted a heroic curator or institutional author narrative. The 1939 Project: Interpretation and Audience The interpretive elements of the exhibition aimed to make transparent to visitors that 1939 did not recreate CNA. On a practical level, there was a need to demonstrate the breadth and depth of the original exhibition. On a philosophical level, both the curator and educators were keenly aware that the exhibition needed to acknowledge the absent works and artists in some way, to make apparent the divergence of the BMA’s institutional narratives about CNA from its collecting patterns. Efforts to illustrate and animate CNA for visitors took several forms in addition to the content on the room’s title and facing wall already described.46 These included a full reproduction of the original catalog made available in the gallery. While the primary function of the catalog was to give visitors a sense of the scope of the original show, from the perspective of critical interpretation, it had the secondary function of giving visitors the opportunity to assess and contrast interpretive strategies of the past with the contemporary framing of these artists and their relevance. Supporting that work were the archival press materials already described. In addition, a brochure shared artworks exhibited by the seven artists in the original CNA exhibition but missing from the 1939 presentation. The brochure was intended for use in the galleries to act as a contrast to the experience of the art works. But it also diverged from the usual function of such brochures in that it was a piece of exhibition ephemera that offered support for the works visitors did not see rather than for the works on view in the galleries. An accompanying student-​authored website featured write ups on various artists and artworks that highlighted their and CNA’s reception history. Collectively, interpretive materials gestured to the heart of the exhibition’s paradox—​attending to what had been left out. They also reinforced the divergence between both what was collected by the BMA and when it was collected, further troubling the distinction between institutional narratives around CNA and historical collecting patterns. The exhibition 1939 was born of a desire on the part of BMA staff to unpack and interrogate the institution’s past and the memory of that past. This impulse is to be situated within the larger context of a growing interest across the field in critical reflexive exhibitions, programs, and related activities in the service of democratizing the museum.47 Exhibitions such as 1939 expose

The Reflexive Riff  83 museum processes and the mechanisms by which knowledge is produced, thereby suggesting that knowledge is something that can be assembled, mobilized, amended, or overturned. They trouble the long-​standing conceptualization of exhibitions as products and in so doing speak to industry insiders and academics.48 But this begs the question: do museum audiences have any appetite for, or see any relevance in such post-​modern institutional narratives? Not only may such exhibitions be irrelevant to visitors’ interests, they may also be actively hostile to them. A significant proportion of visitors come into the museum space with the expectation of receiving the perceived benefit of institutional expertise.49 Here, institutional interests and desires, however laudable, can be at odds with those of their publics.50 While there is great interest within the BMA for deconstructing and interrogating past and present narratives and practices, what does such a project mean for museum visitors? While a summative evaluation was not performed for this exhibition, the BMA has heard from its visitors that they have a deep interest in learning more about how museums work. In recent visitor surveys, in comment cards, and on the BMA’s social media feeds, a significant segment of visitors demonstrate a high degree of curiosity about collecting patterns, exhibition making, and conservation. Given this, some degree of interest in the aims of 1939 can be inferred. Even were that not the case, showing the mechanisms of exhibition making is important for equipping audiences to ask critical questions about museums, and providing them with tools to hold museums accountable. The question of audience also arises as a demographic one. Of the BMA’s visitors, 50% are local to the region.51 Given this percentage, some degree of local interest and relevance can be assumed. However, the BMA’s main audience is also overwhelmingly white, female, college-​educated, and over 40.52 This begs once more the question of for whom 1939 was created and what kind of work it can be expected to do. If the curatorial question, then and now, might be framed as “what is black art and what can it do in the world?”, a subsequent question might be “who is black art for?” This question was at the heart of CNA’s reception among black critics and newspapers. In anticipation of CNA’s opening, the Afro-​American newspaper called for Baltimore’s African-​Americans to visit CNA: While we shall be happy and pleased that a large number of whites will have an opportunity to see what the group is doing in this field, the most important effect, we hope, will be the stimulation the exhibit will give our young men and women who have artistic ability. To this end, every public and private school teacher, every social worker, every minister and professional man and woman should lead some young man or woman to this exhibit.53 By comparison to CNA, 1939 received relatively minor attention in the press (although not unusually so for a small historically grounded exhibition). An

84  Morgan Dowty, Gamynne Guillotte, and Jennifer P. Kingsley article published in the Afro entitled “Groundbreaking Artists Return to Baltimore Museum of Art” gave a brief overview of both CNA and 1939 and emphasized the roles local newspapers had played in promoting CNA in the past.54 The 1939 project was also mentioned in a lengthy article from Baltimore Magazine entitled “The Color Line: Black Artists Are Finally Receiving Recognition in the Mainstream Art World But It Has Been A Long Uphill Battle Toward Equity, and It’s One They Are Still Fighting.”55 The article juxtaposed the long-​time work of local black artists, gallerists, and scholars against the recent efforts of white institutions such as the BMA to engage with black art, and noted the 80-​year span between CNA and 1939. Similar conversations took place at a September 6, 2018 panel entitled “Exhibiting Black Art at the BMA and Beyond”—​a discussion introduced by Jennifer Kingsley which featured Bridget Cooks, author of Exhibiting Blackness, in dialogue with Morgan Dowty and Gamynne Guillotte. With 86 individuals in attendance, the questions posed by the audience were predominantly asked by arts insiders—​artists, curators, historians, and patrons with a vested interest in diversifying the BMA and making the museum accessible to black artists and scholars in particular. These discussions and articles, with their attendant skepticism, were dialogues that the organizers of 1939 hoped to spur. On the one hand, for those unfamiliar with the BMA and its history, curatorial goals were relatively straightforward—​to introduce the work of the seven CNA artists on view, and to reveal some philosophical and logistical underpinnings of exhibition-​ making. On the other hand, for BMA staff, stakeholders, and arts insiders wanting to transform the museum in 2018, 1939 served as a cautionary tale recounting a moment in history when a series of exhibitions (including CNA) intended to put the museum to work for the city, that is, to democratize it, had not brought lasting change. Indeed, the primary mechanism by which museums create outward-​ facing institutional transformation—​ exhibition-​ making—​is also one of the most fugitive, which may in part answer for the importance of the reflexive riff as a genre. The reflexive riff makes visible the historicity of remembering exhibitions and the ways in which they mediate memory. Yet as exhibitions, reflexive riffs remain fundamentally ephemeral. How effective are they at translating reflexivity into museum practice? And what will be the impact and afterlife of their interventions?

The Reflexive Riff  85

Figure 4.1 Overall view of installation, 2018.

86  Morgan Dowty, Gamynne Guillotte, and Jennifer P. Kingsley

Figure 4.2 Case with archival materials, 2018.

The Reflexive Riff  87

Figure 4.3 Title Wall, 2018.

88  Morgan Dowty, Gamynne Guillotte, and Jennifer P. Kingsley

Figure 4.4 Chart of exhibitions of African-​American art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 1939–​2017. Note that the timespans have been deliberately modified at two points so as to make visible the gaps between 1949–​1971 and 1989–​1992.

The Reflexive Riff  89

Figure 4.5 Chart of acquisitions of works by African-​American artists at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Note that the spike in the 1970s is due to the acquisition of a portfolio of James van der Zee photographs in 1975. Their unique accession numbers mean that each photograph of the portfolio is counted individually.

90  Morgan Dowty, Gamynne Guillotte, and Jennifer P. Kingsley Notes 1 All images and figures in Chapter 4 are by Jennifer Kingsley. 2 Reesa Greenberg, “Remembering Exhibitions: From Point to Line to Web,” Tate Papers 12 (2009), www.tate.org.uk/​resea​rch/​publi​cati​ons/​tate-​pap​ers/​12/​reme​ mber​ing-​exhi​biti​ons-​from-​point-​to-​line-​to-​web 3 Laura C. Mallone “Why Are There So Many Art Exhibition Revivals,” Hyperallergic 11 August 2014; Catherine Spencer, “Making it New: The Trend for Recreating Exhibitions,” Apollo Magazine 27 April 2015; Kerr Houston “Past Imperfect: Restaging Exhibitions and the Present Tense,” BmoreArt 18 April 2016. For a scholarly overview of the history of critical museography and its close companion: critical museology (including commentary on distinct national trends and terminologies), see J. Pedro Lorente, “From the White Cube to a Critical Museography: The Development of Interrogative, Plural and Subjective Museum Discourses,” in From Museum Critique to the Critical Museum, ed. Katarzyna Murawska-​Muthesius and Piotr Piotrowski (Surrey, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 115–​128. 4 A classic study for the American context is by historian of science Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-​1926 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). See also the comments by Randolph Starn, “A Historian’s Brief Guide to New Museum Studies,” American Historical Review (February 2005), pp. 68–​98. 5 Andrea Fraser, “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique,” Artforum 44.1 (2005): 278–​283. The best-​studied artists working in the mode of institutional critique include Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke, Isidor Valcárcel and Michael Asher, and younger artists Fred Wilson, Cesare Pietroiusti, Andrea Fraser and Cristian Segura, on which see John C. Welchman, ed., Institutional Critique and After (Zurich and Los Angeles: JRP-​ Ringier-​ Southern California Consortium of Art Schools SoCCAS, 2006) and Dieter Roelstraete, “The Way of the Shovel: On the Archaeological Imaginary in Art,” E-​Flux Journal 4 (2009), www.e-​flux.com/​jour​nal/​04/​68582/​the-​way-​of-​the-​sho​ vel-​on-​the-​archeo​logi​cal-​imagin​ary-​in-​art/​ 6 As Catherine Spencer rightly points out in “Making It New: The Trend for Recreating Exhibitions,” Apollo Magazine, April 27, 2015. 7 Bruce Altschuler, “A Canon of Exhibitions,” Manifesta Journal 11 (2011), p. 13; Julian Myers, “On the Value of a History of Exhibitions,” The Exhibitionist 4 (2011), pp. 24–​28; Linda Boersma and Patrick van Rossem, “Editorial: Rewriting or Reaffirming the Canon? Critical Readings of Exhibition History,” Stedelijk Studies 2 (2015). https://​stede​lijk​stud​ies.com/​jour​nal/​rewrit​ing-​or-​reaf​fi rm​ing-​ the-​canon-​criti​cal-​readi​ngs-​of-​exh​ibit​ion-​hist​ory/​ 8 See especially Brigitte Cook, Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011); Susan E. Cahan, Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016). 9 Christopher Bedford, “Building an Inclusive Baltimore,” YouTube Video, 2:20:54, August 7, 2017. www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​ZEHc​mfRc​sQg 10 For a useful analysis of the racial politics of the monument, see Jane Daily, “Baltimore’s Confederate Monument Was Never about ‘History and Culture’,”

The Reflexive Riff  91 Huffington Post, August 17, 2017. The site of the Lee and Jackson Monument was rededicated as Harriet Tubman Grove in March 2018. “List of Removed Baltimore Confederate Monuments,” Baltimore Sun, March 12, 2018. 11 To cite only a few examples: The Baltimore Sun, April 13, 2018; ArtNet, April 30 and June 26, 2018; The Guardian, May 4, 2018; Hyperallergic, May 8, 2018; Arts Journal, June 1, 2018. 12 The full quote is “this exhibition centers on a decisive moment in the BMA’s history and highlights the value of the museum responding deliberately to community needs and desires with ground-​breaking art exhibitions...I am very pleased to present the work of my predecessors as we look toward the future of this great museum.” ‘1939: Exhibiting Black Art’ Revisits Groundbreaking Show at Baltimore Museum of Art,” ArtfixDaily, June 21, 2018, www.artf​i xda​ily.com/​ artw​ire/​rele​ase/​2896-​1939-​exh​ibit​ing-​black-​art-​at-​baltim​ore-​mus​eum-​of-​art 13 “The Art Committee, Cooperative Women’s Civic League Holds Its Third Exhibition of Art,” Publication Collection, Archives and Manuscripts Collections, Baltimore Museum of Art. 14 Adelyn Breeskin to Vivian Cook, January 6, 1948 and Vivian Cook to Adelyn Breeskin, January 13, 1948. Negro History Week Exhibition File, Registration Department Records, Baltimore Museum of Art. 15 African and African-​American Art Exhibitions at the BMA, 1923–​2016, Library, Baltimore Museum of Art, September 2017. 16 In a 1955 survey 91% of 191 randomly selected Baltimore businesses reported either the exclusion or segregation of blacks, this after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Ed ruling against segregation had been immediately implemented in Baltimore’s schools. 17 Paul A. Kramer, “White Sales: The Racial Politics of Baltimore’s Jewish-​Owned Department Stores, 1935-​ 1965,” in Enterprising Emporiums: The Jewish Department Stores of Downtown Baltimore, ed. Dean Krimmel, Paul A. Kramer and Melissa J. Martens (Baltimore: Jewish Museum of Maryland, 2001), 37–​ 66; Andor Skotnes, “Communities, Culture, and Traditions of Opposition,” in A New Deal for All?: Race and Class Struggles in Depression-​Era Baltimore (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 11–​41. 18 Index to the Maryland and Regional Artists’ Exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art 1933-​1990, Library, Baltimore Museum of Art, September 2017. 19 William H. Johnson 1901-​1970 (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Collection of Fine Arts, 1971). 20 Susan E. Cahan establishes this convincingly as a broader pattern for public art museums in the U.S., in Mounting Frustration. 21 Art Committee, Cooperative Women’s Civic League, General 1938-​1939. Series G, Box 191-​36, Folders 13 and 14. Vivian Johnson Cook Papers. Manuscript Division. Howard University. See also correspondence with Adelyn Breeskin. Series C, Box 191-​ 19. Vivian Johnson Cook Papers. Manuscript Division. Howard University. 22 Object Files for Tailor Shop (1948.29), Drapemaker (1948.110). Registration Department Records, Baltimore Museum of Art. 23 James A. Banks, “Race, Knowledge Construction, and Education in the United States: Lessons from History,” In James. A. Banks & Cherry A. McGee Banks (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-​Bass, 2004), pp. 228–​239.

92  Morgan Dowty, Gamynne Guillotte, and Jennifer P. Kingsley 24 See note 38. 25 It generally merits a line in the artists’ exhibition history “Baltimore, 1939” but not a single one of the people involved mention the exhibition in later interviews, or in oral histories on deposit at the Archives of American art, nor do newspaper tributes to these or their obituaries mention CNA. 26 Kent Roberts Greenfield, The Museum: Its First Half Century, Annual 1 (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1966), pp. 16–​17. 27 “The museum had been launched as a civic enterprise; in 1929 it passed into the possession of the city. The directors of its affairs had recognized and declared from the first that its primary purpose was educational, and they had shaped its program of activities to this end.” The section is titled “A Radical Shift”. Greenfield, 32. The same message arguably hovers under the surface of the present restaging. The Press release for 1939 includes the following quote by Director Christopher Bedford “This exhibition centers on a decisive moment in the BMA’s history and highlights the value of the museum responding deliberately to community needs and desires with groundbreaking art exhibitions... I am very pleased to present the work of my predecessors as we look toward the future of this great museum.” Baltimore Museum of Art News Release, undated. Publication Collection, Archives and Manuscripts Collections, Baltimore Museum of Art. 28 Greenfield, “The Treide Program,” p. 35. 29 50th Anniversary Exhibition. Also known as 1914: An Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture Created in 1914 (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1964). 30 George Boas, “1914: Reminiscences and Meditations,” in 1914, p. 11. 31 Jacqueline Francis, Making Race: Modernism and “Racial Art” in America (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011). 32 Museum staff. Informal Communication to Jennifer Kingsley, Fall 2017. 33 Baltimore Museum of Art News Release, Jan 3, 1990. Publication Collection, Archives and Manuscripts Collections, Baltimore Museum of Art. 34 John Dorsey, “Museums Brush Up on Black Portrayals,” Baltimore Sun, April 26, 1992. 35 Baltimore Museum of Art News Release, Fall 2014, Publication Collection, Archives and Manuscripts Collections, Baltimore Museum of Art. 36 The Baltimore Museum of Art: Celebrating a Museum (Baltimore, Baltimore Museum of Art, 2014). 37 Carla Brenner, “A Great Museum for a Great City,” in The Baltimore Museum of Art: Celebrating a Museum, pp. 12–​25. 38 Brenner, p. 23. 39 Cook, pp. 17–​52. 40 “I have read through the article you sent me carefully, and am slightly embarrassed to speak my frank judgment about it. I think it says too much about the Committee, in spite of the fact that the Committee initiative was back of the whole thing. However in my judgment the emphasis should be the quality of the work and the critics’ reactions to the paintings.” Correspondence from Alain Locke to Sara C. Fernandis, undated, Series C, Box 29, Folder 7. Alain Locke Papers, Manuscript Division, Howard University. 41 For example, on social networks in the formation of museums: Frances Larson, Alison Petch and David Zeitlyn, “Social Networks and the Creation of the

The Reflexive Riff  93 Pitt Rivers Museum,” Journal of Material Culture 12.3 (2007), pp. 211–​239. Critics have long called upon museums to diversify their boards. In 2017, the American Alliance of Museums launched their first national initiative to diversity museum boards and leadership. A 2019 press release reveals the first round of participants in this initiative: AAM, 51 Museums Selected for Board Diversity and Inclusion Program as Part of $4 Million National Initiative, Press Release Posted July 23, 2019. www.aam-​us.org/​2019/​07/​23/​51-​muse​ ums-​selec​ted-​for-​board-​divers​ity-​and-​inclus​ion-​prog​ram-​as-​part-​of-​4-​mill​ion-​ natio​nal-​ini​tiat​ive/​ 42 The famous Cone sisters are an exception. Ellen B. Hirschland and Nancy Hirschland Ramage, The Cone Sisters of Baltimore: Collecting at Full Tilt (Evanston, I.L.: Northwestern University Press, 2008). 43 Of the 353 artworks acquired by the museum in 1939, around 90% were gifts and most purchases were from a fund designated to build a collection of Asian arts. 44 Typical lead time for an exhibition prior to 2017 hovered around two years. Since 2017 that pace has accelerated significantly to be closer to less than one year. 1939’s originally intended relationship with the Whitten retrospective, however, was the unique factor that most contributed to the exhibition’s short production timeline. 45 An excerpt from the Introduction to 1939 Exhibiting Black Art at the BMA reads: “Contemporary Negro Art occurred just over 70 years following the end of the Civil War, when Baltimore, a city embodying aspects of both North and South, had been shaped by the racist practices of Jim Crow segregation. While the historic exhibition is to be celebrated, it must be acknowledged that the BMA across its history has been by no means immune to the kinds of racial discrimination by predominantly white institutions across this country toward people of color.” 46 Identifying and locating in present-​day collections the works from Contemporary Negro Art is an ongoing process that has been undertaken by Jennifer Kingsley, her students and Morgan Dowty. 47 See Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum (Museum 2.0, 2010) which exemplifies this trend. See also Gretchen Jennings, “The Idea of Museum Neutrality: Where Did it Come From?” Museum Commons, June 26, 2017 (www.museum​comm​ons.com/​2017/​06/​_​_​tras​hed.html) and Mike Murowski, “Towards a More Human-​centered Museum: Part 1, Rethinking Hierarchies,” Art Museum Teaching, January 22, 2018 http://​artmus​eumt​each​ing.com/​2018/​ 01/​22/​ret​hink​ing-​hier​arch​ies/​ 48 For a useful overview of the history and contemporary status of critical reflexive museology, see Shelley Ruth Butler, “Reflexive Museology: Lost and Found,” Museum Theory Part II: Disciplines and Politics, ed. Andrea Witcomb and Kylie Message, International Handbook of Museum Studies 1 (Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2015), pp. 159–​182. 49 John Falk, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience (New York, Routledge, 2016). 50 Boris Groys, “The Politics of Installation,” Going Public (New York, Sternberg Press, 2010). 51 “Current and Potential Visitor Segmentation: Report of Key Findings and Recommendations,” Slover-​Linnet Audience Research, 2015.

94  Morgan Dowty, Gamynne Guillotte, and Jennifer P. Kingsley 52 Slover-​Linnet Audience Research, 2015. 53 “Contemporary Negro Art Exhibition,” The Afro-​American, 21 January 1939. 54 J.K. Schmid, “Groundbreaking Artists Return to Baltimore Museum of Art,” Afro, 28 June, 2018, https://​afro.com/​gro​undb​reak​ing-​arti​sts-​ret​urn-​to-​baltim​ ore-​mus​eum-​of-​art/​ 55 Lauren Larocca, “The Color Line: Black Artists Are Finally Receiving Recognition in the Mainstream Art World, But It Has Been a Long Uphill Battle Toward Equity, and It’s One They Are Still Fighting.” Baltimore Magazine, September 5, 2019, www.baltim​orem​agaz​ine.com/​2018/​9/​5/​black-​arti​sts-​fina​lly-​receiv​ing-​ reco​gnit​ion-​in-​mai​nstr​eam-​art-​world

5 The Making of Tucumán Arde (1968), 1997–​2012 Isobel Whitelegg

Introduction Every exhibition is a historically contingent event whose coming into being involves a multitude of actors. These include curators, artists, objects and spaces, and also the organisational structures that support it, and those who witness it, in its time. Even in the absence of explicit social or political reference, the meaning of an exhibition emerges socially. As such, every exhibition is authored as much by its publics as by those involved in its conceptual or physical making. A reconstructed exhibition replaces one such situation with another, and what may be lost in that process becomes clear where a historic exhibition’s form and purpose were contingent to the socio-​political demands of its time. In this, the now internationally celebrated Tucumán Arde (Tucumán is Burning), Rosario and Buenos Aires (1968) provides a test case. Tucumán Arde took the form of an exhibition, but it is also an event that is integral to Argentina’s cultural memory. As such, its history has a communal value always already exceeding its institutionalisation as art. Realised in the wake of a coup, and at a time of heightened division and unrest, Tucumán Arde’s stated objective was to reveal acute socio-​economic crisis in the Argentinean province of Tucumán. To achieve this, its two exhibitions incorporated conflicting aesthetic languages: experimental art, social science, protest and straight documentary. Intended to be seen by publics other than an existing audience for avant-​garde art, the exhibitions were realised in collaboration with the CGTA (Argentinian General Workers Confederation), took place within this trade union’s premises, and were the work of both named artists1 and those collectively described as activists, social scientists, students and union officials. Lucy Steeds has argued that reconstructions treat past exhibitions as if they were destroyed objects in need of replication.2 Like other exhibition historians, she instead emphasises the contingency and instability of her object. For Steeds, the exhibition is art in the event of its “becoming public”;3 for Bruce Altshuler, it is a node within “structures of agency,”4 an intersection between the “full range of actors and institutions that make up the DOI: 10.4324/9780429279775-8

96  Isobel Whitelegg world of art and culture,”5 and for Dario Gamboni, “art in the context of presentation” implies an “enlarged notion of authorship.”6 These combined perspectives, which emphasise the exhibition as not only spatialised object but also process and relation, are apt to the complex status of Tucumán Arde as an exhibition set within a wider collective project and as an event that holds a place in art history while also forming part of a cultural memory suppressed by Argentina’s 1976–​1983 dictatorship. The Tucumán Arde exhibitions have never been re-​staged. Instead, the history of Tucumán Arde, first recovered in post-​ dictatorship Argentina, has been presented in mobile, exhibitable forms. Its reconstruction has thus occurred as a reiterative process, but Tucumán Arde has also settled into a more stable art world existence as a replica archive. Here, I address how this material and aesthetic change has operated in parallel with a search for an appropriate re-​contextualisation of Tucumán Arde as both cultural heritage and political-​artistic event. Two Contextual Narratives for Tucumán Arde If, as Gamboni argues, the exhibition is an extended “aesthetic unit”7 constituted by people and things involved in producing, experiencing and responding, then context can be understood as inherent rather than external to it. In exhibition space and particularly within the museum, however, the divide between exhibit and context is maintained by established protocols: show the work here, provide the contextual gloss there. Designed to serve objects, the same conventions are used to contextualise the reconstruction of exhibitions. Ascribed a medium, author and short text, the ontological complexity of what we are being encouraged to see is subject to the efficiencies the museum demands of all its objects. Short-​form contextual writing rarely fails to be reductive. This is a mundane observation, but its implications are clear where what is being shown and described contradicts the place it is now being seen. Tucumán Arde now has a place in anglophone art history, and its archives are contextualised as art within exhibitions and museum collections. The Tucumán Arde exhibitions however are inextricable from their location and the conflicting aesthetic languages they strategically deployed. Their realisation occupies an intersection between art-​centred and extra-​artistic narratives: one line is traced by the CGTA’s formation as an independent trade union, and the other by a group of artists based in the cities of Rosario and Buenos Aires. The ability to maintain a separation between the two collapses in the event of the exhibitions themselves, which retain a socio-​historical importance that exceeds Tucumán Arde’s institutionalisation as art. Associated with sugar cane production and processing since the 19th century, Tucumán’s industry unravelled after President Juan Perón was overthrown in 1955; his state-​regulated balance between variously scaled producers tipped towards a monopoly by large sugar mills. A decade on,

The Making of Tucumán Arde (1968), 1997–2012  97 and Tucumán was a known site of union activity and intermittent tension. Declining living and labour conditions, worsened by a fall in sugar prices, were brought into crisis by Operativo Tucumán. Implemented in August 1966 under Juan Carlos Ongania (de facto President after a June coup), this campaign promoted efficiency and forced diversification, ushering in transnational investment by companies including Monsanto. Rationalisation caused mill closures, and the loss of smaller producers’ quotas. Local unions took opposing positions and were destabilised by inner conflict. By 1968, national newspapers reported confrontations between factions, student involvement in protests, new levels of repression enforced by a police emboldened by military leadership. The CGTA, formerly a horizontal, combative division of the national workers’ union, broke away. Its 1968 Message to the Workers and Argentinean People appealed to all sectors including intellectuals and artists8 and via this publication the CGTA’s interests met those of artists working in the cities of Rosario and Buenos Aires. Tucumán Arde’s eventual artist-​ contributors were already disillusioned with the radical-​bourgeois trappings of their art-​institutional milieu, already attracting police intervention and CGTA support for provocative events, already devising artistic and theoretical strategies to intervene with mass media, encourage participation and provoke sensory experiences (some verging on violence). Their decision to work collectively to engage with the Tucumán crisis took place at a self-​ organised First National Conference on Avant-​Garde Art, held in August 1968, in Rosario. Tucumán Arde as Exhibition Tucumán Arde was and subsequently has been named an exhibition, but this definition can be disputed. An argument against calling it so is provided by the artists involved. As described in their published statements and manifesto, the exhibition is not afforded any centrality but is instead listed as one stage of Tucumán Arde as a project and process. The time between the moment of proposal and event of exhibition is punctuated by a series of planned actions, outlining the work of information-​gathering and field research and the orchestration of an intricate publicity campaign. Tucumán Arde’s research and publicity phases were simultaneous processes containing different modes, locations and relations.9 Incorporated into the CGTA Committee of Agitation and Propaganda, artists were supported by others working in opposition to the regime. Having established a collaboration with militant social science research centre CICSO (Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias Sociales, 1966–​), a group travelled to Tucumán to establish contacts. Meanwhile in Rosario, a publicity campaign began; the word “Tucumán” appeared on posters, cinema tickets and amongst advertisements at film screenings. During a second trip to Tucumán, citizens were documented using film, photography and recorded interviews. In

98  Isobel Whitelegg Rosario, the publicity campaign was repeated with the addition of the word “Arde” (Burning). The phrase “Tucumán Arde” appeared as graffiti and as a logotype, designed by Juan Pablo Renzi and stickered on opportune surfaces. Its culmination was the display of a poster advertising a “First Biennial of Avant-​garde Art” at CGTA headquarters in Rosario. Artefacts and imagery from preceding phases were integrated into the exhibition. Thus, the documentation circulating today as Tucumán Arde is a fragment of both the exhibition in which it was displayed and the research and publicity phases before it. Here I maintain a focus on the exhibition because it is there that the relationship between named artists and unnamed others becomes evident. It was a point of convergence between artist group and union as previously discrete constituencies, a pretext for collaboration between them, and a production that consequently remains the property of both. At a time when the device of exhibition is widely used to represent Tucumán Arde, its protagonists’ employment of the same device is instructive. As no attempt has been made to exactly replicate the exhibition, what is understood of Tucumán Arde as a spatial experience now relies on a set of black and white images. The majority document the first iteration at CGTA regional Rosario headquarters10 (a second Buenos Aires iteration was closed by police within twenty-​four hours). The space depicted most clearly is the entrance. Its side walls are papered with “Tucumán” posters, and on the left these are overlaid with a set of newspaper articles. Ahead is a large poster bearing Renzi’s logotype, and below diagrams can be seen pasted on the floor to be stepped on by visitors. Diagrams recur across different images depicting different spaces, as do banners bearing slogans and large-​scale documentary images, posted on the walls or displayed on free-​standing panels. The graffiti reappears, as does the poster that announced the exhibition to be an avant-​garde biennial. Elsewhere are glimpses of audio-​visual equipment, a tape recorder, a white sheet to project images. Some actions are perceptible: the distribution of documents and collection of food donations, people being interviewed, visitors sipping coffee; but the details can only be filled in by anecdotes or reports: the coffee served without sugar; the lights blacked-​out to a rhythm marking the infant mortality rate; interviews and popular songs amplified by loudspeakers; the specific documents distributed were transcripts, a manifesto, and CICSO’s report “Tucumán Arde, Por Que?” (Tucumán Is Burning, Why?). These visual, textual and perceptual elements fold the process of preparation into the event of the exhibition: directly in the reintroduction of posters and graffiti, and indirectly in the projection, amplification and display of findings. Some such elements speak of Tucumán as long-​standing site of union activism; diagrams identifying links between politicians, sugar companies and multinationals were produced by university students, active in Tucumán and within the CGTA. Others point to individual authors; the news report montage is recognisable as the work of Léon Ferrari. The location

The Making of Tucumán Arde (1968), 1997–2012  99 also tells us something. It was, as present-​day CICSO director Beatriz Balvé argues, more than a symbolic space. This was not just a site-​specific exhibition, the CGTA was not simply a place where “what artists used to do in art institutions is now done”; it was the constitution of a “new social territory”11 underpinned by transversal artist-​unionist relationships. The exhibition’s intent was to make the reality of Tucumán perceptible, and denounce official and press accounts claiming Operativo Tucumán as a successful model for the nation. Those who re-​present Tucumán Arde now perform a not dissimilar aim, using the device of exhibition to present the reality of Tucumán Arde –​along with an echo of the reality it sought to present. If Tucumán Arde’s significance lies in its manifestation of specific social relationships, it would seem unrepresentable in a form that captures this. Yet Tucumán Arde has been and continues to be represented. Reconstruction as Recovery In 1984, documentation of Tucumán Arde was shown within “1966/​68, Arte de vanguardia en Rosario” (Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes, Rosario), an exhibition organised by recently formed artists association Artistas Plásticos Asociados, less than a year after the end of the 1976–​ 83 dictatorship. During the regime, material evidence of Tucumán Arde was concealed, and the exhibition’s intention was to rescue “attitudes that are part of our artistic history,” rendering the history of the Rosario avant-​garde a “visible, common and available fact.”12 By making a heritage lost to a younger generation tangible, the 1984 exhibition initiated a process of repair. A fuller recovery emerged later, through sustained research by Ana Longoni and Mario Mestman, initiated in 1993 and published as Del Di Tella a Tucumán Arde in 2000. Longoni and Mestman’s book charts the initial relationship and eventual rupture between the Rosario and Buenos Aires-​based avant-​gardes and the Centro de Artes Visuales (CAV) –​a section of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute (ITDT) in Buenos Aires directed by art critic Jorge Romero Brest. Culminating in the realisation of Tucumán Arde, the books narrative encompasses two key artistic events that occurred prior to it: “Experiencias Visuales” (Buenos Aires, 1967; 1968)13 and the “Ciclo de Arte Experimental” (Rosario, 1968).14 In a process they describe as reconstruction,15 Longoni and Mestman carried out archival research and gathered oral histories from protagonists including artists, trade-​ unionists, administrators and intellectuals. Their work thus gauged Tucumán Arde as a history of art, activism and unionism at once and asserted its complex extra-​artistic implications. The research underpinning Del Di Tella a Tucumán Arde continues to emerge through Longoni’s participation in the Conceptualisms of the South Network (RedCSur). Founded in 2007 as a platform for research, collaboration and position-​taking, its members participate in the recovery and

100  Isobel Whitelegg preservation of political-​artistic practices and assert the “inalienable status” of artists’ archives as “common heritage.”16 Amongst RedCSur’s members is artist Graciela Carnevale, who participated in Tucumán Arde and became the clandestine keeper, throughout the dictatorship, of an archive that includes documentation of Tucumán Arde as well as Experiencias Visuales and the Ciclo de Arte Experimental. In Tucumán Arde’s passage from recovery to art historical renown, its link to these two prior events has supported the construction of an art-​centred narrative. At the same time however, RedCSur’s definition of artist’s archives as common heritage supports a counter-​position that forestalls Tucumán Arde’s wholesale institutionalisation as art. Tucumán Arde Rematerialised Tucumán Arde’s now-​ regular appearance within large-​ scale international exhibitions began in 1997, with the first edition of the Bienal do Mercosul. Curated by Frederico Morais, the exhibition was conceived in the long wake of colonisation, foreign intervention and military rule across Latin America’s Southern Cone, and driven by his long-​standing ambition to grant Latin America the agency to author its art history.17 Morais organised the biennial according to three “vectors”, with Tucumán Arde forming part of a “Political” vector, subtitled “Art and its context.” This vector occupied two sites, the Espaço Cultural Edel and the Bienal’s headquarters, where Tucuman Arde appeared alongside works realised under repressive regimes in other countries within Latin America. Documentation of Tucumán Arde was displayed flat –​on a glazed shelf, above which was hung a framed series of bright monochrome posters18 announcing the 1968 “Ciclo de Arte Experimental.” Two years later, Tucumán Arde made an appearance in “Global Conceptualism” (Queens Museum, New York, April–​Aug 1999; touring to Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Miami Art Museum, Dec 1999–​Nov 2000). What was seen here was not archival material, but a 20-​minute documentary film directed by Maria Jose Herrera and Mariana Marchesi and co-​ produced by Queens Museum and Museo de Bellas Artes Buenos Aires.19 Its format established a relation between a script, detailing varied contexts and referents, political and artistic, national and international, and a montage of still and moving archival images. Its denouement is the closure of the Buenos Aires iteration of the Tucumán Arde exhibition and a scripted speculation on the end of art. Global Conceptualism’s Latin American sector, curated by Mari Carmen Ramirez, set into place a discursive legacy since both taken up and contested. Through her catalogue essay, Tucumán Arde can be understood within the anglophone world as an example of Latin American conceptualism.20 The text established its equivalence with other artistic practices in that region within similar timeframe, where socio-​political engagement is understood to lend conceptualism the ideological hue that is also its distinction from Euro-​ North American conceptual art. The end of Global Conceptualism’s tour

The Making of Tucumán Arde (1968), 1997–2012  101 was closely followed by the opening of a second Ramirez-​curated exhibition featuring Tucumán Arde, “Heterotopías. Medio siglo sin-​lugar: 1918–​1968” (Dec 2000–​Feb 2001), one amongst five simultaneous Latin American art exhibitions, with the shared title Versiones del Sur, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), Madrid. By virtue of its link to two subsequent exhibitions, Francisco Godoy has placed Heterotopías as a root cause of Tucumán Arde’s later “overexposure.”21 “Antagonismos, Casos de estudio” (MACBA, Barcelona, July–​Oct 2001) received the Tucumán Arde material directly from MNCARS,22 and “Inverted Utopias” (MFA, Houston, 2004) was a Ramirez-​curated exhibition for which “Heterotopías” served as a rehearsal.23 Tucumán Arde as Art Documentation “Heterotopías” is a moment at which Tucumán Arde’s new exhibitionary form (shown as part the show’s Conceptual “constellation”) begins to fill out. From installation shot and checklist, we can gain a sense of this form as one poised between artefact, documentation and documentary. Material lent by Carnevale appears under the checklist title Tucumán Arde but includes documentation of both “Ciclo de Arte Experimental” and “Acción Política” (the title granted to Tucumán Arde within this exhibition). Documents shown in Madrid follow what was seen and distributed at the Tucumán Arde exhibition: CICSO’s report; a sheet of statistics entitled La Realidad Tucumána en Números (The Reality of Tucumán in Numbers); the artists’ manifesto and research report, and –​recalling Ferrari’s contribution to the Tucumán Arde exhibition –​press cuttings. Visible in installation shots, but not listed in the catalogue, is a framed poster announcing the “First Biennial of Avant-​garde Art” and a set of photographs documenting both the publicity campaign and the Rosario exhibition. These photographs are small, presented alongside text documents on acrylic-​hooded shelves. Above this (and resembling Morais’ presentation at Mercosul) are hung the framed “Ciclo” posters. This compact display interleaves Ciclo with Tucumán Arde, a narrative reinforced by Herrera and Marchesi’s film, shown on a cube monitor. The “artificially fashioned lifespan”24 into which Tucumán Arde is placed here nudges it in the direction of the artistic. It is neither archive nor simply documentation. It could be described instead by the term art documentation, used by Boris Groys to denote a variable material form referring to art –​art that is not durable object but rather “life form,”25a duration in-​itself which “cannot be observed but only told.”26 By means of narrative, art documentation grants this form of art-​life a prehistory.27 Within Heterotopías, Tucumán Arde’s prehistory is granted both by the “Ciclo” and photographic documentation of the phases preceding the exhibition. The publicity campaign and field research can be viewed as steps in an artistic process, a series of punctual events unfolding like a set of instructions to be followed, a clean

102  Isobel Whitelegg conceptual procedure that smooths out the bumpier work of establishing the relationships underpinning them. Groys goes on to think through the spatial dimension of art documentation as installation, a form that is not neutral but is in itself a form of life, a here and now. For Groys it is through the experiential nature of installation that art documentation regains an “aura of the original, the living, the historical.”28 This “complex play of removing from sites and placing in new sites, of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, of removing aura and restoring aura”29 allows the installation to make originals out of copies, a manoeuvre that was taken to its extreme by the one-​to-​one scale documentation provided by a meticulously re-​made exhibition. For Groys the distinction between original and copy is topological and situational; rather than being determined by material alone, regaining site is the determining factor in producing an original from a copy. Through a reading of Walter Benjamin, he asserts that “originality has not simply been lost –​it has become variable.”30 The material transformation involved in Tucumán Arde’s original reproduction as an installation of art documentation however is also one that is categorical and aesthetic. Documentation is a formal language proper to conceptual art –​one to which viewers of contemporary art have become habituated. What becomes lost or flattened down is Tucumán Arde’s other language: straight social documentary –​the images of impoverished citizens and decrepit buildings, looming large and prominent both within the CGTA exhibition and its less frequently displayed installation shots.31 Becoming Archive A peak in Tucumán Arde’s material over-​exposure was its display within documenta XII (Kassel, Germany, 2007) as “Grupo de Artistas de la Vanguardia, Arquivo Tucumán Arde, 1968-​2007.” In the seven years between “Heterotopías” and documenta, Tucumán Arde has changed in form and name. It has gained a body; it is now an archive. The documenta XII curators Roger Buergel and Ruth Noak, who had had placed Tucumán Arde within exhibitions previously, worked with Carnevale to install a combination of facsimiles and duplicates. Carnevale’s own role has, in this time, also become more complex: both keeper of her own archive in Rosario and fielder of curatorial requests internationally. At documenta, Carnevale’s consideration of how the material should be exhibited was shaped by uncertainties raised by previous installations, since the start of that decade. The room where “Arquivo Tucumán Arde” was displayed was subdivided by suspended display panels, creating a relationship between various groups represented in this section. Carnevale swerved an orthodox “museum format”32 seen elsewhere in the room, aiming to present this “large body of images and texts”33 as an informal arrangement. This was enhanced by deploying what have now become conventions for

The Making of Tucumán Arde (1968), 1997–2012  103 producing an archival effect, the material was neither framed nor boxed, but pinned or bulldog-​clipped to its wall panels. In place of chronology, she favoured the planting of clues by selecting and arranging items that would allow viewers to “interpret not only the group’s ideas and positions but also the context and that moment in history.”34 Arquivo Tucumán Arde was made up of pieces more numerous and diverse than the “Accion Politica” of Heterotopías. While connecting the pre-​history of the 1960s avant-​garde to the event of Tucumán Arde, it also displayed evidence of the exhibition’s reception and afterlife: 1968 newspaper reports, including a CGTA article; a government leaflet still promoting Ongania’s Operativo Tucumán in 1969; the dossier on Tucumán Arde published by Paris-​based Robho journal in 1971. Carnevale had intended to facilitate an active mode of participation. Differently linked elements would incite viewers to understand “a complex whole,”35 and a pile of loose-​leaf translations would allow text documents to be legible. Installation shots, however, also show the effect of scale on this presentation of the archive. Photographs of the CGTA exhibition are large, allowing details to be picked out, as are those documenting Tucumán Arde wall graffiti and pasted-​up fly-​posters. Slightly smaller is a photograph of a row of “Biennial” posters in situ, and smaller still are the documentary images of Tucumán. Rules of Engagement Between “Heterotopías” (2000) and documenta (2007), Tucumán Arde had also gained other associations. Within a period including widespread action against the World Trade Organisation, and Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis, it came to serve as exemplar for resurgent anti-​capitalist activism. Tucumán Arde’s present-​day relevance was established by connecting it to contemporary militant practices and establishing rules of engagement that allowed it to find a permanent place in the progressive art museum. This museum, Barcelona’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), forms a nexus linking “Heterotopías,” RedCSur, the project Ex-​Argentina (2001–​06), and documenta. The despatch of Tucumán Arde from “Heterotopías” to “Antagonismos” occurred at an opportune moment in MACBA’s history. Under Manuel Borja-​ Villel’s directorship, a museum conceived as part of a process of redevelopment was steered towards reflective acknowledgement of its inevitable role in gentrifying the neighbourhood where it is sited, El Raval.36 This was motored by engagement with grass-​roots anti-​capitalist activism, together with one of new institutionalism’s now classic manoeuvres –​releasing the public programmes department from a supporting role and allowing it to contribute to the direction of the museum. The brokering of a relationship between grass-​roots activism and museum management occurred via “On Direct Action as one of the Fine Arts,” a workshop with presentations by artists and activists. This event provoked a

104  Isobel Whitelegg proposal that the museum should allow work to be done rather than merely described. The outcome was Las Agencias (May–​October 2001), conceived as the provision of tools, resources and support for groups participating in protests against the World Bank Summit in Barcelona. Borja-​Villel’s project also centred on MACBA’s historical collection; he established a historiography emerging from the 1970s, for which an origin was provided by the Grup de Treball (Work Group), a Catalan collective at work in the last years of the Franco dictatorship.37 The forms in which their work could be collected (posters, films, newspaper interventions, etc.) established an interchangeability between collection and archive that remains enshrined by MACBA’s collecting policy. Moving directly from “Heterotopías” to “Antagonismos,” Tucumán Arde did not only enter a different curatorial framework but also a different organisational structure: a museum operating in experimental mode and bringing art and activism into confrontation. “Antagonismos” overlapped and related to the activities, interventions, direct actions, and moments of conflict and violence carried out inside and beyond the museum during “Las Agencias.”38 Three years later, Tucumán Arde returned to MACBA twice: within the first phase of “How Do We Want to be Governed?” (Sept–​Oct 2004) curated by Buergel (by then nominated as documenta co-​curator) and as a new acquisition within a display of the MACBA Collection (Oct 2004–​Jan 2005). Buergel’s exhibition took place in three phases at separate sites: Institut Barri, a school founded in 1977 in the then-​peripheral Besòs neighbourhood; a former textile factory in the Palo Alto industrial district, and the Centre Civic La Mina cultural centre –​which occupies a building constructed in 1974, during the redevelopment of a neighbourhood once occupied informally by immigrants to the city. These locations were selected for their proximity to the venue of the Universal Forum of Cultures 2004, an initiative aiming to complete the urban regeneration of Barcelona. MACBA invited a neighbourhood forum, representing those adversely affected by envisaged demolition, to be involved in the exhibition’s planning and realisation.39 Shown within “How Do We Want to be Governed?’s” first phase at Institut Barri, Tucumán Arde was re-​contextualised in relation to the social implications of regeneration, and as exemplar of the political agency of off-​site exhibitions. Buergel’s third and final phase was a partial re-​staging of “Steps to Fleeing from Work to Action,” an exhibition at the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, curated by artists Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann, earlier in 2004, as part of their Ex-​Argentina project (2001–​2006). Developing under the auspices of the Goethe Institute, Ex-​Argentina was intended as an embedded investigation of the dynamics of economic collapse. Tucumán Arde was adopted as a historical axis for the project and represented within its two exhibitions, in Cologne and Buenos Aires (2006). Meanwhile, as part of a “How Do We Want to be Governed?” tour (Miami-​Vienna-​Rotterdam) Tucumán Arde continued to circulate elsewhere.

The Making of Tucumán Arde (1968), 1997–2012  105 Relocating from Germany to Buenos Aires, Creischer and Siekmann had worked with local collectives to form a growing roster of collaborators, including Carnevale and Longoni, who –​with two artists, Matthijs de Bruijne and Ana Claudia García –​formed Ex-​Argentina’s Tucumán Arde research team. In the two years separating Ex-​ Argentina’s shows, the form in which Tucumán Arde was represented changed. In Cologne, archival documentation was shown with an overt aestheticism criticised by Carnevale and Longoni.40 Installation shots of “La Normalidad” (Palacio de Glace, Buenos Aires, 2006) meanwhile, show archival images of Tucumán Arde as enlarged reproductions exhibited in fluid conjunction with “El Comedor,” a newly commissioned work by de Bruijne that was the result of time spent in Tucumán alongside Garcia, who is from the province. Re-​engaging Tucumán Arde as pre-​exhibition research phase, de Bruijne and Garcia also followed its concern with agribusiness as cause of deprivation. Garcia’s target was the creeping dominance of the transgenic soy industry, and de Bruijne’s site a kitchen providing food for children in a Tucumán suburb (a context where, Garcia commented, transgenic soy-​derived products were likely promoted as cheap meat or milk substitutes).41 The resulting works emphasise a certain distance or estrangement. Garcia’s “Look on the Bias” represented the agricultural fields of Tucumán as abstracted landscapes created by satellite images; de Bruijne’s projected images of the kitchen’s daily life were washed out with a filter. Whereas Tucumán’s entry into MACBA was facilitated by the museum’s status as a progressive model, Ex-​Argentina incorporated institutional critique into temporary museum exhibitions. In Cologne, the Grupo de Arte Callejero collective presented a panel outlining links between corporate museum patrons and Argentinean elites; in Buenos Aires, an impromptu intervention targeted Nelida Blaqeuir, museum patron and heiress of the Ledesma sugar mill empire42 (historically a corporate collaborator in the kidnap, torture and disappearance of its workers).43 It would be cynical to dismiss the work of Grupo de Arte Callejero, Garcia and de Bruijne as merely procedure, following the formula readily offered by Tucumán Arde’s project narrative. What the approach of the Ex-​Argentina project does suggest, however, is a new method of reconstruction: pulling Tucumán Arde apart to find, within its process, a blueprint for militant artistic research. Conclusion: Exhibition as Museum Piece MACBA was exempt from neither critique nor self-​contradiction,44 but in 2004 its mode of operation was convincing enough for Carnevale to sanction the museum’s acquisition of a Tucumán Arde Archive formed from facsimiles and spare duplicates. By forging relationships between art and activism, MACBA had proved open to risk and capable of commitment; its collection policy did not enforce distinction between artwork and archive, its public

106  Isobel Whitelegg programme sustained critical engagement with Tucumán Arde as collective history as well as material object. As a financial transaction, the acquisition also funded the maintenance of Carnevale’s archive in Rosario. Thus, Tucumán Arde began two parallel lives at home and abroad, where it could be repeatedly exhibited and toured to like-​minded venues. Tucumán Arde’s material stability, as museum object in archival form, was maintained by both documenta and a later editioning (5 +​ 2 AP; 2012) by Spanish gallery espaivisor as part of the Graciela Carnevale Archive. Again, the ability for others to purchase Tucumán Arde as an element of a replica archive was a strategy to support its alternative life, as research resource and common heritage, in Rosario. The slow material reconstruction of Tucumán Arde has occurred as a reiterative, cumulative, distributed process. In time, it has landed upon the replica archive as a definitive form that is also a stand-​in for an original, held elsewhere. The triad of museum acquisition, documenta consecration and market availability pins it to place in an international art world. In Rosario, however, Carnevale’s archive continues to grow through experimental research exhibitions, notably including RedCSur’s Inventario 1965-​1975 (Centro Cultural Parque de España, Rosario, 2008), and by accumulating evidence of Tucumán Arde’s continual reappearance within other shows. What is replicated in the museum, meanwhile, is not the spatial experience of Tucumán Arde as exhibition, but a spatialised archive, alternately categorised as an installation or graphic edition. Its transformation from event to archive has allowed the significance of its constitutive context to be foregrounded. As replica archive displayed within exhibitionary space, however, Tucumán Arde may also be apprehended as a politically potent but formally conventional conceptual art. This new material form obscures what may have been the experience of Tucumán Arde, a collectively authored exhibition whose aesthetic language deliberately exceeded the acceptable boundaries of erudite, experimental art. Notes 1 María Elvira de Arechavala, Beatriz Balvé, Graciela Borthwick, Aldo Bortolotti, Graciela Carnevale, Jorge Cohen, Rodolfo Elizalde, Noemí Escandell, Eduardo Favario, León Ferrari, Emilio Ghilioni, Edmundo Giura, María Teresa Gramuglio, Martha Greiner, Roberto Jacoby, José María Lavarello, Sara López Dupuy, Rubén Naranjo, David de Nully Braun, Raúl Pérez Cantón, Oscar Pidustwa, Estella Pomerantz, Norberto Púzzolo, Juan Pablo Renzi, Jaime Rippa, Nicolás Rosa, Carlos Schork, Nora de Schork, Domingo J.A. Sapia, Roberto Zara, Margarita Paksa, Eduardo Ruano, Pablo Suárez. 2 Lucy Steeds, “What is the Future of Exhibition Histories? Or, Towards Art in Terms of its Becoming Public” in Paul O’Neill, Mick Wilson and Lucy Steeds (ed.), The Curatorial Conundrum (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), p. 24 3 Ibid.

The Making of Tucumán Arde (1968), 1997–2012  107 4 Bruce Altshuler, “Biennial Writing –​Re-​assessing Art History“, presentation at the General Assembly of the International Biennial Association (IBA), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, July 2014. 5 Ibid. 6 Dario Gamboni, “The museum as a work of art. Site specificity and extended agency”, kritische berichte 33, no. 3 (2005), p. 16. 7 Ibid. 8 Darío Dawyd, “A 40 años del Programa del 1º de mayo. La CGT de los argentinos y la ofensiva contra la ‘Revolución Argentina’ ”, Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos, 12 July 2008. https://​doi.org/​10.4000/​nue​vomu​ndo.38022 9 Carnevale, Graciela, Marcelo Expósito, André Mesquita, Jaime Vindel. “Inventariar, desinventariar y reinventariar un archivo siempre en curso sobre las prácticas artísticas de vanguardia y sus devenires políticos, revolucionarios y activistas desde la década de 1960.” In Desinventario, Esquirlas de Tucumán Arde en el Archivo de Graciela Carnevale, edited by Red Conceptualismos del Sur, (Madrid: MNCARS; Buenos Aires: Ocho Libros, 2015), p. 93. 10 See Archivo Graciela Carnevale, available at: http://​archiv​osen​uso.org/​carnev​ale/​ cole​ccio​nes 11 Beatriz Balvé, “Tucumán Arde =​a 50 años.” Presentation at 1968-​2018. A cincuenta años de la CGT de los Argentinos, Centro Cultural Paco Urondo, Buenos Aires, May 3 2018 http://​cicso.org/​2018/​06/​05/​tucu​man-​arde-​a-​50-​anos-​ beat​riz-​s-​balve/​#_​ftn1 12 Romina Garrido, “A propósito de la muestra ‘1966-​1968. Arte de vanguardia en Rosario’ ”, Ramona 13 Sept 2015 http://​ram​ona.org.ar/​node/​57134 13 An exhibition at the CAV ITDT, Buenos Aires, which replaced the annual ITDT visual art prize system in 1967. 14 Developed by artists who would later contribute to Tucumán Arde and initially subsidised by ITDT, this cycle of two-​week artist-​led experimental exhibitions took place in Rosario, May–​Sept 1968. 15 Ana Longoni, Mariano Mestman, Del Di Tella a Tucumán Arde (Buenos Aires: El Cielo Por Asalto, 2000), p. 27. 16 Ana Longoni, “Coming Out of Silence”, Art Journal, Vol. 73, No. 2 (2014), p. 15. 17 Isobel Whitelegg, “Brazil, Latin America, The World”, Third Text, 26:1 (2012), pp. 131–​140. 18 See http://​univer​ses-​in-​unive​rse.de/​car/​merco​sul/​fund/​e_​fu​nd2.htm 19 Available at http://​hemis​pher​icin​stit​ute.org/​jour​nal/​8.1/​tucu​mana​rde/​index.html 20 Mari Carmen Ramirez, “Tactics for Thriving on Adversity: Conceptualism in Latin America 1960-​1980”, in Luis Camnitzer, Jane Farver, Rachel Weiss (Eds.), Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin 1950s-​ 1980s (New York: Queens Museum of Art, 1999), pp. 53–​71. 21 Francisco Godoy, Textos y contextos de las exposiciones de arte latinoamericano en el Estado español (1989-​2010) (PhD Diss, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2015), pp. 221–​222. 22 Ibid. 23 Inverted Utopias was a beacon for MFAH’s new initiatives: a Latin American Department, International Center for the Arts of the Americas and digital archive. Antagonismos initiated a relationship between MACBA and Tucumán Arde. 24 Boris Groys, “Art in the Age of Biopolitics”, in Groys, Art Power (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2008), p. 55.

108  Isobel Whitelegg 25 Ibid., p. 53. 26 Ibid., p. 57. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., p. 64. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 For Olga Fernández López, such images “represented poverty and spoke on behalf of the community that they had photographed and filmed.” Olga Fernández López, “Dissenting Exhibitions by Artists, 1968-​1998” (PhD Diss, Royal College of Art, 2011), p. 62. 32 Graciela Carnevale, interview by Ana Longoni, LatinArt.com, August 1, 2007. www.latin​art.com/​tra​nscr​ipt.cfm?id=​91 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 See Emma Mahony, “The Uneasy Relationship of Self-​Critique in the Public Art Institution”. Curator, 59: 219–​238 (2016). 37 Roger Sansi, “Spectacle and Archive in two contemporary museums in Spain” in Sandra Dudley, Amy Jane Barnes, Jennifer Binnie, Julia Petrov and Jennifer Walklate (eds.), The Thing About Museums. Objects and Experience, Representation and Contestation: Essays in Honour of Professor Susan M. Pearce ((London and New York: Routledge, 2011). p. 223. 38 See Mahony (2016), op. cit. 39 Ibid., p. 230. 40 Ana Longoni, “La legitimación del arte político”. Brumaria 5 (2005): 43–​52. For Longoni, the impression created was “photos from the ‘60s, in a third-​world country, where poor people are seen talking to people who are not so poor, and then political and advertising posters.” 41 Garcia cited in Claudia Mandel Katz, “Arte y Globalización: Estética de un Masacre Administrada”, Escena 33:66 (2010), pp. 130–​131. 42 See Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann, “Steps for Fleeing from Work to Action Can artistic work be militant research? A field report in the project Ex Argentina” Transversal 4 (2006). https://​tran​sver​sal.at/​tran​sver​sal/​0406/​creisc​ her-​siekm​ann/​en 43 See Alejandra Dandan and Hannah Franzki, “Between Historical Analysis and Legal Responsibility, The Ledesma Case”, in Verbitsky and Bohoslavky (Eds.), The Economic Accomplices to the Argentine Dictatorship, Outstanding Debts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 186–​200. 44 See Mahony (2016), op. cit.

Part 3

Restaging Modernisms

6  15 Polish Painters (MoMA, 1961) Fifty-​Five Years Later Magdalena Moskalewicz

If repetition was a key strategy of artistic modernism, can a critical act of an intentionally imperfect repetition dismantle the modernist logic from the inside? Repetition—​the operation performed by innumerable artists in the 20th century and recognized already decades ago as the dark underbelly of the modernist myth of originality—​was also a fundamental curatorial approach of Cold War-​ era exhibition making. Spearheaded by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York as early as the 1930s, organizing traveling exhibitions to be sent on multi-​stop tours—​in other words, restaging of exhibitions executed in close temporal proximity—​established itself as a principal tool for art’s circulation and popularization. Founded in 1932, MoMA’s Department of Circulating Exhibitions disseminated over 500 exhibitions for over 4,000 showings to almost nine hundred locations across the United States (US) and Canada until 1959. Together with its brainchild, the better-​known International Program (started in 1952), it created curatorial standards that would last for decades. Such a tactic of canonization through dissemination—​quickly picked up by other institutions, foundations, and artist estates in the US and beyond—​became a widely exercised strategy that organized the western modern art system as we know it today. “15 Polish Painters,” presented at MoMA in New York in 1961, was one of those mid-​century exhibitions that traveled.1 Presenting works by thirteen men and two women in the first MoMA show of recent art from behind the Iron Curtain, it was an exhibition without precedent in the cultural history of the Cold War. The exhibition featured a total of 75 canvases, gouaches, collages, and reliefs produced in People’s Republic of Poland during the post-​ Stalinist Thaw. After its premiere in New York City, the exhibition toured to Ottawa, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Utica, Toronto, and Montreal. Unlike the multiple other traveling shows organized and toured by MoMA—​such as the much-​discussed “Twelve Contemporary American Painters and Sculptors” that the Museum sent to Paris and Dusseldorf in 1953, or “Modern Art in USA” of 1956, shown in London, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Belgrade—​it did not advance American Art. Unlike these other exhibitions, considered essential DOI: 10.4324/9780429279775-10

112  Magdalena Moskalewicz agents in the canonization of American post-​war modern art, “15 Polish Painters” had little influence over the canon. In fact, it hardly affected the official history of (western) modern art at all. Seen from today’s perspective, “15 Polish Painters” was important without being particularly influential. What would it mean, then, to repeat an exhibition that was a part of that modernism-​building legacy but, nonetheless, never really made it all the way into the canon? To restage, even more than repeat; to revive, in a revival as bleak as the few archival documents and black-​and-​white photographs kept in folders in the six-​floor archival storage of a museum in mid-​town Manhattan? This chapter looks at “15 Polish Painters” as an exhibition that fits within the much-​discussed strategy of cultural diplomacy during the Cold War, but with the opposite vector: not sending American art to Europe, but importing European art—​Eastern European, at that—​into North America. It is grounded in my research into archival materials held at MoMA and discusses the project I curated based on that research. In the first part of the chapter, I briefly discuss the organization of “15 Polish Painters” at MoMA in New York based on MoMA Archive’s Exhibition Files and situate it in its historical context. In the second part, I focus on the object-​based reconstruction in a form of an exhibition display that I commissioned in 2015 from the Museum of American Art (MoAA) in Berlin. This is therefore an account of a double, research and curatorial project. And the underlying motivations are also twofold. The first part, scholarly research, was motivated by the archival impulse of an art historian provided with a rich documentation of a barely researched past event.2 The second, a reconstruction, was motivated by the creative impulse of a curator. Rather than publishing a matter-​of-​fact scholarly written account of “15 Polish Painters,” situating it within the historical context of the post-​Stalinist Thaw and international cultural diplomacy during the Cold War, I decided to focus on the issue of the exhibition’s contemporary in/​ visibility. Consequently, it made more sense to employ the newly gained knowledge to produce an object-​based reconstruction—​a display rather than a text. The chapter provides a reflection on exhibition reconstruction of a scholar-​cum-​curator, one that revolves around the issues of dissemination and visibility. The goal of both the archival research and the curated project was to examine and enact the ways that an art historian can process knowledge about exhibition histories. If art historical writing describes the past in an attempt to grasp, restore, and preserve history, then a physical display embodies it, effectively visualizing what was lost. I discuss the 2016 project here in order to analyze if, and how, a historical exhibition can be brought into the present while avoiding art history’s imperative, described by the French philosopher Georges Didi-​Huberman, to eradicate the loss of the past by always making all of it visible.3

15 Polish Painters (MoMA, 1961) Fifty-​Five Years Later  113 “15 Polish Painters” in 1961 On October 2, 1959, MoMA Curator of Painting and Sculpture Peter Selz wrote in a letter to a friend, which was sent from his hotel in Vienna: It’s with very mixed feelings that I go to Poland tomorrow. Somehow, now that I’m close to it, it seems like a weird place to go, especially as one has a feeling here of being at a last outpost of Europe. He added a day later, after his flight was canceled due to fog: “Well, I hope I will get to Poland. Not that I really want to go there.”4 Poland was, indeed, an unusual destination for an American curator at the time. Selz’s colleague in whose footsteps he was about to follow, the director of MoMA’s International Program Porter McCray, was the first American museum professional to travel to Poland since the outbreak of World War II when he visited the country just a few months earlier.5 McCray stopped there in August 1959 on his way from Moscow—​where he went to visit American National Exhibition in Sokolniki Park—​and was guided through Warsaw, as well as Kraków, Gdańsk, and Sopot, by Juliusz Starzyński, the director of the National Institute of Fine Arts [Instytut Sztuki]. Before he had set off, an exhibition of Polish modern art was already being contemplated at MoMA. It was also clear from the start that this would be a traveling show, as is documented by a paper trail kept in the Museum’s archives.6 MoMA’s interest in Polish art in the late 1950s is understandable if seen in the international context. Official cultural exchange between the US and USSR had just been initiated in 1958 (the American National Exhibition in Moscow was one of its results).7 Poland was the only member of the Soviet bloc that officially produced abstract art, considered most aesthetically progressive in American eyes and championed by MoMA. The year 1959—​when McCray and Selz went to Poland—​was the post-​Stalinist Thaw’s climactic moment. The relaxation of official cultural policies in the People’s Republic of Poland around 1955–​56, following the death of Joseph Stalin, and the subsequent proliferation of art spaces, magazines, and opportunities for international travel (of art works more often than people) quickly resulted in the development of new visual language of abstraction, which was exhibited both inside and outside the country.8 New York closely followed the Polish developments from its beginnings: The New York Times reported as early as 1956 that “Poland Abandons Red Dogma in Art.”9 It also announced that “Moscow [is] Astonished by Polish Modern Abstract Art” after the Polish presentation distinguished itself with a number of abstract paintings at the 1958 exhibition “Art of Socialist Countries” in Moscow, where it “rudely interrupted the uniform acceptability.”10 This, clearly, was a political as much as a cultural matter. The very same year the Guggenheim Museum included two Polish painters, Tadeusz Dominik and Jan Lebenstein, in its International Award Exhibition, while Documenta 2, a year later, featured

114  Magdalena Moskalewicz Lebenstein along with Tadeusz Kantor. Also in 1959, as MoMA’s plans were already under way, Lebenstein was awarded Grand Prix of the newly established Biennial of Young Artists in Paris (not coincidentally, both Starzyński and McCray served on the jury), and Aleksander Kobzdej received an acquisition prize at the V Sao Paulo Biennial—​followed by his solo gallery shows in New York and Washington, DC. These four, and many others, of the ultimate 15 Polish painters exhibited and sold work in Paris. All of these events formed what the Poles wanted to see, according to one French critic, as “un miracle polonaise”—​one that has to be viewed today as an effective result of carefully planned cultural diplomacy.11 Porter McCray and Peter Selz’s visits to Warsaw marked the first stage in what turned out to be a multi-​stage preparation process for “15 Polish Painters.” Its complexity reflected the intricacy of the East-​ West cultural relations in the Cold War era. Since McCray was not a curator, the organization of the exhibition was given to Selz, who largely followed in his colleague’s itinerary in October 1959. Still, the director of International Program remained involved.12 Two months after their August meeting in Warsaw, McCray met with Juliusz Starzyński again, this time in Paris, at the International Jury for the first Biennale di Paris, and discussed an exhibition of eight-​to-​ten Polish artists.13 (Starzyński himself was denied a visa to travel to the US in 1959 due to his Communist Party membership.) Selz’s plans grew to be more ambitious: Around the same time, he populated his notebook with notes from multiple studio visits: one of its pages lists 19 Polish painters (some of the names are crossed out), 3 sculptors, and 5 printmakers under a shared heading “20 Polish Artists of Today.” The exhibition, which was to be organized with the help of the National Museum in Warsaw, was at that point planned for April 1960, and was even announced with Dore Ashton’s thorough article in The New York Times.14 But towards the end of 1959, McCray learned that the Polish authorities withdrew their support, citing plans for another, large-​scale Polish show co-​organized with the US Department of State.15 (Plans for two exhibitions, one in the US and one in Poland, never materialized.)16 Led astray, MoMA’s plans were suspended. The second stage of the exhibition organization process was marked with Peter Selz’s trip to Poland in September 1960 to attend congress of AICA, the International Association of Art Critics. This is when he revisited the idea and discussed a future collaboration with two National Museum directors: Stanisław Lorentz of Warsaw and Zdzisław Kępiński of Poznań.17 This collaboration proved unsuccessful since the Polish side insisted on a thorough presentation of various trends of Polish modern art, not just abstraction. (Beyond the now-​abandoned socialist realism, Poland had a strong tradition of monumental realist painting as well as post-​impressionism). This, again, has to be seen as a political decision: as the Thaw was waning, the authorities focused on curbing the artistic liberties—​most noticeable in the recent outburst of abstract painting—​and setting Polish art on a more controllable course. Around the same time, it became obvious to the Americans that they

15 Polish Painters (MoMA, 1961) Fifty-​Five Years Later  115 should be able to organize a complete show without the involvement of the Polish authorities: the international circulation of newest art from Poland in Western Europe18 as well as interest from American commercial galleries were strong enough to provide sufficient material.19 Plans for an exhibition of 13 Polish painters—​sculptors and printmakers were excluded in this version —​ were underway since early 1961.20 The checklist included, in addition to the three painters mentioned above, Tadeusz Brzozowski, Wojciech Fangor, Bronisław Kierzkowski, Piotr Potworowski, Henryk Stażewski, Stefan Gierowski, Jerzy Nowosielski, Teresa Pągowska, and Jerzy Tchórzewski. Finally, the exhibition opened at MoMA, in August 1961, with 15 artists as a result of the last-​minute addition of Marian Warzecha and Teresa Rudowicz, in June that year. In the end, the Polish State’s involvement was limited to providing vodka for the exhibition’s opening. Paintings came from private collectors big and small. Many of them were loaned or purchased directly from the artists specifically for the show.21 A number of commercial galleries from New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles were commissioned by Selz to acquire specific works in Poland—​interestingly, buying in People’s Republic of Poland has proven much easier than processing official loans.22 John D. Rockefeller, MoMA trustee and a son of one of the Museum’s founders, loaned a Kobzdej, a Lebenstein, and a Potworowski from his private collection. Three more Potworowskis, one Kobzdej, a Lebenstein, and a Kantor came, somewhat unexpectedly, from a cellist of the New York Philharmonic who had bought the six paintings while touring in Poland.23 The musician, Frederick Zimmerman, learned about the planned exhibition from the press and took their own initiative to contact the Museum. He was one of a number of lenders who did so. In the exhibition catalog, Peter Selz asserted that the 15 artists represent “the vital new movement of painting in Poland” and “the most important trends among the avant-​garde.”24 Clearly, the selection was symptomatic of what MoMA defined as “avant-​garde” at the time: the show excluded any representational painting (the only non-​fully abstract paintings exhibited were highly stylized nudes by Jerzy Nowosielski). The political motivations for the mounting of the exhibition were clear from the first sentences of his essay, where Selz recalled the Nazi occupation of Poland and positioned the exhibited artists within the war generation. He also presented Polish abstraction directly as an adversary of Stalinism—​going as far as to quote a scholar who had compared the anti-​Stalinist power of abstraction to that of Catholicism. Throughout the essay, Selz positioned the 15 artists firmly within the Polish pre-​war tradition: that of constructivism with roots in Russia, on one hand, and post-​impressionism/​colorism that looked to Paris, on the other hand. Unsurprisingly, he did not discuss the socialist realist works produced by some of the exhibited painters just a few years prior.25 Accompanied by the catalog, the exhibition was sent on a grand tour through the United States and Canada under the auspices of the Museum’s Department of Circulating Exhibitions—​similarly to the many exhibitions

116  Magdalena Moskalewicz of American art that MoMA traveled through Europe since the early 1950s. Between November 1961 and December 1962, “15 Polish Painters” traveled to Ottawa, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Utica, Toronto, and Montreal. In fact, McCray had thought of the show as an intrinsic part of the circulating exhibitions program from the very beginning. In his 1959 letter to the Museum’s director of Exhibitions and Publications, Monroe Wheeler, he had mentioned the show’s “value in publicizing the revival of this program.”26 *** This is a necessarily short reconstruction of the events that led to the 1961 exhibition. A reconstruction that could continue: multiple boxes held at MoMA Archives include—​as any other archival record of a major institutional exhibition would—​folders dedicated to lenders’ correspondence, installation records, book production, budgets and costs, photo orders, sales, publicity, and so on. “15 Polish Painters” left a trail of official documents, professional letters, personal notes, internal institutional memoranda, postcards expressing gratitude, published articles (with their numerous copies), photographs of artworks deliberated—​and those randomly received from aspiring artists. It provides knowledge precise and relevant: the prices of works by the Polish artists went up on the American market as a result of the show—​and completely random: Peter Selz sent a $5 check to a Maria Mucka from Wojcina village, Dobrawa county, in Kraków province via the Polish-​American Information Buraeau in December 1959. The knowledge is sufficient to reconstruct the practicalities of the show’s organization, its design, and official reception circa 1961. But it only partly reveals what the art actually looked like—​ a function of black-​ and-​ white reproductions only available for a selected number of paintings. Or, explains what happened to the paintings in the wake of the tour, as the canvases often changed hands or were withdrawn between one stop and the next. In other words, it says little about the exhibition’s appearance and disappearance. Repetition—​Dissemination—​Visibility The tactic of canonization through dissemination was characteristic of MoMA’s early decades and was later picked up by other institutions, foundations, and artists estates in the US and beyond, becoming widely exercised. Writing from the perspective of critical museology, the cultural theorist Mieke Bal observed that hanging the same paintings in multiple museums across the globe repeats one particular aesthetic conception over and over again in many different contexts, constructing a universalist idea of modern art.27 For instance, to reference Bal’s example, Mark Rothko’s estate’s decision to disperse Rothko’s paintings after his death can be read as a strategy of cultural imperialism. Hanging Rothko’s canvases in multiple display halls around the world imposed and solidified a very specific understanding of what art is. Collapsing the traditional distinction between a work of modern art and an ethnographic artifact (where an artwork would

15 Polish Painters (MoMA, 1961) Fifty-​Five Years Later  117 be considered for its aesthetic values, while an artifact only for the culture that it was supposed to represent), Bal argued that “this dispersal has something in common with the colonialist legacy of the ethnographic museums.”28 In that context, it seems particularly poignant that the hanging of “15 Polish Painters” in 1961 was premeditated directly off the architectural plans of the Mark Rothko exhibition that had taken place at MoMA a few months prior.29 Saved in the archival folders concerning the Polish show, the plan of the Museum’s first-​floor galleries says in the bottom right corner: “Installation –​ Rothko Exhibition /​1st Floor Galleries /​Museum of Modern Art /​12-​27-​ 60.”30 The plan is additionally covered with hand-​drawn markings designating placement of new artworks, but a mention of “15 Polish Painters” is not to be found. Along with this large sheet of paper is stored an envelope containing small square and rectangular pieces of colored paper (the so-​called “exhibition chips”) marked “Kobzdej,” “Nowosielski,” “Dominik,” etc.—​ each standing for a particular Polish painting.31 This confirms that the canvases by Tchórzewski, Gierowski, Pągowska, and others hung in the same first-​ floor spaces as Rothko’s, but not only that. The very planning of the display, conducted physically by a hand attaching those chips onto the lines of the architectural drawing, followed the installation design of the Mark Rothko show. What was probably just a coincidence stemming from convenience today feels like a poignant metaphor. The Museum reused its exhibition strategies of both display and circulation, which had been first developed for American artists, for its Eastern European guests in an attempt to fit their art into the same format. And in doing this, as Bal explained, it once again imposed and solidified a very specific understanding of modern art. It turned out, however, that a similarly structured art display and distribution but with the opposite East-​West vector—​deprived of additional backing from other institutions, governmental organizations, or artists estates—​did not have an equal canon-​building power. The tour granted the Polish painters wide visibility, but since their paintings had not been a part of MoMA’s collection, it also contributed to their dispersal to a number of private owners. And so although “15 Polish Painters” features in the Polish narratives of art history as a sort of trophy—​proof that Poland’s modern art was fit for New York standards immediately with the cultural “Thaw”—​the exhibition remains barely researched. Its past significance seems to lie mainly in its symbolical and sentimental value: the fact that paintings by artists from the People’s Republic of Poland were exhibited at the most important institution of modern art in the West, at the time when the East-​West division was a very palpable one, was of utmost importance for the national self-​esteem of artists, critics, and people of culture. “15 Polish Painters, 1961” in 2016 The 2016 restaging did not mean to argue for the “15 Polish Painters” overlooked value. Rather than an overdue attempt at canonization, it

118  Magdalena Moskalewicz sought a critical engagement with the exhibition’s disappearance. MoAA, which I invited to stage a contemporary revival of that 55-​year-​old show, has been operating since 2004. It is an institution dedicated to providing critical insight into institutionalizing practices of modern art museums, especially the New York MoMA, and to revealing the strategies used for creating the canonical narrative about the development of modern art (in the West). The museum has organized exhibitions in numerous other institutions, and is affiliated with the Kunsthistoriches Mausoleum in Belgrade as well as the Salon de Flerus in New York.32 In initiating this collaboration, I was motivated by the belief that in order to criticize, rather than canonize, a repetition (that great strategy of imperialist culture-​building) needs to simultaneously resemble and undermine the construction of what is being repeated. “15 Polish Painters” shown in 2016 was not exactly a reconstruction. A reconstruction assumes a possibility of a complete return to something that is no more; a reversal of time. A restaging would be a more apt characterization, since a restaging is by definition time-​based, it is performative (not, like reconstruction, object-​focused) and based on repetition. By recalling the notion of the stage, it also implies theater. The exhibit (Figure 6.1) was presented in the summer of 2016 at Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw in the scope of “The Travellers: Voyage

Figure 6.1  Installation view of 15 Polish Painters, 1961 at Zachęta—​ National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, May 2016. Paintings, photographs, archival materials from the collection of the Museum of American Art, Berlin. Now in the collection of Zachęta—​National Gallery of Art. Image courtesy of Zachęta—​National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. Photo by Marek Krzyżanek.

15 Polish Painters (MoMA, 1961) Fifty-​Five Years Later  119 and Migration in New Art from Central and Eastern Europe,” which later traveled to Kumu Art Museum in Tallin.33 It was prepared in collaboration with the Technical Assistant of theMoAA, who delivered all the documents from the collection of the Museum to Warsaw and took care of their careful installation. The display consisted of a few parts. It included a painting that transposed onto canvas the iconic cover of the original exhibition catalog —​ “15 Polish Painters” written in lower case, in black, next to the Polish flag and with white space underneath. The canvas was hung together with enlarged photocopied pages from that publication. Below, a standing vitrine included facsimile of archival documents: letters between McCray and his colleagues at MoMA, notes Peter Selz took while visiting studios of Polish artists, as well as brochures of the museum’s International Program that shed light on “15 Polish Painters’ ” context. There were no paintings from the original exhibition, or other works by the Polish artists. The only paintings shown in this project were the canvas with the catalog cover and four medium-​size chiaroscuro copies of the museum’s official installation shots: black-​ and-​ white photographic documentation of the 1961 MoMA display. Besides fitting into the signature strategy of MoAA who often operates on copies, the gesture of duplicating the black-​and-​white installation photographs had also a practical reason: we simply do not know what many of the exhibited paintings looked like. After the 1961 exhibition many of them got transferred from one private collection to another and virtually disappeared from the public eye.34 The only documentation left are the reproductions of selected paintings in the catalog, and the said installation shots held at MoMA Archives, both in black and white. This small documentary exhibit titled simply “15 Polish Painters, 1961” served as a frame, and a stage, for a lecture by Porter McCray of the MoAA that completed the presentation (Figure 6.2).35 In this lecture, commissioned especially for the occasion, McCray explained how MoMA’s traveling exhibitions changed Europe’s image of modern art in the Cold War era. He also shared memories and photographs of his mid-​century travels to Paris, Moscow, Belgrade, and Warsaw, with emphasis on the 1959 visit to the Polish capital. Rather than a reconstruction, then, the 2016 “15 Polish Painters” was a modest exhibition about an exhibition. It presented a metanarrative about the construction of the story of modern art, as it was exercised via exhibition-​making during the Cold War. As such, it was not an artistic endeavor, but an anthropological one—​and by that I mean, after Mieke Bal, a type of research that studies artifacts as synecdoche of their culture of origin rather than for their supposed aesthetic values.36 The contemporary project looked at the historical exhibition as one looks at an ethnographic specimen: looking for what it can tell us about values shared by the culture that had produced it. Each of the photocopied documents or copied paintings was presented here not as art, but as cultural artifact; each speaking for the era of mid-​century exhibition making that had

120  Magdalena Moskalewicz strengthened and solidified the modernist myths of art’s originality and authorship. MoAA mostly operates via copies of canonical painting; its own permanent exhibition in Berlin features copies of iconic paintings by Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, and others that traveled through Europe in the 1950s. It does so in order to question authorship and short-​ circuit the progressively understood history of art.37 The museum presents that canonical narrative as a work of fiction and looks at copies as playing the role of the original—​similarly to how actors do in a theater.38 This exhibition strategy, therefore, suggests that all modern masters can be seen as that: characters in a play about modern art. The effectiveness of such tactics, however, depends on the popularity of the art works, on these images’ immediate recognizability. But since the canvases from “15 Polish Painters” could hardly be considered universally recognized, this approach was abandoned here. In the meta-​exhibition prepared by MoAA, the only paintings were the copy of the catalog cover and miniature gray scale copies of the installation photographs including the original works. One can only copy what remained visible. The restaging thus focused on the institutional framework of the exhibition, and specifically on undermining the modernist concepts of originality and authorship that the exhibition was meant to spread. And how better to undermine the modernist—​linear, progressive, and teleological—​ understanding of history than by breaking its linearity? By exercising an anarchistic, anti-​institutional gesture, while still pretending to be playing by the rules? Having Porter McCray return to Warsaw in person was essential for this restaging which was intended more as an action of performing—​ rather than simply reconstructing—​history. This was not Porter McCray’s first reappearance in the 21st century, after his reported death in 2000. In recent years, Porter McCray of the MoAA in Berlin has become responsible for the museum’s traveling exhibitions. He helped to prepare the MoAA exhibitions: “Savremena umetnost u SAD” shown in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade (2006) and Istanbul Biennial (2009) that concerned the exhibition of American art that came to Belgrade in 1956, under the auspices of New York’s MoMA as well as “Face to Face” at the Garage Museum in Moscow (2015) that concerned the above-​mentioned “American National Exhibition” organized in Moscow’s Sokolniki Park in 1959. In this case, in Warsaw in 2016, Porter McCray was Polish and he was giving his lecture in Polish. And just as another associate of the MoAA in Berlin, Walter Benjamin, once realized, when visiting Guangzhou, that he was now a Chinese person delivering his lecture in Chinese, the Polish-​speaking McCray could similarly ask himself: “What is the meaning of all this?”39 If the modernist historiography that underlined the narratives for many of the mid-​century modern art exhibitions harbored an idea of a linear and progressive history, then bringing Porter McCray back to life to have him visit Warsaw once again, 57 years later, was grounded in a very different sense

15 Polish Painters (MoMA, 1961) Fifty-​Five Years Later  121 of time passing. It fits much better into Georges Didi-​Huberman’s concept of anachronistic art history, based on his critique of the neo-​Hegelian traits in the discipline. “Everything past is definitively anachronistic,” says Didi-​ Huberman, “it exists or subsists only through the figures that we make of it.” The past “exists only in the operation of a ‘reminiscing present,’ ” and that present is “endowed with an admirable or dangerous power” of making the past present (i.e. in attendance), of embodying and materializing it.40 The 2016 restaging can be seen as such an operation with the Polish-​ speaking McCray—​a kind of figure assigned to this historical past, a figure quite literally made present—​brought into life. (“A memory… may be the only way the past can be actualized, brought into the present so that it becomes alive again,” Walter Benjamin of MoAA echoes the French philosopher).41 This curatorial restaging, rather than a straightforward reconstruction, makes it possible to avoid what Didi-​Huberman calls a “positivist trap” characteristic of the neo-​Hegelian approach to art history. The trap, explains Didi-​Huberman, stems from the belief that the loss that always characterizes the past can in fact be eradicated, and art be made immortal: preserved, cataloged, and restored. The approach stems from overconfidence in knowledge and destines the art historian to always be making everything visible,

122  Magdalena Moskalewicz

Figure 6.2 Porter McCray’s lecture at Zachęta—​National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, May 14, 2016. Image courtesy of Zachęta—​ National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. Photo by Bartosz Górka.

to be constantly delivering a new spectacle within what the philosopher calls “a tyranny of the visible.”42 Didi-​Huberman’s reflection on the need to immortalize past art and to constantly make it visible can be applied, as I believe, to the restorative impulse that drives so many exhibition reconstructions today. It is easy to see that a reconstruction operating within such neo-​ Hegelian, positivist logic would surely deliver the full checklist of artworks, be it meticulously recreated copies or originals, and follow their historical hanging in order to deliver the most “historically accurate” experience. And this is specifically what the installation prepared by MoAA, in its critical act of an intentionally imperfect repetition, refused to do. The humble vitrine, the view documents, and the faint, black and white copies of the 1961 photographic installation shots kept the past in the bygones and, if anything, reminded the viewer of the past’s irreversible loss. This restaging, as the French philosopher would put it, “scrutinized the visual traces of [the exhibition’s] disappearance.”43 So if the director of MoMA’s International Program in fact returned to Warsaw in 2016, fifty-​seven years after his first visit, it was only within the horizon of anachronistic art history. Just like the canvases in MoAA’s permanent display, the Polish-​speaking Porter McCray was playing the role of

15 Polish Painters (MoMA, 1961) Fifty-​Five Years Later  123 the original, and, as a forty-​something-​year-​old, was doing so without a very extensive cover-​up. A fake is essentially opportunistic—​ it does not question the system: undetected, it is the original; uncovered, it is discarded as forgery. On the other hand, a copy is out in the open, obvious and blunt; once it is incorporated into the system, it starts questioning everything.44 The Polish Porter McCray was a sort of a copy, but he was not a fake; his purpose was not to conceal, but to reveal. He criticized, rather than canonized, by both resembling and undermining the construction of what was being repeated. As the Technical Assistant of the MoAA in Berlin would tell you: we are all just characters in the story of modern art. Notes 1 Fifteen Polish Painters [MoMA Exh. #690, August 1–​October 1, 1961], The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1960-​ 1969, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York; see also the exhibition’s catalog: Peter Selz, 15 Polish Painters (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1961). 2 Virtually nothing—​beyond brief mentions—​had been written about “15 Polish Painters” for five decades, either in Poland or the United States. The exhibition was more thoroughly analyzed for the first time in 2012 by Jill Bugajski in her essay dedicated to Tadeusz Kantor’s reception in America. See Jill Bugajski, “Tadeusz Kantor’s Public,” in Divided Dreamworlds?: The Cultural Cold War in East and West, edited by P. Romijn, G. Scott-​Smith, G. Segal (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), pp. 53–​72. The only time the exhibition was discussed in detail in a Polish publication before this restaging was in the art market context: In 2015 a Warsaw auction house published a catalog/​brochure dedicated to the show on the occasion of an auction that offered four of its paintings. See “15 Polish Painters”: 4 obrazy z najważniejszej powojennej wystawy sztuki polskiej, auction catalogue, (Warsaw: Desa Unicum, 2015). Its co-​author later published an article focused on the commercial galleries’ involvement in the organization of the show. See Konrad Niemira, “Much Ado About Nothing? Political Contexts of the 15 Polish Painters Exhibition (MoMA, 1961),” Ikonotheka vol. 26, 2016. 3 Georges Didi-​Huberman, Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2004), pp. 50–​51. 4 Letters from Peter Selz to his colleague, Assistant Curator Alicia Legg dated, respectively, October 2 and October 3, 1959. Folder 690.2, The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1960-​ 1969, MoMA Archives, New York. (Hereafter as “MoMA Archives.”) 5 “According to their story, I was the first museum professional from the United States, except for Monuments officers during the War, to visit Poland since 1939.” Porter McCray’s letter to Louise Smith dated October 30, 1959, folder 690.2, MoMA Archives.

124  Magdalena Moskalewicz 6 Internal note from James White to MoMA Director René d’Harnoncourt dated August 11, 1959, folder 690.2, MoMA Archives. Peter Selz’s introduction to the exhibition catalog says that “15 Polish Painters” was initiated by McCray during his 1959 Warsaw visit. 7 Known as Zarubin-​Lacy agreement, the document was signed on January 27, 1958 and titled “Agreement between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Exchanges in the Cultural, Technical, and Educational Fields.” 8 For more, see Odwilż. Sztuka około 1956 roku, edited by Piotr Piotrowski. (Poznań: Muzeum Narodowe, 1996). 9 “Poland Abandons Red Dogma in Art,” The New York Times, 31 December 1956. 10 “Moscow Astonished by Polish Modern Abstract Art.,” The New York Times, 25 January 1959. For a detailed analysis of the exhibition and Polish participation, see Susan Reid, “The Exhibition Art of Socialist Countries, Moscow 1958-​9 and Contemporary Style Painting,” in Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-​War Eastern Europe, edited by David Crowley and Susan Reid (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000). 11 For more on the reception of Polish modern art in the United States in the late 1950s/​1960s, see Jill Bugajski “Tadeusz Kantor’s Public.” 12 Letter from McCray to Peter Selz in Hotel Bristol in Warsaw, October 30, 1959 detailing all the sites and people to visit. Folder 690.2, MoMA Archives. 13 Letter from Juliusz Starzyński in Warsaw to McCray dated December 21, 1959, folder 690.2, MoMA Archives. McCray also traveled to Warsaw once again from Paris, where he met, among others, with the director of the National Museum Stanisław Lorentz. Letter from McCray to Starzyński, November 9, 1959, folder 690.2, MoMA Archives. 14 Dore Ashton, “Poland’s Modern Art to be Shown,” The New York Times, 4 October 1959. 15 Letter from Starzyński to McCray dated December 21, 1959, folder 690.2, MoMA Archives. 16 Collaboration with USIA was cancelled by the Polish authorities in order for them to focus, as was officially reported, on the Chopin year. Internal note from Waldo Rasmussen to Porter McCray dated February 1, 1960, folder 690.2, MoMA Archives. 17 Letter from Selz, in Poland, to McCray dated September 16, 1960, folder 690.2, MoMA Archives. 18 For example, during his European trip in October 1959 Peter Selz saw many of the paintings by Tadeusz Kantor not in Poland, but in Dusseldorf, at the artist’s solo show, which Selz visited on his way from Warsaw. Letter from Selz to Alicia Legg dated October 31, 1959, folder 690.2, MoMA Archives. 19 Letter from McCray to American ambassador in Warsaw James West dated November 7, 1960. folder 690.2, MoMA Archives. 20 On learning about MoMA’s independent plans, the Polish side went as far to ask the Museum to postpone the exhibition until after a show of older Polish art planned by the Polish authorities was over. Letter from Stanisław Lorentz to McCray dated January 17, 1961, folder 690.2, MoMA Archives. 21 Such was the case of Piotr Potworowski, whose works came to MoMA from Gdynia on board of “SS Legnica.” See his letters in folder 690.4 and transport documents in folder 690.14, MoMA Archives.

15 Polish Painters (MoMA, 1961) Fifty-​Five Years Later  125 22 These were Galerie Chalette in New York, Contemporary Art Gallery in Chicago, Gres Gallery in Washington, DC, and Felix Landau Gallery in Los Angeles. See lenders’ correspondence in folders 690.3 and 690.4, MoMA Archives. 23 See correspondence with Zimmerman in folder 690.4, MoMA Archives. 24 Peter Selz, 15 Polish Painters, p. 11. 25 For a discussion of the surprisingly smooth transition from socialist realism to modernist abstraction in the 1950s Poland, see my article: “Who doesn’t like Aleksander Kobzdej? A State Artist’s Career in the People’s Republic of Poland,” in The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures, edited by A. Skrodzka, X. Lu, and K. Marciniak (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). DOI: 10.1093/​ oxfordhb/​9780190885533.013.7 26 McCray to Monroe Wheeler on November 19, 1959, folder 690.2, MoMA Archives. 27 Mieke Bal, “The Discourse of the Museum,” in: Thinking About Exhibitions, edited by R. Greenberg, B. Ferguson and S. Nairne (London: Routledge, 1996). 28 Ibid., p. 147. 29 The exhibition was shown at MoMA from January to March 1961 and subsequently travelled to London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Basel, Rome, and Paris from October 1961 to January 1963. 30 Folder 690.8, MoMA Archives. 31 Folder 690.13, MoMA Archives. 32 “The Museum of American Art of Berlin is an educational institution dedicated to assembling, preserving and exhibiting memories on the Museum of Modern Art in New York and its exhibitions of American art shown in Europe during the 1950’ and early 1960s. Those exhibitions helped establishing the post-​war common European cultural identity based on individualism, modernism and internationalism.” See more in Inke Arns and Walter Benjamin (eds.), What Is Modern Art? Museum of American Art (Berlin: Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien and Museum of American Art, 2006). 33 The “15 Polish Painters” display was presented in the room dedicated to artistic travels before and after the Iron Curtain. The exhibition was shown at Zachęta—​ National Gallery of Art in Warsaw from May 13 to Aug 21, 2016 and at Kumu Art Museum of Estonia in Tallinn from August 24, 2017 to January 28, 2018. See the accompanying publication: M. Moskalewicz, ed., The Travellers: Voyage and Migration in New Art from Central and Eastern Europe (Tallin: Lugemik, 2017). 34 Four of the paintings resurfaced at an art auction at a Warsaw auction house DESA in December 2015. See “15 Polish Painters”: 4 obrazy… 35 The event was filmed and subsequently included in the display on a flat screen. 36 Mieke Bal, “The Discourse of the Museum.” 37 Walter Benjamin, “On Copy,” in Recent Writings (Vancouver and Los Angeles: New Documents, 2013), p. 22. 38 Ibid. 39 Walter Benjamin, “MoMA Made in China,” ibid., p. 157. 40 Georges Didi-​Huberman, Confronting Images, p. 38. 41 Walter Benjamin, “On Copy,” p. 23. 42 Didi-​Huberman, Confronting Images, pp. 50–​51. 43 Ibid. 44 Benjamin, “On Copy,” p. 23.

7 Provenance Research A New Perspective on Exhibitions from the Past Lucy Wasensteiner

The past 20 years have seen an upsurge of interest in the practice of provenance research –​tracing an object’s physical and ownership history from its creation to the present day. Sparked by a renewed engagement with property displacements during the period of National Socialism, this interest has fuelled the development of numerous new resources in the field. These new resources, however, can also be applied outside the context of theft and restitution. This chapter sets out to illustrate how provenance research can offer new perspectives on historical exhibitions. And, how this research can provide the basis for exhibition reconstructions. As it will become clear in the course of this chapter, however, such new exhibitions must not necessarily take the form of a strict “reconstruction.” For that reason, the chapter will utilise art historian Reesa Greenberg’s term “remembering exhibitions” to refer to such shows, simply “exhibitions that remember past exhibitions.”1 The central case study for the chapter is provided by the 1938 London exhibition Twentieth Century German Art and the two “remembering exhibitions” staged to commemorate its 80th anniversary. These took place from 13 June to 14 September 2018 at the Wiener Library Holocaust Archive in London, and from 7 October 2018 to 14 January 2019 at the Liebermann-​ Villa am Wannsee in Berlin, under the shared project title London 1938. The original 1938 exhibition was the subject of the author’s doctoral thesis, which applied a provenance-​based methodology to reconstruct the exhibition and its lenders. The author was then co-​curator of the exhibitions at the Liebermann-​Villa and the Wiener Library.2 The chapter begins with introductions both to the 1938 exhibition and to provenance research as a method. After considering how this method has provided new insights into the London exhibition, the chapter then explores how the results of provenance research were used as the basis for the two subsequent exhibitions: how the research informed choices such as venue, exhibit choice and presentation. In her writing on “remembering exhibitions,” Reesa Greenberg has identified a development in these types of shows.3 While they once sought to emphasise historical exhibitions as “landmarks” in a linear history, today DOI: 10.4324/9780429279775-11

Provenance Research  127 they are increasingly interested in “interwoven historical perspectives, layered approaches […] different and more decentred histories […] that call the very concept of the landmark exhibition into question.” Greenberg identifies three forms of “remembering exhibitions” –​the replica, the riff and the reprise –​placing them on a spectrum from “exhibitions within exhibitions to exhibitions about exhibitions to exhibitions represented online.” As she argues, it is this third form, the “reprise” or exhibition represented online, which is particularly powerful in affecting this shift to an interwoven, layered and decentred approach to exhibition research. As will be shown below, the “remembering exhibitions” of the London 1938 project exist somewhere between Greenberg’s “replica” and “riff” forms: there was no attempt to document these or the original exhibition online. Nonetheless, with their foundations in provenance research, these exhibitions automatically shifted focus from the impact of Twentieth Century German Art as part of a linear history to the multiple contexts and histories within which it was staged. Provenance-​based “remembering exhibitions” can make an important contribution to undermining the “landmark exhibition” idea, even when not documented extensively online. Twentieth Century German Art The exhibition Twentieth Century German Art, staged at London’s New Burlington Galleries from 7 July to 27 August 1938, remains to this day among the largest displays of German art ever to have been staged in Britain, the catalogue listing some 271 exhibits (Figure 7.1). At the same time, the show provided British audiences with their first retrospective of German modernist art, the consecutive rooms of the New Burlington Galleries leading visitors from the figurative art of the late 19th century to the abstractions of the mid-​1930s. In the first room, Impressionist oils by Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt and Lovis Corinth were hung together with rural scenes by the painter Paula Modersohn-​Becker. In the second room, expressionism was the focus –​with large oils by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Beckmann and Franz Marc. This room also contained representatives of New Objectivity, among them Otto Dix and George Grosz. Only in the third room did the exhibition move on to more abstract works, among them further pieces by Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Sculptures were displayed on pedestals throughout the gallery –​works on paper in a covered balcony encircling the gallery rooms. The show was also politically significant. One year earlier, in the July of 1937, the National Socialist authorities had staged twin propaganda exhibitions in Munich, the Große deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German Art Exhibition) at the newly constructed House of German Art, and Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) at Munich’s nearby Archaeological Institute.4 From its timing and scope, the London exhibition Twentieth Century German Art positioned itself as a response to these Nazi exhibitions. All but two of the 64

128  Lucy Wasensteiner artists listed in the London catalogue had been branded “degenerate” by the German regime, had seen their works confiscated from German museums, or had been forced into exile after 1933.5 The show’s opening in London coincided almost exactly with the one-​year anniversary of Degenerate Art, and with the opening of the second annual Great German Art Exhibition in Munich. As a result of its place in these inter-​war cultural and political histories, Twentieth Century German Art has long featured in accounts of the period. The exhibition has been widely acknowledged as an artistic and political landmark, the first retrospective of German modernism in Britain and the most significant international response to Nazi cultural policy.6 Indeed, it has been possible over the years to identify certain of the exhibited artworks, despite their brief catalogue descriptions, thanks in large part to the installation views taken by photographer Ewan Phillips (Figures 7.2 and 7.3).7 The London exhibition was even subject to a partial reconstruction in 1988, as part of the Berlin exhibition Stationen der Moderne (Stations of Modernism), a show dedicated to “twenty important exhibitions in Germany during the Twentieth Century.”8 As the decades progressed, however, it remained difficult for scholars to move beyond this “landmark” conception, beyond a merely visual appraisal of Twentieth Century German Art. As a venue for hire, the New Burlington Galleries retained no archives from the exhibition. The personal papers of the eight-​person “organising committee” named in the 1938 catalogue contain no trace of their involvement. Some authors were able to obtain eyewitness accounts from the period, the Stationen der Moderne catalogue, for example, featuring a contribution from Max Beckmann’s dealer Stephan Lackner, who travelled to London shortly after the show’s opening.9 Nonetheless, many key questions remained unanswered. How was it possible to bring so many works to London, so quickly, with Europe on the brink of war? Who provided the loans, considering the scarcity of German modernism in British collections at this time?10 And were these lenders solely motivated by aesthetics or politics, or were other factors at play? A New Perspective: Provenance Research Provenance research has long been a practice of art historians. Particularly on the art market, the reconstruction of object histories is central to questions of authenticity, value and establishing the right to sell. In the last 20 years, this practice has taken on a new urgency. As a result of the Nazi campaign against cultural “degeneracy,” together with the regime’s wider campaigns of persecution, between 1933 and 1945 hundreds of thousands of artworks were displaced from collections across German-​occupied Europe.11 Though laws were enacted to facilitate restitution after 1945, only a limited number of claims reached a successful conclusion.12 It was only following the reunification of Germany that significant steps were made towards dealing with this issue. Growing academic and public interest during the 1990s13 led in

Provenance Research  129 1998 to the agreement of the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi Confiscated Art.14 The 44 signatories –​among them Germany, Switzerland, France and Britain –​committed to undertake research into the histories of publicly owned artworks potentially displaced under National Socialism. The signatory nations also committed to publish the results of this research, and to take steps to achieve “fair and just solutions” for both claimants, and those currently in possession of disputed works. The agreement of the Washington Principles has brought many new possibilities for researching object histories. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Germany has taken a leading role in promoting such research. Following the Washington Conference, in 1999 Germany’s federal, state and local governments signed a “Common Declaration” committing to research works in their care.15 Successive state research initiatives culminated in 2015 with the foundation of a centralised research and funding centre in Magdeburg, the “Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste” (German Lost Art Foundation). German universities too have established new centres for the development and application of provenance research. The ground-​breaking Degenerate Art Research Centre at the Freie Universität Berlin was inaugurated in 2003, with a second base established later that year at the University of Hamburg. The year 2018 saw the creation of the first German professorship in provenance research at the University of Hamburg, followed by further appointments in Munich and Bonn.16 Beyond Germany’s borders, though provenance research has perhaps not enjoyed such extensive governmental support, a new awareness of object histories is increasingly visible, leading to numerous new resources in the field. Museums large and small have begun researching the physical and ownership histories of their collections. The world’s major auction houses have established or expanded dedicated provenance research departments. The inclusion of provenance information has become standard practice in the preparation of artistic catalogue raisonnées. The rise of digital technology and the internet have also vastly expanded the extent to which these new research resources can be identified and shared. In recent years it has become possible like never before to research the provenance histories of artworks, in particular those which changed hands in Europe between 1933 and 1945. Though developed with the aim of “righting” National Socialist wrongs, these new resources can also be applied outside the Nazi-​era restitution context. Since 2017, for example, the German Lost Art Foundation supports research into property displaced in Eastern Germany between 1945 and 1989.17 In April 2018 the Foundation announced it would further extend its activities to cover the histories of objects brought to Germany “in colonial contexts.”18 Provenance research can also be utilised entirely outside the contexts of unlawful displacements and restitution, however. In any field connected to the physical movement of artworks, provenance can today provide a valuable new perspective. This includes research into historical exhibitions.

130  Lucy Wasensteiner The Results of a Provenance-​Based Investigation Returning to the 1938 London show Twentieth Century German Art, the systematic identification of the London exhibits, and the reconstruction of their provenance histories, has transformed our understanding of the exhibition.19 On a basic level, it has enabled the reconstruction of what was shown in London, and where these works are today. Provenance research has enabled the identification of works not captured in the installation photographs, while identifying the lenders and accessing their archives have revealed that far more works were shipped to London than the 271 listed in the catalogue. At least 320 London exhibits have been identified with certainty. The final figure may be closer to 600 if correspondence between the organisers is to be believed. At the same time, this research has revealed important new insights into how the show was brought together, and the context in which it was staged. Among these insights is the central role played by German émigrés in providing the exhibits. The London catalogue includes at entry number 203, for example, an undated Emil Nolde oil described as “Portrait of a Young Philosopher,” described as a loan from “Nelkenstock, London.” Research into the history of this painting allows it to be identified as Nolde’s 1918 Junger Gelehrter (Young Academic), loaned by the Hanau lawyer Ernst Nelkenstock, who had fled to Britain in 1936, bringing part of his art collection with him.20 Nelkenstock was one of at least 20 German émigré lenders to Twentieth Century German Art, who between them provided over 100 works to the show. Provenance research thus reveals the 1938 exhibition as an important opportunity for those cast out of Germany to answer their treatment by the Hitler regime, to use their art as a means of public statement against the policies of the Third Reich. It also suggests that art collections were recognised by émigrés as a means of self-​promotion, of presenting themselves as wealthy, cultured and liberal-​minded to a perhaps hostile London milieu.21 Provenance research also reveals how many of the artists branded “degenerate” in Germany provided their own works to London. At number 74 in the London catalogue, for example, appears a Kandinsky painting described as “Landscape, 1909,” without a named lender. Due to the installation photographs, this work can be identified as the 1908 oil Murnau –​Landschaft mit Turm (Murnau, Landscape with Tower), today in the collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris.22 The painting was gifted to the institution in 1976 by the artist’s widow Nina, having never left Kandinsky’s possession.23 Kandinsky’s correspondence confirms he provided the work to London from his own exile near Paris.24 He was one of at least 14 artist lenders to the show, others including Max Beckmann and Paul Klee. While a political motivation can certainly be implied, these loans also reveal the commercial importance of Twentieth Century German Art. Branded “degenerate” in Germany, these artists lost the ability not only to work, but also

Provenance Research  131 to sell in the country, thus becoming increasingly reliant on foreign markets. Though German modernism was little known in pre-​1933 Britain, as the 1930s progressed the situation was slowly changing.25 In the 1938 London catalogue, around half of the exhibits were marked for sale. Among the artist loans, this figure rises to over 90 per cent, exposing the exhibition’s status as an important commercial opportunity for the artists forced out of Germany. Tracing the histories of the Twentieth Century German Art exhibits has also brought the full circumstances of the show’s organisation into focus. As noted above, no records were kept by the New Burlington Galleries, nor by the organisers named in the catalogue. Yet the identification of the circa 90 individual lenders, and research into their respective archives, has revealed the scattered traces of the organising team. The young Swiss gallerist Irmgard Burchard evidently played a central role.26 The German-​Jewish art critic Paul Westheim –​exiled from Berlin to Paris since 1933 –​also made an important contribution, utilising the contacts from his Weimar-​era career to identify potential lenders. The London exhibition can therefore be identified as a fundamentally international project, in which Swiss and German émigré figures played a central role. These are only a selection of the new insights offered by a provenance-​ based investigation of the Twentieth Century German Art exhibits. The vast majority of these objects fall clearly outside the definition of “Nazi confiscated art” set out by the Washington Conference Principles, and are thus detached from issues of theft and restitution. Nonetheless, the research methods promoted by these principles have enabled an entirely fresh perspective on this historical exhibition. A Provenance-​Based Reconstruction for Berlin As noted above, this provenance-​based investigation of Twentieth Century German Art was initially the subject of the author’s doctoral dissertation. Completed in 2015, the thesis presented the provenance histories of six case study exhibits, covering as broad a range as possible of lenders and lender motivations. The thesis included three appendices listing the identified exhibits, the biographies of the identified lenders and a reconstruction of the exhibition’s layout.27 As the research drew to a close, however, it became clear that the subjects considered by the thesis could be of wider public interest, particularly in Germany. The discovery of the Gurlitt collection, for example, made public in 2013, drew new attention to the complex relationship between National Socialism and modernist culture.28 As noted above, provenance research was becoming an increasingly recognised method, attracting significant state support. The European migrant crisis from 2015 onwards –​and the response of Chancellor Angela Merkel –​was bringing the issues of exile and solidarity with émigrés to wide media attention. Following the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union in June 2016, relations

132  Lucy Wasensteiner between Britain and its neighbours on the continent were also facing new scrutiny. Against this backdrop, it was decided to present the Twentieth Century German Art research in the form of an exhibition. By late 2015 the author was working in the curatorial team of the Liebermann-​Villa am Wannsee, a museum dedicated to the German painter Max Liebermann (Figure 7.4), housed in the artist’s former summer residence on the banks of Lake Wannsee near Berlin. Liebermann was among the most prominently featured artists in the 1938 exhibition, his personal history as a German Jewish artist also intrinsically linked to the subject of Nazi persecutions. The trustees of the Liebermann-​Villa were convinced that a display of original Twentieth Century German Art exhibits, accompanied by their provenance histories and the stories of their lenders in 1938, would correspond with the museum’s mission statement of promoting and presenting research into Liebermann’s life and work. The exhibition was planned for the autumn/​winter of 2018/​ 19, under the provisional title London 1938 (Figure 7.5).29 From the outset, however, it was clear that the Berlin show could never be a straightforward reconstruction, mainly for practical reasons. Firstly, even though the majority of the original exhibits had been identified, the exact whereabouts of at least 180 pieces remained unknown, the works held in anonymous private collections or having been lost in the years since 1938. Secondly, even if these works could be located, the rooms of the Liebermann-​Villa could never accommodate anywhere near the 271 exhibits catalogued in 1938: the exhibition space comprising five rooms on the upper floor of an originally residential villa. Thirdly, some of the identified exhibits were far too large for display at the Villa, the Beckmann triptych Temptation (1937) for example, visible in the 1938 installation photographs. Fourthly, at least 20 of the identified exhibits were now housed in museum collections in the US. Even with generous financial support from various private and public backers, securing all of these loans for Berlin would not have been feasible. Finally, there was no guarantee that the current owners of the Twentieth Century German Art exhibits would agree to lend to the Berlin show. Private owners may not wish to lend from their collections; museums may deem a work too fragile to travel, or have already promised it to another exhibition. But would an exact replica, of all or even part of the 1938 exhibition, have been the best way to present the results of the research? The answer here was clearly “no.” Presenting over 250 artworks together with their provenance histories would undoubtedly result in an overload of information for visitors. At the same time –​as had already been made clear by the writing of the thesis –​the most important findings of the Twentieth Century German Art research could be presented via a selection of the original exhibits. It was not necessary to present every loan from an émigré German to highlight the involvement of such figures, nor to present every loan offered for sale in 1938 to argue for the show’s importance as a commercial opportunity.

Provenance Research  133 A selection was therefore made from the original London exhibits. In making this selection, the curatorial team at the Liebermann-​Villa were guided by two key principles. Since the original London exhibition was planned as an introductory retrospective to German modernism for a British audience, it was important that the stylistic and technical variety of Twentieth Century German Art was also visible in Berlin –​with Impressionist and Expressionist works, for example, figurative and abstract pieces, oils and drawings alongside sculptures and prints. Perhaps more importantly, however, the provenance histories of the works shown in Berlin should present as far as possible a cross-​section of the provenance histories of the original exhibits. If we wanted to highlight the émigré contributions to Twentieth Century German Art, or the loans from “degenerate artists,” it would be essential that the exhibits contained examples of such provenances. The Berlin exhibition ultimately contained 29 pieces: paintings, sculptures and works on paper which indeed succeeded in reflecting the stylistic mix of the original exhibition.30 Two of the five exhibition rooms contained works by the earlier German modernists: the Impressionists Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt, for example, together with three works by Paula Modersohn-​Becker (Figures 7.5, 7.6 and 7.7). Two further rooms contained figurative works by artists frequently associated with Expressionism, among them Max Pechstein, Christian Rohlfs, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde and Oskar Kokoschka (Figure 7.8). A fifth room contained more distinctly abstract works. These included Wassily Kandinsky’s Unbenannte Improvisation II (Untitled Improvisation II, 1914; see Figure 7.9) and the Paul Klee watercolour Gift (Poison, 1932) (Figure 7.9). The final selection of Berlin exhibits also succeeded in presenting a broad range of provenance histories together with the artworks. As can be seen in the installation photographs, each work was accompanied by a brief wall text, setting out the provenance of the work in question, its lender to London in 1938, and their possible motivations. Alongside these wall texts, audio guide content provided more background to the lender in question, and related their loans to others with similar backgrounds. It was possible, for example, to secure the Nolde painting Young Academic, and thus to tell the story of the Nelkenstock family, their exile from Hanau to London, and the wider contribution of German émigrés in Britain (see Figure 7.10). The Centre Pompidou also agreed to lend Kandinsky’s Murnau, Landscape with Tower, allowing us to present the story of the artist’s exile and his loans from near Paris. Other exhibits presented, for example, the involvement of Swiss museums and private collectors, émigrés in Paris and art dealers across Europe. The original exhibits and their provenance histories made up the majority of the exhibiting space at the Liebermann-​Villa. A vitrine in the opening room contained an example of the London exhibition catalogue, which had been used as the basis for the original provenance research (Figure 7.11). Longer, stand-​alone wall texts in a corridor space within the exhibition provided

134  Lucy Wasensteiner details regarding the National Socialist policies that had prompted the show’s staging, the circumstances of its organisation and its impact in Britain and Germany. These wall panels also contained reproductions of the 1938 installation photographs, and of contemporary British and German press reports. A small seating area within the gallery provided access to a small selection of relevant literature, and to a folder containing further reproductions of contemporary press reports from 1938. Considering this display in the light of Greenberg’s three forms of “remembering exhibition,” there were certainly elements of both the “replica” and the “riff” at the Liebermann-​ Villa. The exhibits were strictly chosen from among those same artworks shown in London in 1938. And, as noted above, there was also some attempt made to recreate the stylistic groupings of the original exhibition. There were, however, no “exact” spatial reconstructions among these rooms: none of the hanging constellations from the original exhibition were reproduced in Berlin. The sense of stylistic “progression” in the original exhibition was also not recreated –​in Berlin the most “abstract” room was the first to be accessed by visitors. Many of the works arguably central to the London exhibition were also missing from Berlin. These included the Beckmann triptych Temptation which heavily dominated the original show (Figure 7.11). With the provenance-​based display, visitors were expressly encouraged to explore aspects of the exhibition beyond the spatial and visual: the object histories, the stories of the lenders, their motivations and the contemporary impact of the show. Thus, while incorporating a degree of replication, the Berlin show was also very much an “exhibition about an exhibition.” A Provenance-​Based Reconstruction for London In the course of planning this display for the Liebermann-​Villa, the curatorial team began to consider the possibility of incorporating a London stage into the London 1938 project. The process of requesting loans for Berlin had illustrated a broad level of interest in the exhibition concept, not only in Germany, but also further afield: in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden –​and Great Britain. London had of course been the venue of the original exhibition. It was also clear that while many in Britain were becoming increasingly aware of the National Socialist campaign against “degenerate art,” few had heard of this important response exhibition. The Wiener Library and Holocaust Archive in central London presented an ideal partner to host this London stage. The archive was founded in the late 1920s by the German-​Jewish Dr Alfred Wiener as a collection of information about the National Socialists and their anti-​Semitic activities. In 1933 Wiener and his family were able to escape with the archive to Amsterdam, later travelling on to London, where the Library opened in 1939.31 Today its focus is to collect and present information regarding the Holocaust and genocide, their causes and consequences. As a reaction to National Socialist

Provenance Research  135 cultural policy, and as a project in which German emigres were centrally involved, Twentieth Century German Art clearly fell within this thematic remit. The Library agreed to host an additional exhibition as part of the London 1938 project, to take place in advance of the Liebermann-​Villa show, over the summer of 2018.32 In London as in Berlin, the basic aim of this show would be to use the provenance histories of the original exhibits to tell the story of Twentieth Century German Art. It soon became clear however that modifications to the exhibition concept would be necessary for the Wiener Library. Most important was the need to include more detailed background information: both about the National Socialist cultural polices which had prompted Twentieth Century German Art, and about the Nazi persecutions which had forced millions into exile after 1933. For the Liebermann-​Villa, these elements were considered “common knowledge” for Berlin exhibition-​goers, and were thus reduced to brief wall texts in the exhibition’s corridor. At the Wiener Library however these developments were dedicated more space (Figure 7.12). Around one quarter of the wall area was dedicated to panels setting out these developments, from the twin exhibitions in Munich in 1937 to the fates of those forced into exile. It was also possible to make use of the Library’s extensive holdings to present this background. Original photographs, letters and other archival materials were reproduced on the panels and displayed in a series of gallery vitrines. The decision to dedicate more space to this background information necessarily meant less display space for the original artworks and their provenance histories. This restriction was overcome with the use of reproductions, displayed in reduced size alongside original artworks. Both the originals and the reproductions were then accompanied –​as in Berlin –​with provenance information and the details of the 1938 lenders (Figure 7.13). Reproductions were used, for example, of Kandinsky’s Untitled Improvisation II and Max Pechstein’s Fischerpferde (Fishermen’s Horses, 1919). These were displayed alongside original artworks, including Nolde’s Young Academic. Visitors thus still had some sense of the visual impression of Twentieth Century German Art. It was however the lender histories which came here more prominently to the fore. As at the Liebermann-​Villa, a third section of the Wiener Library exhibition used text panels to set out how the London exhibition was organised, and its reception in the Britain and Germany of 1938. These panels were of similar length as those used in the corridor space at the Liebermann-​ Villa. The combination of reproduced installation photographs from 1938, extracts from the contemporary press responses and text mirrored closely the wall presentations of the Berlin stage. As a result of these modifications, the display in the Wiener Library can be seen as a shift in the direction of Greenberg’s “riff” category. Nonetheless, the presentation of original exhibits remained central to the exhibition concept. Elements of the “replica” were therefore very much still present.

136  Lucy Wasensteiner Evaluating the Provenance-​Based Approach Using provenance research as the basis for “remembering exhibitions” undoubtedly brought challenges for both curators and visitors. How to condense and present often complicated stories into the wall text format, and how best to combine these texts with other content such as audio or image reproductions, were key concerns. The sense of increased mediation between visitor and artwork was stronger still, for example, in the case of non-​German-​speaking guests to the Liebermann-​Villa, where translations of the wall texts had to be presented in a separate booklet. Nonetheless, there are clear signs that these provenance-​based shows succeeded in broadening public interest in Twentieth Century German Art. Both shows were well-​ attended, with both the Wiener-​ Library and the Liebermann-​Villa stages attracting record audiences.33 The exhibitions were also widely reported in both Britain and Germany.34 These articles consistently drew attention not only to the works on show, but also to their provenance histories and the fates of their 1938 lenders. While neither exhibition in the London 1938 project fit neatly within Greenberg’s formal categorisations, there is no question that by making provenance central to their presentations both of these shows encouraged a shift away from the conception of Twentieth Century German Art as aesthetic and political landmark, instead drawing attention to the show’s layered contexts and varied interconnections. By highlighting the stories of those who lent their works to the show, it was possible to uncover multiple new perspectives on the turbulent years before the outbreak of war, in particular the contexts of Nazi persecutions and mass-​migrations. By exposing the differing backgrounds of the individual lenders, and their various motivations for providing works, the exhibitions raised wider questions about the value and function of art collections, beyond the aesthetic: as a means of raising funds, or bolstering one’s public profile. And by highlighting the range of participants, the exhibitions also served to fracture the notion of “impact” or success, encouraging an awareness of various impacts for the various individuals involved.

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Figure 7.1 Poster for the exhibition Twentieth Century German Art, New Burlington Galleries, London 1938. Private collection.

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Figure 7.2 Ewan Phillips, View of the exhibition Twentieth Century German Art, New Burlington Galleries, London 1938, with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s painting Stafelalp Raod (upper left), Max Beckmann’s tryptich Temptation (middle), Wassily Kandinsky’s painting Murnau, Landscape with Tower (upper right). Tate Archive, Ewan Phillips, Photo: Ewan Phillips, Tate, London 2018.

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Figure 7.3 Ewan Phillips, View of the exhibition Twentieth Century German Art with Max Liebermann’s paintings Concert at the Opera (lower left), Potato Gatherer (middle), Going to Church, Laren (right), Self-​Portrait, 1928 (hidden) and The Parrot Man, Study (far right). Tate Archive, Ewan Phillips. Photo: Ewan Phillips, Tate, London 2018.

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Figure 7.4 Lotte Jacobi, Max Liebermann in his studio in Wannsee, ca. 1932. Max-​ Liebermann-​Gesellschaft Berlin e. V.

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Figure 7.5 View of the Exhibition London 1938. Mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler, Liebermann-​Villa am Wannsee, Berlin 2018–​19, with paintings (from left to right) by Max Liebermann (Harry Graf Kessler in Uniform, ca. 1916, pastel, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach) and Paula Modersohn-​Becker (Landscape with Three Children, 1902, oil on card, LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz; Old Workhouse Woman, 1906, oil on card, Hessisches Landesmusem Darmstadt). Max-​ Liebermann-​ Gesellschaft Berlin e. V. Photo: Elke A. Jung-​Wolff.

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Figure 7.6 View of the Exhibition London 1938. Mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler with paintings (from left to right) by Paula Modersohn-​ Becker (Still Life with Oranges, Bananas, Lemon and Tomato, 1906, oil on card, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe) and Max Liebermann (Going to Church, Laren, 1882, oil on card, Saarlandmuseum Saarbrücken, Stiftung Saarländischer Kulturbesitz; Professor Albert Einstein, 1925, oil on canvas, The Royal Society, London (facsimile); Concert at the Opera, 1922, oil on canvas, private collection). Max-​Liebermann-​Gesellschaft Berlin e. V. Photo: Elke A. Jung-​Wolff.

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Figure 7.7 View of the Exhibition London 1938. Mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler with a sculpture by Benno Elkan (Alfred Flechtheim, 1912, bronze, Museum Ostwall im Dortmunder U, Dortmund) and paintings (from left to right) by Lovis Corinth (In Bordighera, 1912, oil on canvas, Museum Folkwang Essen), Max Slevogt (The Panther, 1931, tempera, private collection and The Garden in Neukastel with the Library, 1930–​ 31, oil on canvas, Landesmuseum Mainz). Max-​ Liebermann-​ Gesellschaft Berlin e. V. Photo: Elke A. Jung-​Wolff.

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Figure 7.8 View of the Exhibition London 1938. Mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler with paintings (from left to right) by Oscar Kokoschka (Self-​ Portrait of a “Degenaretd Artist”, 1937, oil on canvas, private collection on long-​term loan to the National Galleries of Scotland), Helmut Kolle (Young man with a Coloured Scarf, ca. 1930, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz –​Museum Gunzenhauser, Stiftung Gunzenhauser) and Emil Nolde (The Young Academic, 1918, oil on canvas, Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen). Max-​Liebermann-​Gesellschaft Berlin e. V. Photo: Elke A. Jung-​Wolff.

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Figure 7.9 View of the Exhibition London 1938. Mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler with paintings (from left to right) by Paul Klee (Poison, 1932, watercolour and pencil on paper, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern), Jacoba van Heemskerck (Sailing Picture, circa 1915, watercolour and ink on paper, on wood, 48 × 63 cm, Moderna Museet, Stockholm) and Wassily Kandinsky (Untitled Improvisation II, 1914, oil on canvas, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam). Max-​ Liebermann-​ Gesellschaft Berlin e. V. Photo: Elke A. Jung-​Wolff.

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Figure 7.10  Front cover of the exhibition catalogue Twentieth Century German Art, New Burlington Galleries, London 1938. Courtesy of the Wiener Library, London.

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Figure 7.11  Extract from the exhibition catalogue Twentieth Century German Art, New Burlington Galleries, London 1938. Courtesy of the Wiener Library, London.

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Figure 7.12 View of the Exhibition Defending “Degenerate” German Art, Wiener Library, London 2018. Max-​Liebermann-​Gesellschaft Berlin e.V.

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Figure 7.13 View of the Exhibition Defending “Degenerate” German Art, Wiener Library, London 2018 with various exhibit reproductions, and Max Slevogt’s tempera The Panther, 1931. Max-​Liebermann-​Gesellschaft Berlin e. V.

Notes 1 Greenberg, R., ‘ “Remembering Exhibitions”: From Point to Line to Web’, Tate Papers, no. 12, Autumn 2009, available at: www.tate.org.uk/​resea​rch/​publi​ cati​ons/​tate-​pap​ers/​12/​reme​mber​ing-​exhi​biti​ons-​from-​point-​to-​line-​to-​web, accessed 14 August 2019. 2 The exhibition at the Liebermann-​ Villa curated together with Martin Faass and Alice Cazzola; the exhibition at the Wiener Library curated together with Barbara Warnock. 3 Greenberg, “Remembering Exhibitions”. 4 See, for example, Schlenker, I., Hitler’s Salon: The ‘Große deutsche Kunstausstellung’ at the Haus der deutschen Kunst in Munich, 1937-​ 44 (Oxford, 2007); and Barron, S., Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-​Garde in Nazi Germany, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (New York, 1991). 5 The two exceptions here were the sculptor Georg Kolbe, and the painter Otto Meyer Amden. Meyer Amden was Swiss and had passed away in 1933. The German Kolbe had continued to work successfully in National Socialist Germany. He was represented by one work in the 1938 London catalogue, a 1925 bronze of the Jewish art dealer Paul Cassirer. 6 See, for example, Rave, P. O., Kunstdiktatur im Dritten Reich (Hamburg, 1949), pp. 112–​14; Frowein, C., “The Exhibition of 20th Century German Art in London 1938: Eine Antwort auf die Ausstellung Entartete Kunst in München 1937”, in Exilforschung: Ein internationales Jahrbuch, vol. 2, 1984, pp. 212–​37;

150  Lucy Wasensteiner and Weikop, C., “The British Reception of Brücke and German Expressionism”, in Weikop, C. (ed.), Bridging History: Perspectives on Brücke Expressionism (Farnham, 2011), pp. 236–​76. 7 Tate Gallery Photographic Archive, Ewan Phillips collection, Twentieth Century German Art photographs, 1938. 8 Roters, E., Stationen der Moderne: Die bedeutenden Kunstausstellungen des 20. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland, exhibition catalogue, Berlinische Galerie (Berlin, 1988), pp. 315–​37. Though not staged in Germany, Twentieth Century German Art was nonetheless included in this exhibition, as was the November 1938 Paris show Freie deutsche Kunst. 9 Ibid. 10 See, for example, Jeuthe, G., Kunstwerte im Wandel: Die Preisentwicklung der deutschen Moderne im nationalen und internationalen Kunstmarkt 1925 bis 1955 (Berlin, 2011), p. 46. 11 The literature considering these movements of cultural objects is extensive. See, for example, Nichols, L. H., The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York, 1994). 12 See Goschlar, C. and Lillteicher, J., ‘Arisierung‘ und Restitution: Die Rückerstattung jüdischen Eigentums in Deutschland und Österreich nach 1945 und 1989 (Göttingen, 2002). 13 For a useful overview of these developments, see Gramlich, J., “Reflections on Provenance Research: Values –​Politics –​Art Markets”, in Journal for Art Market Studies, vol. 1, no. 2 (2017), available at: www.fokum-​jams.org/​index.php/​jams/​ issue/​view/​3, accessed 14 August 2018. 14 The full text of these principles is available online at: www.state.gov/​p/​eur/​rt/​ hlcst/​270​431.htm, accessed 23 July 2018. 15 For an overview of these state developments in Germany, together with copies of all key documents (including the Common Declaration of 1999), see the website of the German Lost Art Foundation, available at: www.kultur​gutv​erlu​ste.de, accessed 23 July 2018. 16 Universität Hamburg: Junior Professor in Provenance Research; Ludwig-​ Maximilians-​ Universität Munich: Junior Professor in Cultural Heritage and Provenance Research; Rheinische Friedrich-​ Wilhelms-​ Universität Bonn: one Professor and one Junior Professor in Provenance Research and the History of Collecting, working alongside a further Professor in Art and Cultural Heritage Law. 17 See “Erforschung von Kulturgutentziehungen in SBZ und DDR”, available at: www.kultur​gutv​erlu​ste.de/​Webs/​DE/​Forsc​hung​sfoe​rder​ung/​Projek​tfoe​rder​ ung-​Bere​ich-​SBZ-​DDR/​Index.html, accessed 20 July 2018. 18 “Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste übernimmt zentrale Rolle bei der Aufarbeitung der Provenienzen des ‘Kolonialen Erbes’ in deutschen Museen”, press release of the German Lost Art Foundation, 25 April 2018, available at: www.kultur​gutv​erlu​ste.de/​Cont​ent/​02_​Ak​tuel​les/​DE/​Pre​ssem​itte​ilun​gen/​ 2018/​Zent​rum-​ueb​erni​mmt-​zentr​ale-​Rolle-​bei-​Aufar​beit​ung-​kol​onia​len-​Erbes. html, accessed 20 July 2018. 19 This research published in full as Wasensteiner, L., The Twentieth Century German Art Exhibition: Ansering Degenerate Art in 1930s London (New York, 2018). 20 Urban, M., Emil Nolde: Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde (Munich, 1990), no. 785; also correspondence between the author and Dr Margot S. Norton (born

Provenance Research  151 Nelkenstock), Richmond, June 2012; and Monika Rademacher, Hanau City Archive, July 2012. 21 For a detailed discussion of this point, see Wasensteiner, The Twentieth Century German Art Exhibition, ­chapter 3. 22 Roethel, H. K. and Benjamin, J. K., Kandinsky: Werkverzeichnis der Ölgemälde (Munich, 1984), vol. 1, no. 220. 23 Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, collection information, available at: www. cen​trep​ompi​dou.fr/​en/​Coll​ecti​ons/​The-​works, accessed 23 July 2018. 24 Centre Pompidou, Paris, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, letter from Irmgard Burchard to Wassily Kandinsky, 26 March 1938. 25 See, for example, German exhibitions staged by Alfred Flechtheim in London between 1934 and 1936, and the 1934 Liebermann exhibition at the Leicester Galleries which prompted Tate to purchase their first work by the artist that year. Jeuthe, Kunstwerte im Wandel, p. 77; Tate Gallery, London, collection information in respect of inv. no. N04779, available at: www.tate.org.uk/​art/​artwo​rks/​lie​ berm​ann-​self-​portr​ait-​n04​779, accessed 1 September 2018. 26 See Wasensteiner, The Twentieth Century German Art Exhibition, pp. 22–​27; also Watling, L., “The Irmgard Burchard Tableaux: An Anti-​Nazi Dealership in 1930s Switzerland”, in Blimlinger, E. and Mayer, M. (eds.), Kunst Sammeln, Kunst Handeln (Vienna, 2012), pp. 233–​242. 27 Watling, L., Documents of a Forgotten Network: The Loans to Twentieth Century German Art, London 1938, doctoral dissertation, University of London (Courtauld Institute of Art), 2016. Later published in revised form as Wasensteiner, The Twentieth Century German Art Exhibition, though without the layout appendix. 28 The discovery of hundreds of artworks from the collection of art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt –​who worked in close collaboration with the Nazi regime –​in the apartment of his son, Cornelius. Indeed, this find spawned its own exhibitions in Bonn, Bern and Berlin. See Andreas Baresel-​Brand, Meike Hopp and Agnieszka Lulinska, eds. Bestandsaufnahme Gurlitt: “Entartete Kunst”, beschlagnahmt und verkauft, der NS-​ Kunstraub und die Folgen (Munich, 2017). 29 The full title of the Berlin stage was London 1938: mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler (London 1938: with Kandinsky, Liebermann and Nolde against Hitler). 30 For a full list of the exhibits, see Wasensteiner, L. and Faass, M., London 1938: Mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler. Defending ‘Degenerate’ German Art, exhibition catalogue, Liebermann-​Villa am Wannsee and Wiener Library (Zürich, 2018). 31 History of the Wiener Library, available at: www.wiener​libr​ary.co.uk/​Our-​Hist​ ory, accessed 5 September 2019. 32 This show ultimately bore the full title London 1938: Defending ‘Degenerate’ German Art. 33 London 1938 was the best-​attended exhibition in the Wiener Library’s history, and the best-​attended winter exhibition ever staged at the Liebermann-​Villa. 34 See, for example, Aaronovitz, R. “The Treasure Hunt that Revealed Germany’s ‘Degenerate’ delights”, The Times, 9 June 2018, available at: www.theti​mes. co.uk/​arti​cle/​the-​treas​ure-​hunt-​that-​revea​led-​germa​nys-​deg​ener​ate-​delig​hts-​ jghjpz​vjr; Brown, M., “Library Explores British Defence of German ‘Degenerate

152  Lucy Wasensteiner Art’ ”, The Guardian, 12 June 2018, available at: www.theg​uard​ian.com/​artan​ ddes​ign/​2018/​jun/​12/​libr​ary-​explo​res-​brit​ish-​defe​nce-​of-​ger​man-​deg​ener​ate-​art; Connolly, K., “Berlin Recreates Nazi-​Baiting Art Exhibition from 1938”, in The Guardian, 5 October 2019, available at: www.theg​uard​ian.com/​world/​2018/​ oct/​05/​ber​lin-​recrea​tes-​nazi-​bait​ing-​art-​exh​ibit​ion-​from-​1938; Anon., “Künstler gegen Hitler am Wannsee”, Berliner Abendblatt, 23 October 2018, available at: www.abe​ndbl​att-​ber​lin.de/​2018/​10/​23/​kuenst​ler-​gegen-​hit​ler-​am-​wann​see/​ ; Buchholz, E. L., “Kunst gegen Hitler”, Der Tagesspiegel, 30 October 2018, available at: www.tages​spie​gel.de/​kul​tur/​mode​rne-​in-​der-​lie​berm​ann-​villa-​kunst-​ gegen-​hit​ler/​23244​122.html; all sites accessed 1 September 2019.

8 Copy as Container, Original as Content “The Making of Modern Art” at the Van Abbemuseum Milena Tomic

On view at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven between April 2017 and January 2021, “The Making of Modern Art” combined works from the collection by Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Lucio Fontana, and many others with reconstructions of historical exhibits made of hand-​ painted copies that resembled art yet were conceived in an entirely different spirit. Varying in size and degree of skill, these anonymous copies did more than just imitate individual masterpieces; they also imitated pages from the exhibition catalogues and installation photographs in which those paintings and sculptures first appeared in the story of modern art. Curators Christiane Berndes, Steven ten Thije, and Charles Esche worked with the Museum of American Art (MoAA), a private educational institution run out of a private Berlin residence and with no formal affiliation with New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Since 2004, the MoAA has collected and displayed “memories” of the MoMA and its International Program of Circulating Exhibitions. Launched in 1952 to promote American artists in Western Europe, that program aimed to establish what the MoAA’s mission statement calls “the first post-​war common cultural identity based on internationalism, modernism and individualism.”1 These memories are preserved through exhibits of copies that are, in theory at least, exact imitations of their referents, syntactically if not semantically identical.2 Their function is not to promote aesthetic appreciation of the originals or the recognition of their historical significance but institute a new temporality through the spatial relationship between original and copy that positions the latter as primary. By collaborating with the MoAA on many –​though not all –​of the reconstructed exhibits, the Van Abbemuseum’s curators gained a special advisor in a certain Walter Benjamin who often speaks on the MoAA’s behalf, though never in any official capacity. The Frankfurt School philosopher died on 26 September 1940. Evidently, his death presented no obstacle to Benjamin’s “reappearance” in two capital cities once part of Yugoslavia. The first took place on 2 June 1986 at the Cankar Centre (Cankarjev dom) in Ljubljana, Slovenia, co-​organised by the Marxist Centre and ŠKUC Gallery (Galerija Škuc), while the second was taped and televised in Belgrade, Serbia, DOI: 10.4324/9780429279775-12

154  Milena Tomic the following year.3 This Benjamin lectured on a series of paintings by a certain Piet Mondrian made between 1963 and 1996 –​another evident fiction as Mondrian himself died in 1944. Parafiction provides a conceptual lens through which to read these personas. Carrie Lambert-​Beatty has described the parafictional mode, which is related to yet distinct from the pseudo-​documentary turn in contemporary art, as reflecting a growing ambivalence with the institution of art, namely “the contradictions between art’s ability to move into and change the world, and art as a space of only symbolic relevance.”4 Here, the use of anonymity or names like Benjamin and Mondrian signalled an overcoming of the creative impulse that put the meaning of the word “artist” into question. Further aligning parafiction with J.L. Austin’s unhappy performative, which denotes “speech acts that don’t take” or performatives that fail to effect the desired transformation in the existing state of affairs, Lambert-​Beatty argues that performatives still “make someone believe, however temporarily or ambiguously,” and thus “trouble the distinction between happy and unhappy performativity.”5 At the Van Abbemuseum, visitors were subjected to the litany of deceptions that are parafiction’s stock in trade, all in the service of imagining a future beyond the art museum as we know it, one in which such museums are decommissioned in the manner of deconsecrated churches given over to secular use. The sheer complexity of the exhibition strategies in the eight rooms of “The Making of Modern Art” requires that my focus be selective. Close analysis of selected exhibits from rooms two and three will be interspersed with limited discussion of rooms one and five, with the fourth, sixth, seventh, and eighth rooms receiving the least attention. The occasionally non-​linear nature of my trajectory reflects possibilities offered by the exhibition itself, which rejects both art-​historical chronology and hierarchies of value. The manner in which I discuss the relevant rooms and exhibits involves much backtracking and moments of déjà vu, which, I argue, is entirely in line with the design of “The Making of Modern Art.” Throughout, I pay special attention to how the exhibition-​makers engaged with the legacies of Alfred H. Barr, Jr., founding director of the MoMA from 1929, and Alexander Dorner, who in 1922 became director of the Landesmuseum in Hanover, then called the Provinzialmuseum. Room three, for instance, contained the reconstructed memory of Barr’s “Cubism and Abstract Art” and “Fantastic Art, DADA, Surrealism,” two exhibitions from 1936 that shaped the growth of the MoMA collection for years to come, largely through the spread of their catalogues, and along the dual lines of geometric clarity and chaotic introspection. Room five reflected on eight historical exhibitions of great importance, including Dorner’s collaboration with El Lissitzky on the Abstract Cabinet (Kabinett der Abstrakten), a dynamic space for the display of abstraction that opened in 1928 and was lost in the Nazi purge of the avant-​garde from German museums. Recreated by the MoAA complete with copies of the abstract works it was built to display, the Abstract Cabinet came with

Copy as Container, Original as Content  155 moveable display cases and walls whose appearance shifted with the visitor’s movements (an effect produced by angled vertical slats painted black on one side and white on the other). The full-​scale reconstruction of Dorner’s collaboration with Làszló Moholy-​Nagy’s unrealised Room of the Present (Raum der Gegenwart) (1930) took up the entirety of the sixth room and lies beyond the scope of this chapter.6 The curators’ approach to Dorner’s and Barr’s legacies was not confined to literal reconstructions of particular exhibits, of course. Dorner used interior architecture, wall colour, wall-​mounted text, and other visual aids to rehang a collection, once organised by donor name and hung salon-​style, as a progression of “atmosphere rooms” that separated out the work on display for individual viewing and mediated the conditions of that viewing for maximal emotional impact.7 In contrast, Barr promoted a temple-​like orthodoxy of the white cube whose apparent neutrality is a matter of convention. In “The Making of Modern Art,” the relationship between “art” and “not-​art” remained unsettled throughout, reflecting a growing cultural ambivalence towards the art museum. Where the author of “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935) saw aura as that which “withers in the age of mechanical reproduction,”8 his namesake has described the copy as that which “contains both the idea of its model and its own idea: the idea of being a copy.”9 For the other Benjamin, the copy has primacy over the original whose meaning it contains alongside its own meaning. A potential objection is that, when the copy is exhibited in the art museum, the latter contains and potentially delimits that new meaning simply by virtue of providing it with an institutional space in which to appear –​at least for the foreseeable future. Although that future remains uncertain, I argue, it may end up being defined by exactly this kind of hybrid approach to exhibition-​making as exhibition re/​deconstruction, one that embraces the parafictional conceit over expressive transparency, spatial strategies of double vision over the cult of the unique and original, and a temporality of repetition and déjà vu over chronological progression. Modernist Curiosities and the Challenge of De-​articisation The story of the MoMA was the story of Alfred Barr’s adopting and refining what art collectors such as Katherine S. Dreier had already begun to explore: the transition from a linear chronology of national schools to one dominated by international avant-​garde movements. In the first room, “The Making of Modern Art” traced art’s development from the sixteenth century to the twentieth, through hand-​painted copies of everything from paintings like Piet Mondrian’s Composition No. II, with Red and Blue (1929) to photographs like the one of the Apollo Belvedere from the Vatican Museums. Next to the books, catalogues, photographs, and other educational items, some provided by a MoAA affiliate called the Museum of Antiquities (MoA), these copies were displayed in eight glass cabinets recessed into three walls

156  Milena Tomic and topped with undulating arches. Perusing the cabinets from left to right while walking through a space furnished with low tables and an Oriental rug, visitors learned that the invention of what the exhibition called “Western Art” was the cumulative effect of multiple forces, including a 1648 decree by King Louis XIV that painting and sculpture would henceforth be known as the “liberal arts,” Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici’s 1581 decision to build the Uffizi offices, and the origins of the bourgeois art market in the Low Countries as painters began to produce mobile goods that rewarded investment. Other important forerunners to modern exhibition-​making included Pope Julius II exhibiting newly unearthed Roman sculptures in the Vatican’s Belvedere Courtyard from 1508 –​which represented a pre-​Christian memory on the very site of its apparent erasure –​and Vivant Denon’s 1793 inheritance of the royal collection at the Musée du Louvre, then called the Musée Napoléon, followed by its reorganisation around the principles of artistic quality.10 The cabinets referenced Baron de Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721), a popular satire of French manners and culture from the perspective of Uzbek and Rica, imaginary Persian noblemen. The figure of Barr haunted the cabinets too, occasionally prefiguring the logic of the copy; for instance, a painted copy of a photograph taken during preparations for “Cubism and Abstract Art” showed him with the photo-​reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) slated to play the role of absent original. As early as the first room, then, it was evident from the very mode of display that the aesthetic values once taken as universal were being jettisoned –​and despite vaguely resembling the Dorner-​like “atmosphere room” more than the white cube, the result ran counter to what Dorner had intended to achieve nearly a century earlier. While Dorner had used immersion in architectural spaces and continuity between rooms to explain any apparently spontaneous changes in aesthetic form, visitors to the Van Abbemuseum were more likely to be startled by abrupt, non-​chronological shifts in narrative direction. The second room referenced Dorner’s medieval galleries through a number of architectural interventions like walls painted purple, green, and yellow to indicate the boundaries of particular exhibits. Elsewhere, large masonry blocks protruded from the corner of a low green wall, topped with a fragment from a broken vault, while a makeshift gothic niche enclosed an 1865 sculpture of the Madonna and Child from the Eindhoven Museum. Opposite the religious scene on another yellow wall hung what appeared to be Sol LeWitt’s Untitled (Wall Structure) (1972) but was, in reality, a facsimile by Danish collective Superflex, one of multiple metal replicas produced by a 2010 workshop titled Free Sol LeWitt (2010) and then “freed” from the museum by a lottery system.11 On a second green wall perpendicular to the one with the Madonna hung a key collection item –​Piet Mondrian’s Composition in White and Black II (1930) –​next to an identical copy in an identical frame.12 Arguably, these two objects comprised the clearest statement of the exhibition’s purpose (Figure 8.1).

Copy as Container, Original as Content  157 The wall text directed visitors to a passage from “On Copy” in which Benjamin wonders if the copy of an abstract painting is abstract or realist, suggesting that the resulting confusion transforms “the entire modernistic paradigm upside-​down and reveal[s]‌that our idyllic backyard could be a minefield, too.”13 In other words, a painting could be experienced as the object it appears to be or as commentary on that object’s position within a certain narrative. If figures such as Christ and the Madonna once commanded total belief in their historical reality, art museums enlisted them in a different structure of belief, swapping a litany of saints and divinities with a new genealogy marked instead by exceptional talent and a quasi-​divine right to self-​expression. But vestiges of old habits remained. Barr himself, a lifelong Christian and son of a Presbyterian minister, viewed his MoMA directorship between 1929 and 1943 as akin to an evangelising mission. Barr sought large endowments for his fledgling art museum in the same spirit as his minister father once pursued financing for his Baltimore church.14 In her 1989 biography of Barr, subtitled Missionary for the Modern, Alice Goldfarb Marquis attributes to this “quintessential American” personage the wrathful nature of “an Old Testament prophet” who “did battle with the ever-​present philistines and harried them even as they fled.”15 Barr drafted diagrams of art schools and movements that resembled Biblical records of Adam and Eve’s descendants, envisioning representative examples of these genealogy –​his ideal permanent collection –​as fitting into the bays of a cathedral-​cum-​museum.16 Much like religious fervour could haunt the secular institution of the art museum, art itself could be nested inside structures of not-​art, though with an obvious caveat: the attempted transformation of signs might fail to stick, becoming one of Austin’s unhappy performatives –​a real risk that parafictional projects tend to acknowledge rather than deny. Put another way, what guarantee could there be of a successful de-​articisation if no precedent existed against which to measure its success? To better understand this problem, I want to look outside the Van Abbemuseum and recall Benjamin’s first posthumous appearances, first in 1986 at Ljubljana’s Cankar Centre and the following year on TV Gallery (Figure 8.2). In the roughly 22-​minute video that aired on Belgrade television, a grey-​suited, bespectacled man addresses a classroom of students from a lectern before moving to a desk. Behind him is a blackboard with six copies of five abstract paintings by Mondrian, including two identical copies of Composition No. II (1929); these create the same impression of seeing double as the exhibit around Composition in White and Black II at the Van Abbemuseum. The lecturer describes an imaginary visit to an imaginary version of MoMA that contains a room of original Mondrians as well as a room of their exact copies. When an earthquake comes along and collapses the art museum, burying all the masterpieces in rubble, “you” salvage two identical objects: an original Mondrian that is covered in plaster and dust, and a spotless copy. “Perplexed by all these considerations,” Benjamin continues, “you don’t even notice how much time has passed: the cigarette has burnt out long ago, and the coffee’s already gotten

158  Milena Tomic cold and you haven’t even tried it.”17 Time itself seems to stretch and distort for the imaginary person until it seems to come to a standstill. The lecturer speaks of confusion and amazement yet the students appeared bored, their numbers dwindling dramatically by the lecture’s end. In a related manner, visitors to “The Making of Modern Art” encountered copies that had neither temporal coordinates nor authorial identifiers to give them meaning. It is no coincidence that Composition in White and Black II appeared more than twice at the Van Abbemuseum; to jump ahead in the room sequence, visitors bumped against it a third time in the third room, which recreated the white-​walled natural habitat of such masterpieces at Barr’s MoMA. However, unlike the dwindling students in Benjamin’s classroom, the same museum visitors also encountered artefacts laden with claims to originality and historical significance, a few from non-​Western contexts. On the purple wall on other side of the Madonna and Child was a helmet mask used in a funeral ceremony by the Toba Batak of North Sumatra, Indonesia –​a reference to Henri Jacob van Abbe, a cigar manufacturer with Indonesian tobacco farms under Dutch colonial rule who founded the Van Abbemuseum in the same year that Barr curated “Cubism and Abstract Art.” Tied to the colonial history of the place, this ritual object was no different from any other ritual object in the art museum. Indeed, a Dorner-​like recreation of the “atmosphere” of the early Van Abbemuseum awaited visitors in the fourth room, which mimicked the architectural design of Alexander Jacobus Kropholler around a display of pseudo-​modernist work from the collection’s early days. Opposite the helmet mask in the second room hung a painting that resembled Alexander Kosolapov’s Lenin Coca-​Cola (1980) (Figure 8.3). Here, too, the exhibition-​makers flouted expectations in presenting not the original but a copy painted by Li Mu, a Chinese artist who in 2013 rallied villagers from his native Qiuzhuang to copy works from the Van Abbemuseum by such artists as Dan Flavin, Richard Long, Andy Warhol, and Ulay/​Abramović. A memory of the painting by Russian-​American Kosolapov, a Pop mediator between East and West from the early days of Sots Art, engineered a collision of two key icons of the twentieth century across the East/​West divide: the Coca-​Cola logo and a portrait of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. More than a copy, Lenin Coca-​Cola was here accompanied by two video screens playing footage of Lenin and a display case with associated “branded” items ranging from Coke-​branded accessories to the paraphernalia of Soviet officialdom. Visitors learned via the didactic panels that in 2011 the artefacts had been exhibited with Kosolapov’s original at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana. The implications were clear: all works of art, even those of recent vintage, were as ready for de-​articisation as any modern artefact from the days of Barr and Dorner.18 In the absence of chronological progression towards some shared goal, no difference existed between modern and contemporary in the logic of the exhibition. Time was the catalyst in the de-​articising process –​twisted and distorted,

Copy as Container, Original as Content  159 and made to stutter and loop back on itself. In Benjamin’s lecture on the impossibly dated Mondrian copies, some mysterious anomaly in time had induced confusion and boredom in equal measure, but here the exhibition-​makers took a mock-​archaeological view. Oriented towards a speculative future far beyond modernity and its immediate aftermath, the exhibit around Lenin and Coca-​ Cola invited visitors to imagine a world in which the leading mythologies of the twentieth century had become a distant memory. Returning to the second room and the purple wall, the painting that hung to the left of Lenin and Coca-​Cola, Otto Erwin Engelbert Arndt’s Ostmark (1939), had already undergone the same decommissioning process and emerged on the other side as not-​art. A traditional landscape acquired by Adolf Hitler following its display in the Great German Art Exhibition (Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung) at the House of German Art (Haus der Deutsche Kunst) in Munich, Ostmark represented the Nazis’ understanding of art, which excluded the historical avant-​gardes; under the Third Reich, the latter became “degenerate” and were subjected to ritual mockery in the Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) exhibition of 1937. Even before reaching the third room with its focus on Barr’s legacy, the visitor found certain facts harder and harder to ignore. The American takeover of modern art –​the process by which it became international –​depended in large part on Europe’s nationalist turmoil and eventual cultural eclipse. Here, a representative example of Nazi Kunst, which today remains largely forgotten and tucked away in dusty warehouses, was brought to the Van Abbemuseum from the German Historical Museum (Deutsches Historisches Museum) to jolt visitors into performing the required mental shift in their understanding to regard works of art as artefacts that played multiple roles in multiple stories. The Nested Museum: Horizons of Expectations and the Wreckage of History White walls in art museums often register as neutral, escaping our notice, but not so in the third room of “The Making of Modern Art” (Figure 8.4). In the middle of the room stood a downscaled version of the MoMA recalling the heyday of “Cubism and Abstract Art” and “Fantastic Art, DADA, Surrealism.” Courtesy of the MoAA, this roofless model comprised three nested cubes, the largest of which measured two metres on each side.19 Coloured copies painted at one-​tenth of the originals’ scale hung in the outermost room. Moving inward, the middle cube contained copies of black-​and-​ white pages from the catalogues. Finally, the walls of the tiny solid cube had a copy of an installation shot on each side, painted in colour yet tinged with a yellow evoking age. Imagining the model as a Russian nesting doll, the walls of the museum itself became another nested layer, only life-​sized and hung with a mix of originals and copies. Among the originals were Wassily Kandinsky’s View of Murnau with Church (1910), Oskar Kokoschka’s The

160  Milena Tomic Power of Music (1918), Heinrich Campendonk’s Farm (1919), and Georges Braque’s La Roche-​Guyon (1909). Because the copies could imitate works from any art collection in the world, they included Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying (1915) and Paul Cézanne’s The Bather (1885) from the MoMA. The copy of The Bather had a corresponding miniature in the model displayed in the same spot near the entrance, as if the anonymous copyist wished to fill any perceived gaps in the collection as well as induce déjà vu in the visitors. The confusion only increased once the same visitors realised that the version of Picasso’s Femme en Vert (1909), arguably the crown jewel of the Van Abbemuseum, was a “mere” copy. Where was the original Femme en Vert? The painting in question hung on a yellow wall in the second room, accompanied by newspaper clippings recalling the national controversy sparked by its purchase at over double the museum’s acquisition budget for 1954. In the context of “The Making of Modern Art,” it had a single role to play, quite unrelated to aesthetic appreciation: to represent the triumph of internationalism, but in an entirely clinical, dispassionate way. News of this triumph spread by way of Barr’s diagrams of modern art’s evolution, including the famous one reproduced on the cover of “Cubism and Abstract Art.” An exhibit on the back wall of the third room traced this spread in multiple languages and iterations. To better understand the stakes, the contours of that story are worth examining in more detail. Barr’s view of his directorship as a fight against the philistinism endemic in American culture hardly precluded him applying lessons from the business world such as monetising memberships or colluding with collectors over ­strategic donations. While the museum’s early trustees could not have foreseen the impact the MoMA collection would have on the art-​ historical canon, those who supported Barr’s initial vision of the MoMA as “a torpedo moving through time, its nose the ever advancing present, its tail the ever receding past of fifty to a hundred years ago,”20 eventually accepted why the MoMA was never destined to become a feeder institution for the nearby Metropolitan like the Cluny and Luxembourg in Paris for the Louvre. Challenging to acquire, works like Les Demoiselles d’Avignon proved much too central to Barr’s diagrams of modern art’s evolution to ever leave the museum. In the absence of any regulatory system or code of conduct, Barr was free to advise benefactors on what artworks were on the market at any given time; implicit was the understanding that donors received tax incentives and might not even have to lose the work until after their death.21 The white-​ hot art market in the 1950s torpedoed the “torpedo in time.” As Marquis explains in her biography of Barr, donors learned that strategic gifts to public collections increased the value of the same artist’s work in private hands, further nixing the prospect of valuable donations being sold off in pursuit of more novel acquisitions.22 In other words, the copies from the MoAA, including the miniature version of the MoMA, represented the opening and closing of a particular timeline

Copy as Container, Original as Content  161 of art running between the early sixteenth and mid-​twentieth centuries. For Benjamin, the end of that timeline heralded the end of art itself, and the MoAA in Berlin is able to fully embody the consequences of that realisation; if museums of modern and contemporary art continue to exist today in the same manner as before, it is by virtue of having sealed the past-​end of the timeline at some arbitrary point while keeping the future-​end open to novelty.23 How long will such a model continue to operate? Exhibitions such as “The Making of Modern Art” were a sign the Van Abbemuseum had entered a phase that, for Steven ten Thije, “demands a structural consideration of what in the first place should be collected in an age of globalisation.”24 This structural consideration involves the memory of modern art’s move from being defined by national schools to becoming a story about international movements, and in our time of growing national insularity, internationalism has an almost nostalgic dimension. Crucially, “The Making of Modern Art” focused on both sides of the divide. The spectre of “degeneracy” returned in room five. Spacious and titled “Eight Exhibitions,” this room was filled with more copies than any other, many hung salon-​style on tall pink walls, and so crowded as to give Dorner nightmares.25 In the centre stood a grey wall bordered by red carpeting, as if to signify, with an air of officialdom, its symbolic containment from the main storyline. The display addressed Munich’s Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937 and its less infamous Soviet counterpart, “Art of the Industrial Bourgeoisie” at Moscow’s Tretyakov State Gallery in 1931. The German side of the wall revealed the inherent uncertainty of any forced de-​articisation where new roles are imposed on old players. The strange part was not the large painting of the Degenerate Art catalogue cover displayed near the actual catalogue, an unusual take on the original/​copy dichotomy; rather, it was the orange exhibition poster nearby whose title exposed a typographic peculiarity. On the catalogue, only the word “art” appeared in scare quotes.26 Here, the scare quotes encompassed the whole title (“degenerate art”), negating its attempt at negation. In other words, if degenerate “art” was not real art, then “degenerate art” was not really degenerate. Odder still were the photographs taken at the Degenerate Art exhibition, which showed visitors behaving respectfully, not derisively, around the modern art on display –​much like they would behave in a real art museum. The avant-​garde resisted the de-​articising process imposed upon it by the institution, not only because of the authoritarian form that process took here, but also because the avant-​garde largely understood the nature of the public as a multiplicity. Imagined as one of Austin’s performatives, the Nazi concept of “degenerate art” failed to take, undermining the very authority it was meant to strengthen and uphold. Too confident of succeeding as a happy performative, it lost sight of a central feature of parafiction whose primary function is not to produce and manage the true but the plausible. After all, “plausibility (as opposed to accuracy) is not an attribute of a story or image, but of its encounter with viewers, whose various configurations of

162  Milena Tomic knowledge and “horizons of expectation” determine whether something is plausible to them.”27 A more successful form of de-​articisation –​insofar as it recognised a multiplicity of publics and horizons of expectation –​awaited in the seventh room, where 18 modern and contemporary works by Max Ernst, Lucio Fontana, Jenny Holzer, IRWIN, Marijke van Warmerdam, Qiu Zhijie, and others –​ collectively representing “Western art” –​were displayed in freestanding red cabinets reminiscent of those in the first room and recalling the artefacts of a lost civilisation. Neither English nor Dutch, the didactic panels were in the fictitious Utopian language, translated by the parafictional Menno Grootveld from an original text by Raphael Hythlodaeus, who had inspired Thomas More to write Utopia (1516) over five centuries earlier. Though fond of these artefacts, the Utopians accorded them no special importance. Conclusion W.J.T. Mitchell describes one kind of meta-​picture as a “picture that contains another picture of a different kind, and thus re-​frames or recontextualizes the inner picture as ‘nested’ inside of a larger, outer picture.”28 Bruno Trentini goes further to argue that, when “one sees a picture nested in another picture, a hierarchy of representation seems to emerge: the picture in the picture seems less real than the picture in which it is located.”29 The idea of the content-​picture having a lesser claim on authority than the container-​picture resonates with the miniature model of the 1936 MoMA, which the other Benjamin once described as “in fact the real Museum of Modern Art, in a way more so than the one in New York.”30 Following this line of argument, however, leads us to a more solid set of walls that enclosed the diminutive simulacrum: those of the Van Abbemuseum, an institution that continues to function in the traditional sense as a museum of modern art that continues to build the contemporary wing of its collection. This apparent conundrum begins to resolve when we think of the copies as “not endors[ing] the originality of the object they copy,” but, as Steven ten Thije writes, “instead the context that allowed the original to exist,”31 a context defined by a shift away from nationalism and towards internationalism. Benjamin himself has addressed the impossibility of ensuring these projects would be perceived in their proper context at the biennales and other high-​ profile events where they continue to appear in a kind of speculative capacity, as happy/​unhappy performatives unable to exist anywhere else.32 “On Copy,” the essay quoted on the didactic panels at the Van Abbemuseum, accompanied an exhibition of painted copies titled “International Exhibition of Modern Art, 2013,” the Serbian contribution to the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. The title projected the exhibition ten years into the future –​an obvious impossibility, much like Mondrian copies Benjamin lectured on in 1986, having chosen to reemerge from the wreckage of history in Ljubljana and Belgrade, two capitals of former Yugoslavia. The impossible year 2013 just happened to

Copy as Container, Original as Content  163 mark an entire century since the Armory Show, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, first exposed the New York, Chicago, and Boston publics to the shock of the European avant-​ garde. Coincidentally, the Armory Show was also the first time an exhibition catalogue downplayed the national origin of the participating artists.33 Futile as it is to speculate about the hidden personality behind these anonymous projects, the reappearance of a figure like Benjamin on the periphery of Europe rather than its centre seems to hold some minor significance. So does the recreation of an exhibition of modern masterpieces at the Venice Biennale in the old Yugoslav pavilion on the Giardini grounds, a structure built for a country whose open brand of non-​ aligned socialism made it receptive to Barr’s internationalism –​and a country torn apart by nationalist conflicts by the start of the 1990s. Looking past the origin and the proper name –​and also past the desire to excavate origins and personal histories –​we come to the end of “The Making of Modern Art.” The room titled “Not-​Now” was a clear play on Moholy-​ Nagy’s Room of the Present,34 intended by Dorner to be the final room of the Provinzialmuseum yet never built. In 1930, such a room was synonymous with the mechanically reproducible and non-​auratic: everything from theatrical posters and industrial design to photographs and film clips playing at the push of a button. The arguable centrepiece of Dorner’s “now” –​Moholy-​ Nagy’s Light-​Space Modulator (1922–​30), an illuminated kinetic sculpture visible through a circular opening in a black box –​existed in a world apart from the objects arrayed in the final room. These objects rejected the present but left space for the past and future. This took the form of a narrow gallery doubled by a mirror, opposite which hung seven copies of paintings by Mondrian, Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and Jean Arp, along with seven reproductions (not copies) of Christian subjects like the Crucifixion, the Descent from the Cross, and the Assumption of Mary. It stood as a reminder that meta-​art stands in the same relation to art as art history once stood in relation to the Biblical narrative.35 Facing their own reflections, the visitors listened to On Kawara’s One Million Years (Past and Future) No. 9–​24 (2002). Two voices, one male and the other female, took turns reciting a series of dates from either the distant past (993,720 BC to 988,629 B C ) or the distant future (6, 901 AD to 13,292 AD ). In the face of geological timescales, the human present melted away into insignificance; yet even this had the effect of bringing the matter back around to temporality as it raised new questions. For instance, how might sound art be de-​articised? Do time-​based media present a greater challenge than their static, stable counterparts? And to what extent does the process continue to depend on strategies like the lecture performance or museum talk, the preferred medium of parafictioneers? Ultimately, the notion of the copy as the container and the original as content left much unsettled, given how the distinctive temporality of the relationship between copy and original was translated into spatial terms through the eight rooms of “The Making of Modern Art.”

164  Milena Tomic

Figure 8.1 Installation view, The Making of Modern Art (2017–​ 2021), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Copyright photo Peter Cox. Curated by Christiane Berndes, Charles Esche and Steven ten Thije in collaboration with the Museum of American Art, Berlin.

Figure 8.2 Walter Benjamin, Mondrian ‘63–​‘96’. Lecture held in 1986 as part of a series of lectures titled “Art at the End of the Millennium” at Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana, organised by the Marxist Center and Galerija Škuc, Ljubljana.

Copy as Container, Original as Content  165

Figure 8.3 Installation view, The Making of Modern Art (2017–​ 2021), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Copyright photo Peter Cox. Curated by Christiane Berndes, Charles Esche and Steven ten Thije in collaboration with the Museum of American Art, Berlin.

Figure 8.4 Installation view, The Making of Modern Art (2017–​ 2021), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Copyright photo Peter Cox. Curated by Christiane Berndes, Charles Esche and Steven ten Thije in collaboration with the Museum of American Art, Berlin.

166  Milena Tomic Notes 1 See the Museum of American Art’s “about” page: http://​mus​eum-​of-​ameri​can-​ art.org/​index.php/​moaa-​2/​ [accessed 14 April 2022]. 2 Walter Benjamin, “On Copy,” in Recent Writings (Vancouver and Los Angeles: New Documents, 2013), p. 21. Reprinted from International Exhibition of Modern Art, 2013, exh. cat. (Belgrade: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2003). 3 The Cankar Centre was the largest convention centre in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. TV Gallery (TV galerija) was a television programme about visual art that aired on Belgrade’s RTV until 1990. The video lecture is in English and can be viewed on Vimeo: https://​vimeo.com/​61669​696 [accessed 14 April 2022]. See also Walter Benjamin, “Mondrian ’63–​‘96,” in Recent Writings, pp. 5–​19. 4 Carrie Lambert-​Beatty, “Make-​Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility,” October, vol. 129 (Summer 2009), 54, 82. 5 Lambert-​Beatty, “Make-​Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility”, p. 61. 6 The Van Abbemuseum’s reconstruction dates from 2009 and is the product of research conducted by Kai-​Uwe Hemken and Jakob Gebert into Dorner and Moholy-​ Nagy’s correspondence. It has no relationship with the Museum of American Art in Berlin. 7 Sandra Karina Löschke, “Material Aesthetics and Agency: Alexander Dorner and the Stage-​Managed Museum”, Interstices, vol. 14 (November 2013), pp. 28, 29. 8 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, trans. Harry Zohn, in Hannah Arendt, ed., Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (New York: Schocken, 1969), p. 221. 9 Benjamin, “Mondrian, ‘63–​‘96’ ”, in Recent Writings, p. 17. 10 The relevant dates are 1503 and 1801, respectively. 11 Taking LeWitt at his word, Superflex quotes the minimalist sculptor on its website: “I believe that ideas, once expressed, become the common property of all. They are invalid if not used, they can only be given away and not stolen.” See Free Sol LeWitt, 2010. https://​superf​l ex.net/​works/​free​_​sol​_​lew​itt [accessed 14 April 2022]. 12 In the exhibition list, the copy was attributed to Mondrian himself and not the MoAA. The wall text also mentioned “Original and Facsimile” (1929) at the Provinzialmuseum, where Dorner paired original paintings with high-​quality reproductions. My account of the exhibition is based on a site visit in June 2017. 13 Benjamin, “On Copy,” in Recent Writings, 21. The wall text featured the same passage, with “worldview” switched for “paradigm.” 14 Alice Goldfarb Marquis, Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary for the Modern (Chicago: Contemporary Books, Inc., 1989), p. 17. 15 Marquis, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., p. 3. 16 Alfred H. Barr, Jr., “Ideal Collection,” 6 March 1941, Alfred Barr Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., roll 2166, cited in John O’Brian, Ruthless Hedonism: The American Reception of Matisse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 229. 17 Benjamin, “Mondrian, ‘63–​‘96’ ”, pp. 17–​18. 18 Perhaps the best summation of the procedures comes from “On Meta”, the essay that closes Recent Writings: “A (non-​art) artefact plays a role in a (non-​art) story. It is, for example, a religious artefact in the Christian story, something

Copy as Container, Original as Content  167 like the Last Supper painting. Through desacralization it could be included in the (non-​art) history as a historically important artefact (historicization). The same painting through another desacralization could be included in art history as an important work of art (artization). And the same painting could play at least three meta-​roles: one in a (meta-​Christian) story (desacralization), another in a meta-​history (dehistorization), and the third would be in a (meta-​art) history (de-​artization)”. Benjamin, “On Meta”, in Recent Writings, pp. 206–​207. 19 At the MoAA’s permanent home in Berlin, the cubic MoMA occupies a small room hung with the American fruits of its European tree: painted copies of pages from catalogues printed to accompany four travelling “Americans” shows organized by Dorothy Miller, the MoMA’s first curator. There is another room that resembles an ordinary living room from the 1950s, impossibly hung the paintings from the catalogue of The New American Painting as Shown in Eight European Countries, 1958–​1959. 20 The relevant text comes from a permanent collection-​building plan first printed in 1933. See the brief titled “Advisory Committee Report on Museum Collections”, Museum of Modern Art, April 1941, MoMA Library. The two relevant versions of the same diagram are also reproduced in Sibyl Gordon Kantor, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the Intellectual Origins of the Museum of Modern Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), p. 367. 21 Marquis, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., p. 252. 22 Marquis, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., pp. 222–​224. 23 Benjamin, “The Way beyond Art”, in Recent Writings, 68. First published in The Copyist: A Play Van Abbe Journal, no. 1 (2010), p. 23. 24 Steven ten Thije, “From a Collection of Objects to a Collection of Relationships: ‘Play Van Abbe’ and the Museum in the Age of ‘Global Art’ ”, trans. Gary Schwartz, in Mariska ter Horst, ed., Changing Perspectives: Dealing with Globalisation in the Presentation and Collection of Contemporary Art (Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2012), p. 133. See also Steven ten Thije, “The Joy of Meta: On the Museum of American Art”, Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context, & Enquiry, vol. 37 (Autumn/​Winter 2014), pp. 72–​83. 25 The exhibitions were the following: The Art of the Industrial Bourgeoisie in Moscow (1931), Degenerate Art in Munich (1937), the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in Berlin (1927), the International Exhibition of Modern Art in Brooklyn (1926), Gertrude Stein’s collection in Paris (1905), Peggy Guggenheim’s collection in Venice (1948), the Neoplastic Room in Łódź (1946), and the Abstract Cabinet in Hanover (1928). 26 Benjamin mentions the scare quotes around the word “art” in Walter Benjamin with Maxine Kopsa, “The Museum Is History”, in Recent Writings, 78–​79. Reprinted from Metropolis M, issue 2 (28 May 2010): www.metr​opol​ism.com/​ en/​featu​res/​2241​7_​th​e_​mu​seum​_​is_​hist​ory [accessed 14 April 2022]. 27 Lambert-​Beatty, “Make-​Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility”, pp. 72–​73. 28 Asbjørn Grønstad and Øyvind Vågnes, “An Interview with W.J.T. Mitchell”, Image & Narrative, no. 15, Battles around Images: Iconoclasm and Beyond (November 2006): www.imagea​ndna​rrat​ive.be/​inarch​ive/​ico​nocl​asm/​gron​stad​_​ vag​nes.htm [accessed 14 April 2022]. 29 Bruno Trentini, “The meta as an aesthetic category,” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, Vol. 6 (2014), p. 3.

168  Milena Tomic 30 Benjamin with Žerovc, “My Dear, This Is Not What It Seems to Be”, in Recent Writings, 34. Reprinted from Inke Arns and Walter Benjamin, eds, What Is Modern Art? (Berlin: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 2006). 31 Ten Thije, “From a Collection of Objects to a Collection of Relationships”, p. 136. 32 Benjamin with Žerovc, “My Dear, This Is Not What It Seems to Be”, p. 29. 33 Benjamin, “The Unmaking of Art,” in Recent Writings, 141. This is the English version of a lecture first given in Chinese at the Times Museum, Guangzhou. 34 The didactic panels translate this as Room of the Now, but another common translation is Room of Our Time. See, for instance, Noam M. Elcott, “Raum der Gegenwart (Room of Our Time). Kunsthalle, Erfurt, 29 March–​24 May 2009 Bauhaus, Dessau, 9 June–​24 October 2009. Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 8 October 2009–​ 7 February 2010”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 69, No. 2 (June 2010), pp. 265–​269. 35 Benjamin with Žerovc, “My Dear, This Is Not What It Seems to Be”, p. 31.

Part 4

Counter-​narratives

9 Reading between the Lines Locating the Politics of Lucy Lippard’s Six Years Beth Anne Lauritis

As recent decades witness the restaging of historical exhibitions, new relationships to dominant art historical narratives potentially expand and bring together new publics. A related evolution in curatorial practice questions the role of things in the presentation of culture, both in their spatiotemporal dimension and in their activation of open-​ended relational possibilities and interpretations.1 Such developments inform Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, an exhibition curated by Catherine Morris and Vincent Bonin that took place at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum from September 14, 2012 through February 17, 2013 (Figures 9.1 and 9.2). Rather than revisit a landmark event, Materializing “Six Years” reimagined Lucy R. Lippard’s annotated chronicle of historic Conceptual Art, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972.2 Emblematic of the radical redefinition of art production, presentation, and reception in the 1960s and 1970s, Lippard’s volume was regarded by some as an exhibition itself and her role variously described conflating the roles of critic, curator, and artist. Because it foregrounds the medium of ideas that may or may not take physical form, conceptual art is an inherently discursive practice marked by early aspirations to circumvent the art market. To recast a record of cultural production associated with conceptualism for the Brooklyn Museum audience, then, necessarily probes multiple questions and registers of materiality. How such multivalence facilitates forms of historical consciousness in the present is of primary interest in this discussion. Materializing “Six Years” operates at a series of removes from Lippard’s original theorization and documentation of conceptual art in print and excavates a particularized historical trajectory for public consumption in a physical site. Restaging a prior exhibition, according to Terry Smith, “makes the exhibitionary exchange visible, exhibits it, brings it to publicity.”3 Smith applies the term “re-​curation” to projects that revisit influential historic exhibitions in a manner that does not replicate them wholesale but seeks to underscore those aspects that resonate with contemporary experience.4 To selectively revitalize Lippard’s written text in a museum installation of DOI: 10.4324/9780429279775-14

172  Beth Anne Lauritis limited duration resituates critical debates on objecthood and the (re)presentation of history. Conceptual art exhibitions would seem ideally suited to restaging given that reproductions hold as much value as the thing to which they refer. Both book and exhibition reference “The Dematerialization of Art,” a canonical article co-​authored by Lippard and John Chandler for publication in Art International in 1968.5 Although these early observations on dematerialization had a lasting impact on the field, contributions by women artists tended to be subsumed within official histories of Conceptual Art, including Lippard’s own more comprehensive documentation of dematerialization in Six Years published five years later.6 Painstakingly assembled from her extensive files and listed chronologically, Six Years contained personal anecdotes, letters, instruction pieces, theoretical musings, correspondence, exhibition announcements, critical essays, interviews, and photographs. The accumulated entries register an appropriately idiosyncratic and densely layered account of activities by an international range of practitioners. That this collection was largely US-​ Euro-​ centric and male nonetheless reflects hegemonies within and beyond the art world. Artists Sol LeWitt, Robert Barry, Douglas Heubler, Lawrence Weiner, and Joseph Kosuth importantly figured in Lippard’s New York orbit at the time and in most histories of conceptual art, but the sheer plurality represented in Six Years tends to collapse specificity. Especially imperiled in such instances, of course, are those lacking recognition outside more exhaustive surveys of conceptualism. By showcasing select content from Lippard’s compendium, the Materializing “Six Years” exhibition is no mere reprise of what came before. Curators Morris and Bonin explain: Our primary goal was to illustrate, through a discursive display, two intertwined themes that emerge from the book’s content. First, we wanted to tell the story of how an attempt by a group of young artists to scrutinize the cultural usefulness of objects, and extricate artworks from the commodity system, morphed into an entirely new and highly influential form of creative practice with a few short years. Second, by examining the development of Lippard’s own activities over the course of Six Years, we hoped to describe how two fields usually understood as attendant to art-​making—​criticism and curating—​were themselves as radically altered and reconfigured by the development of Conceptual art as was art-​making itself. The exhibition, catalog, and related museum events also demonstrate the curators’ focus on the “occasional political overtones” of Six Years, a parenthetical phrase appended to the book’s lengthy subtitle. Indeed, Morris and Bonin describe how artists’ politicization occurred “between the lines” of Six Years, a subtext their re-​curation brings to the fore along with Lippard’s nascent feminism.7 I propose that Materializing “Six Years” repositions a significant development in art history along with its principal actors. In so doing, the exhibition recovers a broader network of engagement that interfaces

Reading between the Lines  173 past and present, material and immaterial into new dialogues that animate current debates. The public’s physical encounter with the select reappearance or reproduction of information in the Materializing “Six Years” exhibition is freighted with the Brooklyn Museum’s long history and its more specific locus in the Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Traditionally, museums are expected to systematically build an educational experience. Less apparent, for many, are the ways in which the context choreographs a conditioned response. An art institution’s appearance of neutrality, both physical and ideological, indeed encourages the public to accept as common sense the notion that art is removed from everyday life and that exhibitions organize objects to transmit knowledge. Education, then, is a primary expectation for art institutions, “a service to the public,” as Simon Sheikh puts it.8 In addition to probing the ontological status of art and resisting its commodification, conceptualism questioned hierarchies in art and society and radically redefined e­ xhibition practices. Noteworthy among Lippard’s peers who experimented with exhibition formats, Seth Siegelaub mobilized the printed page as a group exhibition “site” in his 1968 Xerox Book.9 Describing his aim as “essentially didactic,” Harald Szeeman famously planned Documenta 5 of 1972 not as “a place for the accumulation of objects, but a process of events that refer to one another.”10 However innovative in their conception, the aforementioned shows neglected contributions by women. Developments that shaped the making of Materializing “Six Years” move from questions about the production of knowledge to those about the production of social relations. The Feminist Art movement particularly informed this transition during its late 1960s emergence. Owing in part to the general perception that conceptual art suppressed the personal whereas feminist art reinforced the personal, the two were historically viewed as antithetical. The social turn in 1970s performance and institutional critique, nonetheless, merges legacies of both conceptualism and feminist art. Institutional critique exposed ideologies that structure the art world by focusing on how institutions organize the spectator’s experience. In the 1990s, the rise of the curator and the predominance of neo-​conceptual and social practice art gave rise to New Institutionalism. Just as earlier exhibitions mirrored emergent conceptual art practices, later developments involved “transforming the institution in the image of the new art,” according to Jonas Ekeberg, and resisting the effects of globalization.11 Curatorial strategies involving community participation and the use of alternative spaces produced more experimental forms of art reception and distribution that variously destabilized or reinforced the education role of art institutions. If strategies seeking to facilitate new forms of community remain subject to fundamentally unequal power relations since art institutions are extensions of social systems that sustain social hierarchies, it is worth considering the Sackler Center’s unique position and audience. Elements of the Materializing “Six Years” curation produced a more dynamic environment while others underscored the museum’s more traditional

174  Beth Anne Lauritis role in knowledge production. With the exception of an Epilogue that slightly extended the 1966–​1972 timeline, the architectural presentation mapped the same chronology outlined in Six Years. Brackets running from wall to ceiling divided disparate content into modules numbered by year. Passage through the rather narrow gridded galleries seemed to confirm a linear model of history yet moments lost in the sea of activities recorded in Six Years became amplified in the exhibition space organized by Morris and Bonin. For instance, the advances of Latin American conceptualism were more conspicuous in Materializing “Six Years” and referenced Lippard’s self-​described politicization during a 1968 visit to Argentina that acquainted her with the Grupo de Artistas de Vanguardia (Rosario Group) and their Tucumán Arde project. Lippard’s support for Latin American artists and curators illustrated her growing commitment to forging transnational connections among cultural workers, a commitment that, for example, expanded the international scope of conceptualism for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) curator Kynaston McShine in his 1970 blockbuster, Information. Back in New York, Lippard also engaged in collective protest through the Art Workers Coalition (AWC) and other activist groups. Morris and Bonin’s inclusion of the unequivocally polemical AWC poster that graphically depicts Vietnam War atrocities at My Lai, “Q: And Babies? A: And Babies” (1970), highlights anti-​war activism against the vacuum of overtly political art among New York conceptualists.12 However, limited in recounting a truly tumultuous historic era, Materializing “Six Years” does ground specific episodes in the lived experience of Lippard and others by reanimating select original and reproduced content that might otherwise be overshadowed by the mass of art production in a more depersonalized informational idiom routinely characterized as apolitical. Among the 170 objects and nearly 90 artists represented, Materializing “Six Years” included catalogs, artist publications, periodicals, photographs, video, and ephemera from key exhibitions and events. The installation vitalized Lippard’s pages in real time and space, which solicited varied forms of engagement. Interspersed with a surfeit of printed matter displayed in vitrines or on walls were larger objects, such as Alice Adams’ Big Aluminum (1965), Michael Snow’s First to Last (two views) (1967), and Dorothea Rockburne’s Scalar (1971). Early video shown on overhead screens included Dennis Oppenheim’s Arm and Wire (1969), Hans Haacke’s Live Airborne System, November 30, 1968 (1968), Bas Jan Ader’s Fall 1, Los Angeles (1970), and Bruce Nauman’s Thighing (1967). Bookending the exhibition were John Latham’s Art and Culture (1966–​69) and Lippard’s 1973 exhibition of women’s conceptual art, c.7,500 (Figure 9.3). Latham’s boite-​en-​ valise containing the chewed remains of Clement Greenberg’s late modernist claims for art’s autonomy and self-​criticality stood in appropriately antipodal relation to the traveling exhibition of women’s art that reckoned with social issues in an exclusionary art system. The culminating gallery in Materializing “Six Years” thus offered a potent expression of the curators’ discursive approach to exhibition reproduction

Reading between the Lines  175 even as it cleaved rather than integrated women’s contributions to conceptualism from an established timeline. Framed as an epilogue, this section expanded official accounts of conceptual art activity in a direction that Lippard’s foundational text and early criticism merely footnoted, namely the contributions of women artists. For Lippard, c. 7,500 categorically refuted the prevailing view that no women were making conceptual art.13 As the fourth and final of Lippard’s “numbers” shows, each named after the population of their host city and transportable by suitcase, c. 7,500 opened in 1973 at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia and traveled the US before concluding in London in 1974. Much like the dematerialized art it referenced, c. 7,500 privileged concepts over objects in resistance to established categories and hierarchies. Moreover, the conceptual art designation squared as much with the art practices cited as it did with the novel manner by which work was solicited, framed, and disseminated as an exhibition. As such, installations of portable ephemera were viewed as equivalent to “exhibition catalogues” of loose index cards containing Lippard’s catalog essay, checklists, and each artist’s self-​documentation. Materializing “Six Years” likewise complicated notions of the original and reproduction by presenting artwork featured in c. 7,500 as well as photographic documentation from the CalArts installation, not to mention the recursive import of this restaged exhibition that restages other exhibitions designed to occupy multiple modalities. Conceptual art practices are notoriously heterogeneous such that bracketing off any group of artists to serve as a definitive example was clearly fraught from the outset and the attempt to find areas of intersect with a politics of difference conjures a range of contradictory aims and interpretations, not the least of which was Lippard’s own ambivalence as a key proponent of conceptual and, later, feminist ideals. Despite her own allegiance to feminism, she indicated that not all artists in c. 7,500 identified as such. During the 1970s era of second wave feminism in the United States, the stakes for a distinct category of “Feminist Art” were being generated, defended, and monitored with great vigor. Repositioning c. 7,500 in 2013 arguably moves beyond these debates, especially when considering how some of these earlier practices resonate today. In another return, Mierle Laderman Ukeles brought performance into focus as she had in various c. 7,500 venues, mostly famously Hartford Wash, a 1973 “Maintenance Art Performance” in which she executed mundane chores to publicly underscore the unseen and undervalued labor that permits the smooth operation of institutions, in this case the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, Connecticut. Ukeles’ feminist mode of institutional critique advanced a politics of recognition for maintenance or service work typically consigned to women or marginalized others. As part of the Materializing “Six Years” programming, Ukeles’ continued engagement with urbanism and environmentalism foregrounded local concerns post-​Hurricane Sandy in a performance and talk entitled “Maintenance/​Survival/​and its Relation to Freedom: You and the City.” Projecting Ukeles’ premise to laborers imperiled

176  Beth Anne Lauritis in the current pandemic moment, in part because their contributions are undervalued, illustrates the currency of her inquiry and the productive interplay of past and present. Her long-​standing commitment to a relational practice that raises public awareness stands out as one among many instances of a conceptualism and feminism nexus that prefigures important considerations in art. In highlighting c. 7,500, a show that until very recently had been overlooked within conceptual art histories, curators Morris and Bonin also furthered the aims of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art “to raise awareness of feminism’s cultural contributions, to educate new generations about the meaning of feminist art, and to maintain a dynamic and welcoming learning environment.”14 The advantage of staging such an exhibition within a dedicated feminist institution would seem clear despite long-​standing concerns that having separate exhibition venues aligned with women’s concerns could abet their marginalization.15 The Sackler Center, which opened in 2007 with a permanent gallery for Judy Chicago’s iconic Dinner Party, was unprecedented as a US public institution committed to feminist art. The Sackler also initiated “The Feminist Art Base,” a digital archive conceived by curator Maura Reilly that comprised international women artists engaging feminism from the 1960s through the early 2000s. In a 2018 text on “curatorial activism,” Reilly suggests revisionism is an important though not unproblematic “strategy of resistance” to contest persistent exclusions.16 Correcting gaps in the canon without challenging and revising what causes such gaps, for example, has limited efficacy. As a strategy of resistance, the Materializing “Six Years” epilogue surfaces critical practices that were largely unnoticed and undertheorized and, in the process, potentially offsets entrenched narratives by guiding audiences to a conclusion that recognizes and, importantly, recontextualizes the deficits in a given history. That this was staged in the Sackler Center for Feminist Art within the Brooklyn Museum further complicates a project involving forms of revision on multiple levels. An activist long engaged in struggles for social and environmental justice, Lippard likewise adopted and supported curatorial strategies that, despite enduring resistance, sought to recalibrate the historical record by rendering the marginalized into visibility. In the 2008 Tate Modern symposium, Landmark Exhibitions: Contemporary Art Shows Since 1968, Lippard remarked: Cultural amnesia –​imposed less by memory loss than by deliberate political strategy –​has drawn a curtain over much important curatorial work done in the past four decades. As this amnesia has been particularly prevalent in the fields of feminism and oppositional art, it is heartening to see young scholars addressing the history of exhibitions and hopefully resurrecting some of its more marginalised events.17 Reesa Greenberg has likewise emphasized the critical exigency of reconstructing the past in twenty-​ first century curatorial practice: “The

Reading between the Lines  177 emergence of the ‘remembering exhibition’ is a manifestation of Western culture’s current fascination with memory as a modality for constructing individual or collective identities.”18 While the recollection of individual and collective identities is an important aspect of Materializing “Six Years,” the exhibition puts other elements into play. The Sackler galleries were populated with items that conjured past events, yet the concept of materialization can extend more generally to the transformative potential that exists as new configurations trouble established narratives and the primacy of the curator(s). Following materialist theorists such as Bruno Latour, new forms of agency emerge in shifting assemblages, here including the properties of artworks, artists, curators, audiences, publics, and institutions.19 The exhibition occasions relational experiences that, rather than retrace an established historical trajectory, renavigates points of tension and discontinuity within it to varying degrees of success. By extending the original spatiotemporal coordinates and activating multivalent voices, such a “remembering exhibition” potentially catalyzes alternative discursive and social formations. Conceptual art has inspired scores of curatorial reappraisals that examine its origins in the 1960s and its reverberations today. Materializing “Six Years” both reinforces and enlarges histories recorded in Six Years in part because developments in historic Conceptual Art run adjacent to particulars in Lippard’s evolution. While art institutions variously operate as a public sphere where the presentation and interaction of things, spaces, and ideas generate new meanings and relationships, the personal and collective memories recorded in Lippard’s compendium and recast in a feminist art institution potentially accrue force and alter perceptions of the present as well as the past. An investigation of evolving exhibition cultures reveals how systemic exclusions that largely endure in the cultural memory of a pivotal current in art might be mediated by giving ground to conversations that occur between the lines.

178  Beth Anne Lauritis

Figure 9.1 Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, September 14, 2012 through February 17, 2013. (Image: DIG_​E_​2012_​Six_​Years_​01_​PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2012).

Reading between the Lines  179

Figure 9.2 Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, September 14, 2012 through February 17, 2013. (Image: DIG_​E_​2012_​Six_​Years_​05_​PS4.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2012).

180  Beth Anne Lauritis

Figure 9.3 Installation view of c. 7,500, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, May 12–​14, 1973; organized by Lucy R. Lippard. California Institute of the Arts Library Visual Resource Collection. (Photo: California Institute of the Arts).

Notes 1 On the important shift in status and function of material objects or thingness within recent curatorial practice, see Beatrice von Bismarck and Benjamin Meyer-​ Krahmer, eds., Curatorial Things (Leipzig: Sternberg Press, 2019). 2 The entire title reads: Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-​reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-​called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-​form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones), edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard. Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object, 1966-​ 1972 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). The 2016 exhibition, FLUIDITY, at the Kunstverein in Hamburg likewise takes Lippard’s Six Years as its inspiration but traces conceptual art activity through the twenty-​ first century. A similar format to document conceptual art developments in Europe can be found in Lynda Morris, ed. Unconcealed: The International Network of Conceptual Artists

Reading between the Lines  181 1967-​1977 –​Dealers, Exhibitions and Public Collections by Sophie Richard (London: Ridinghouse, 2009). 3 Terry Smith, Thinking Contemporary Curating, New York: Independent Curators International, 2012, p. 204. 4 Ibid, p. 216. See also Terry Smith, Talking Contemporary Curating (New York: Independent Curators International, 2015), p. 290. 5 See Lucy R. Lippard and John Chandler, “The Dematerialization of Art,” Art International 12 (February 1968), reprinted in Lippard’s, Changing: Essays in Art Criticism, Documents in Modern Art Criticism (New York: Dutton, 1971) and in Six Years. Lippard reconsidered the principles earlier set forth in the essay “Escape Attempts,” which first appeared in Six Years and later in Ann Goldstein and Anne Rorimer, eds., Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965-​1975 (Los Angeles; Cambridge, MA: Museum of Contemporary Art; Distributed by MIT Press, 1995). 6 Inevitably the failure of dematerialized art to circumvent the art market was clear, as remarked in Lippard’s 1972 “Postface” to the “Dematerialization” essay. 7 Catherine Morris and Vincent Bonin, “An Introduction to Six Years,” Materializing ‘Six Years:’ Lucy Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), p. xv. 8 Simon Sheikh elaborates on the role of education and mediation performed by the museum as “a service to the public.” “Letter to Jane (Investigation of a Function),” in Curating and the Educational Turn (London: Open Editions, 2010), p. 64. 9 Siegelaub explains: “[W]‌hen art concerns itself with things not germane to physical presence its intrinsic (communicative) value is not altered by its presentation in printed media. The use of catalogues and books to communicate (and disseminate) art is the most neutral means to present the new art.” “On Exhibitions and the World at Large, Seth Siegelaub in Conversation with Charles Harrison,” Studio International 178, no. 917 (December 1969), p. 202. 10 “First Exhibition Concepts: Harald Szeemann,” in Florence Derieux, ed., Harald Szeemann: Individual Methodology (Zurich: jrp Ringier, 2007), 93. Cited in James Voorhies, Beyond Objecthood: The Exhibition as a Critical Form Since 1968, Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2017, p. 82. 11 Jonas Ekeberg, “The term was snapped out of the air: an interview with Jonas Ekeberg,” (New) Institution(alism), Issue 21, Dec. 2013: 20. See also Gabriel Flückiger and Lucie Kolb, “New Institutionalism Revisited:” OnCurating, Issue 21, January 2014 (New) Institution(alism). www.on-​curat​ing.org/​issue-​21-​rea​ der/​new-​insti​tuti​onal​ism-​revisi​ted.html#.W153​kthK​ib9, accessed 29 July 2018. 12 The AWC protest poster depicted the well-​known photograph of the infamous My Lai Massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians by US troops on 16 March 1968. 13 On c. 7,500, Conceptual Art, and Feminism, see: Beth Lauritis, Lucy Lippard and the Provisional Exhibition: Intersections of Conceptual Art and Feminism, 1970-​1980, PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2009; Connie Butler, From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard’s Numbers Shows 1969-​ 74 (London: Afterall Books, 2012). 14 Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: www.bro​okly​nmus​eum.org/​eas​cfa/​ about, accessed 24 July 2018.

182  Beth Anne Lauritis 15 Griselda Pollock cautioned against an “ideology of ‘alternative’ practice for women. By remaining outside public institutions and therefore invisible to them and their critical discourses, women endorse their place in the separate sphere historically created for the work, thereby colluding in their own marginalization.” “Feminism, Femininity, and the Hayward Annual Exhibition 1978,” Feminist Review 2 (1979), p. 54. 16 Maura Reilly, Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating (London: Thames and Hudson, 2018), p. 23–​25. 17 Lippard’s presentation focused on her Number Shows that were titled after population figures for each location: “557,087” (Seattle, 1969), “955,000” (Vancouver, 1970), “2,972,453” (Buenos Aires, 1970) and “c. 7,500” (Valencia, California, among other cities, 1973-​ 74). Lucy R. Lippard, “Curating by Numbers,” paper version of talk given at Landmark Exhibitions: Contemporary Art Shows Since 1968, a collaboration between Tate Modern and Jan van Eyck Academie with the Royal College of Art and The London Consortium, October 2008. Tate Papers, no.12, Autumn 2009, www.tate.org.uk/​resea​rch/​publi​cati​ ons/​tate-​pap​ers/​12, accessed 24 July 2018. 18 Reesa Greenberg, “ ‘Remembering Exhibitions’: From Point to Line to Web,” Tate Papers, no.12, Autumn 2009, www.tate.org.uk/​resea​rch/​publi​cati​ons/​ tate-​pap​ers/​12/​reme​mber​ing-​exhi​biti​ons-​from-​point-​to-​line-​to-​web, accessed 24 July 2018. 19 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-​ Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

10 Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum” Natasha Adamou

Introduction: “Times of Interregnum” In 2013, the architect Rem Koolhaas installed pristine white walls within the painted rooms of the eighteenth-​century palazzo at Ca’ Corner della Regina in Venice in order to recreate white-​cube-​style exhibition rooms. On this occasion, the palazzo that houses the Fondazione Prada served as the setting for the reconstruction of Harald Szeemann’s seminal exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form: Works –​Concepts –​Processes –​ Situations –​Information, first shown at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1969. Koolhaas’ intervention, which reconstructed the exhibition space of Kunsthalle Bern, was part of the exhibition When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013 which sought to recreate the atmosphere and to convey the pioneering spirit of Szeemann’s 1969 exhibition (Figure 10.1). This obsessively recreated, theatrical exhibition reconstruction, based on meticulous archival research, was curated by Germano Celant, in collaboration with the architect Rem Koolhaas, and the photographer Thomas Demand. The reconstruction presents one of the most striking yet controversial examples of the curatorial practice of re-​staging seminal exhibitions from the past that emerged around the 2010s.1 The catalogue of the exhibition When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​ Venice 2013 features a group of photographs by Demand focusing on details of the walls, especially on the parts where the new constructions met the palazzo walls (Figure 10.2). The photographs capture the gap between the temporary, plain, white walls and the stucco Baroque walls of the Venetian palazzo emphasising the strikingly different styles of these architectures; the simplicity of the inserted white walls, on the one hand, and the elaborate reliefs and frescoes of the palazzo, on the other hand. Far from incidental, the outlined, sharply contoured gaps, where the two architectural styles meet, are the central subject of Demand’s photographs that crucially call attention to centuries-​long leaps between political systems and power structures: from the eighteenth-​century palazzo as the seat of monarchy to the twentieth-​century white cube as the quintessential modern public art museum space. DOI: 10.4324/9780429279775-15

184  Natasha Adamou According to Demand, the curatorial team decided to “wedge a museum space of the sixties into an eighteenth-​century palazzo, producing a […] sensation of disorientation: you never know where you are.”2 Celant, moreover, coined the term “temporal tear” in order to convey this experience of spatial and temporal disorientation in the exhibition space.3 The resulting anachronism thus became a central feature in this painstaking reconstruction where past and present intersect. In the exhibition catalogue, Celant crucially pointed out that the detailed reconstruction aimed to question the historicisation of Szeemann’s groundbreaking exhibition When Attitudes Become Form and to explore the very process of its institutionalisation.4 This chapter explores the curatorial practice of revisiting and re-​staging seminal exhibitions from the past. It discusses three key examples, including When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013 (Fondazione Prada, 2013), Other Primary Structures (Jewish Museum, 2014) and Richard Hamilton’s Growth and Form, 1949/​1951 (restaged as part of the artist’s retrospective exhibition at Tate Modern, 2014). The motivations behind these three reconstructions are diverse, ranging from an interest in critically examining the legacy of seminal exhibitions (When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013) to an attempt to promote alternative histories “from a global point of view” (as Other Primary Structures sought to do). However, they all share a desire “to introduce the embodied spectator in the specific, temporal encounter.”5 Despite their substantial differences, this chapter examines the phenomenon of reconstructions as a symptom of a specific historical moment that followed the financial crisis of 2008. It argues that it is far from coincidental that the reconstruction emerged as a discreet exhibition model around 2010, following the 2008 crisis, hailed as the deepest one since the Great Depression in the United States in 1929, when the global financial system came to the verge of collapse. The crisis –​which elicited decisive government intervention in the USA that bailed out financial institutions in order to regulate the markets –​caused a shock on a global scale. Its repercussions were felt worldwide and demanded a closer look at the past in the hope of learning from historical precedent. “To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was,’ ” wrote Walter Benjamin in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History”: “It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.”6 In 2008, the memory of the 1929 Great Depression, for example, resonated deeply with the fears of an impending global recession. This chapter suggests that exhibition reconstructions were increasingly taken up by contemporary art institutions in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis at a time when the public discourse was focused on re-​examining past events that resonated with the present situation. While I don’t claim that there is a strict causal relationship between the 2008 crisis and the emergence of the reconstructing exhibitions model, I argue that the crisis offers a constructive

Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum”  185 framework in order to discuss critically the decisive turn towards the past that occurred at this time. In other words, this chapter argues that the exhibition reconstruction was part of the broader sociopolitical discourse. “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear,”7 wrote Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks. The 2008 financial crisis, which brought to light the power dynamics in late capitalist societies between private financial institutions and big corporations, on the one hand, and state governments, on the other hand, provides the socio-​political context for my analysis; a time when revisiting and reconstructing exhibitions from the past emerged as a widespread phenomenon in art institutions. In his polemical critique of historicism, Walter Benjamin argued for a historical materialist viewpoint that conceives of the present moment as the point of experiencing the past from the specific material conditions of the present. He writes: The historical materialist cannot do without the concept of a present which is not a transition, in which time originates and has come to a standstill. For this concept defines precisely the present in which he writes history for his person. Historicism depicts the “eternal” picture of the past; the historical materialist, an experience with it, which stands alone. He leaves it to others to give themselves to the whore called “Once upon a time” in the bordello of historicism. He remains master of his powers: man enough, to explode the continuum of history.8 Taking the present moment –​a moment of crisis –​as a loaded and unique moment of experiencing the past, this chapter explores the curatorial motivations behind the surge in exhibition reconstructions in contemporary art institutions that started around 2010. Despite the ambition to mobilise the past from the perspective of the present socio-​political moment, however, exhibition reconstructions have often been criticised as historical fetishes, frozen in time as “the ‘eternal’ picture of the past,” the very notion of historicism that Benjamin criticised.9 This chapter, however, brings attention to the different temporalities of exhibition reconstructions that mark the terms of their engagement with the past. As mentioned earlier, in his Prison Notebooks written between the late 1920s and early 1930s, Antonio Gramsci revisited the notion of the “interregnum.”10 In 2012, almost one century after Gramsci, the Marxist sociologist Zygmunt Bauman revisited the term in his seminal article “Times of Interregnum,” where he argued that in times of late capitalism there is a separation between power and politics –​as a result of the mismatch between the institutions of politics (i.e. nation-​state) and institutions of power, such as global corporations. It is precisely this discrepancy between government and financial institutions that came under scrutiny with the 2008 financial

186  Natasha Adamou crisis when this power dynamic was thrown out of balance with the bailout of financial institutions by government. In that brief moment, it seemed like the re-​negotiation of this balance and a resulting shift in social structures became possible. In its original meaning, the term “interregnum” indicated a temporal gap, a period of discontinuity due to the suspension of government in-​between the death of a monarch and the enthronement of his/​her successor. During this short period, there was a suspension of the legal framework in anticipation of new laws to be put in place by the new king or queen. Even though it was a canonical part of the succession process, this period also implied a potential rupture in social order. This chapter explores “interregnum” as a term that denotes a relationship between temporality, history and politics. It attempts to place the practice of reconstructing exhibitions under a wider framework as a symptom of art institutions operating in times of late capitalism. Crucially, it considers the phenomenon of reconstructions both as a response to the systemic crises within capitalism and as an opportunity to conceive of alternative models that challenge the existing social order. It does so by looking the reconstruction of seminal exhibitions from the past that changed the course of exhibition-​making as attempts to constitute more inclusive and democratic platforms or social paradigms. As it is illustrated in Demand’s photos reflecting Celant’s formulation of the “temporal tear,” the emphasis on the gaps, transitions, and leaps, rather than the historical continuities, potentially serves in developing a narrative that illuminates the shocks, disruptions, and discontinuities within a political system, in this case late capitalism. As such, this chapter, finally, looks at the reconstruction of past exhibitions as a model that seeks to scrutinise and re-​ stage the past, offering an opportunity to reflect on how social and political demands emerge with a renewed urgency in “times of interregnum.” The Forgotten of (Art) History: The Embodied Spectator In 2001, the year following the grand opening of Tate Modern in London, the art historian Mignon Nixon opened the Round Table discussion on Tate Modern, focusing on the new museum’s orientation, with the question: “Just what is it that makes Tate Modern so different, so appealing?” Paraphrasing Richard Hamilton’s seminal collage Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? Nixon referred to Hamilton’s work and that of the Independent Group that brought mass culture in the domain of the visual arts as “a model of horizontality.” She continued with the following observations, expressing some ambivalence over Tate Modern’s curatorial vision and display strategies: Tate Modern’s account of twentieth-​century art plays down the history of the Independent Group. But I wonder if the future-​oriented IG, an

Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum”  187 involvement with popular culture, new technologies, and public space, might be a useful past to retain in thinking about a museum that exploits techniques of juxtaposition, pastiche, and anachronism to promote the contemporary. A positive reading of Tate Modern’s strategies of display might be that they cut across old hierarchies to make the museum a more popular public place. A more critical reading might be that these ostensibly liberating tactics actually constrain the viewer, in part by dramatizing the role of the curator. Do we need to reach for earlier models of horizontality and contemporaneity to understand what is at stake in Tate Modern’s project?11 While claiming that the quest for horizontality and inclusivity in art museums can be compromised “by dramatizing the role of the curator,” Nixon was calling instead for a renewed attention to Hamilton and the Independent Group’s collective labour practices and horizontal organisational structures. Such a horizontal organisation presumes the involvement of diverse agents in exhibition-​making including the museum audiences. Over a decade after its opening, Tate Modern organised Richard Hamilton’s much anticipated retrospective exhibition in 2014, his first one in the UK. Crucially, the show opened with a full-​scale reconstruction of Hamilton’s early exhibition Growth and Form (1951). While the retrospective exhibition was organised, overall, according to a chronological sequence, it also drew on the recent surge in the reconstruction of past exhibitions. Importantly, this surge occurs at a time when art is being framed and interpreted increasingly through the relatively new academic field of curatorial studies and exhibition histories, displacing art history as the main interpretative framework. The phenomenon of reconstructing exhibitions from the past is thus taking place in this context: the expansion of the new academic field of curatorial studies and exhibition histories. The field of exhibition histories puts emphasis on the role of audiences in the making as well as the reception of exhibitions. The viewer, then, as a key figure in the contemporary art museum, one that needs to be granted more agency by novel display technologies rather than constrained by them, was central in Nixon’s argument. Reflecting similar concerns from a curatorial viewpoint, Victoria Walsh, who co-​curated the re-​staging of Growth and Form, together with Tate curator Elena Crippa, has argued for the value of reconstructing exhibitions as a way to “introduce the forgotten of art history –​the embodied spectator rooted in the specific, temporal encounter.”12 Importantly, Walsh alludes to the audience’s “rootedness” in one’s own historical time and culture. Richard Hamilton’s Growth and Form (1951) Hamilton’s one-​room installation Growth and Form (1951), originally staged at the ICA in the context of the Festival of Britain in post-​war London, dealt with

188  Natasha Adamou the relationship between science, nature and the creative act (Figure 10.3). In its proper historical context, the exhibition aspired, among other things, to play an educational role by familiarising British audiences with scientific imagery in an immersive and playful way. It put into question issues of modernity and scientific positivism in relation to the reconsideration of British national identity and Britain’s place in post-​war Europe. Moreover, in the climate of post-​war optimism and anticipated economic growth, science functioned for Hamilton as a catalyst for the democratisation of art, prefiguring the artist’s celebrated Pop Art practices and its relationship with mass culture. At the same time, Hamilton’s oblique references to surrealism in the show (with the invocation of Jean Painleve’s films as a critique of the depersonalised scientific language) subverted the certainties of scientific positivism and questioned notions of progress as ideological components of a growing capitalism after the war. The exhibition drew inspiration from the homonymous book of Scottish mathematician and biologist D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (Figure 10.4).13 Hamilton brought together a range of scientific and organic materials using the most innovative technologies of the moment. With Growth and Form, and by exhibiting raw organic material in the context of an art exhibition, Hamilton was challenging the old-​ fashioned, more academic format of exhibitions at that time. The artist conceived of the exhibition instead as “an art form in its own right.”14 The one-​room installation consisted of three sculptural structures combining modernist grids with organic elements: one with parts that resembled bones; another with objects based on the drawings of organic forms in Thompson’s book on biology; and an independent cell structure. Vitrines, like the ones found in natural history museums, displayed items such as the skull of a horse and the vertebrae of a goat, eggs, etc. On the walls there was an X-​ray of a seal alongside scientific imagery including illuminated glass negatives, photomicrographs and film frames, drawing on biological findings. Two films, with similarly scientific themes, were projected in the room –​one, on the ceiling, detailing the formation of a crystal and the other, on a table, the development of the cell of a sea urchin. For the exhibition, Hamilton drew on avant-​garde practices of Surrealism, Dada and Bauhaus which put emphasis on the social function of art and design. The relationships thus between the visual arts, modern science, technological developments and design were at the forefront of the installation with a focus on “the visual experience of the exhibition: art can expand its experiential universe if it is able to appreciate natural forms through scientific studies.”15 The democratisation and demystification of science was drawn upon to revolutionise exhibition-​making and to bring both the visual arts and scientific developments closer to the general public through a playful and innovative display. More specifically, the press release from Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), the museum of contemporary art that hosted the second reconstruction of Growth and Form in 2014, alongside the one at Tate Modern, explains that the original exhibition was responding to

Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum”  189 contemporaneous debates from the late 1940s in the fields of design and architecture: between the functionalism of Le Corbusier –​defender of the grid and rational planning –​and supporters of a new humanism, who proposed a form of urban planning with human associations. In the midst of this debate, Hamilton chose to superimpose irregular, organic forms with the geometry of the grid.16 In the 1950s then Hamilton responded to post-​war debates on design and architecture addressing the tension between rationalism and functionalism as foundational of modernism, on the one hand, and a new humanism that supported a more inclusive and humane design environment, on the other hand. In a completely different sociopolitical climate to the post-​war conditions that Hamilton’s exhibition was first shown, Tate Modern in London and MACBA in Barcelona hosted their respective reconstructions of Growth and Form in 2014 in the aftermath of financial, cultural and political crises since 2008, in a context of instability and pessimism. For contemporary audiences in 2014, “the embodied spectator rooted in the specific, temporal encounter,”17 the financial crisis marked the end of an era of optimism that had begun in Europe with the end of the Second World War when Growth and Form was initially staged as part of the Festival of Britain in post-​war London.18 When taking into consideration its different historical contexts –​ 1951 and 2014 –​the reconstruction of Growth and Form brings to light the historical shifts and distinct political issues that are at stake in each one of these contexts: the new place of post-​war Britain in Europe in 1951, and the identity of Britain in 2014 after the global financial crisis, a couple of years before the Brexit referendum in 2016. Even though the reconstruction(s) could have acted as a catalyst to reflect on these diverse historical contexts, the re-​stagings did not offer adequate material to prompt their contemporary audiences in that direction. “An Exhibit” –​ICA 2014 Reconstruction In addition to the reconstructions of Growth and Form at Tate Modern and MACBA in 2014, Richard Hamilton’s reconstructions that year included the re-​staging of his exhibitions Man, Machine, and Motion (1956) and An Exhibit (1957) at the ICA. In “Revisiting the Form of ‘An Exhibit,’ ” Martin Beck argued that, as opposed to Tate Modern’s re-​staging of Growth and Form (1951) which left the author rather disengaged, the 2014 reconstruction of Hamilton’s An Exhibit at the ICA in London appeared particularly “alive and of-​ the-​ moment.” Despite the fact that both exhibitions were accurate material reconstructions of their original versions, drawing on substantial archival documentation, they elicited very different responses. Beck

190  Natasha Adamou attributes such a “discrepancy in experience” to an inherent quality in An Exhibit “that opens it up to re-​visitation,” wondering “if there is something different about the relationship between presence and absence that make this exhibition’s ‘ghost’ especially vital.”19 Indeed, Kevin Lotery conceptualised An Exhibit as a recording device rather than a finished, static object (Figure 10.5). The exhibition, which was co-​curated by Hamilton and Victor Pasmore, consisted of an open grid structure of hanging vertical and horizontal semi-​transparent, semi-​reflexive Perspex panels attached to the ceiling, which organised an ordered yet fluid space where the spectator could wander freely. Unlike Growth and Form there was an absence of imagery in the installation. The spectators’ own reflection would momentarily register instead on the panels as he/​she walked around the installation. In describing An Exhibit, Lotery wrote that: Every possible reflection is produced by the most microscopic movements. Like a faulty cinematic apparatus or computing machine, the panels mark everything yet store nothing, forgetting in the end the images passing over their surfaces as so many chance configurations of body, architecture, and Perspex -​-​configurations too fleeting and precise to enter the human sensorium as memory images.20 In its use of the modernist grid that organised the arrangement of its components in space, moreover, the installation introduced a tension between form and process, manifesting an incompleteness that invited a more vivid audience engagement. Lotery argues that this incompleteness in An Exhibit “always leaves one wanting, it always creates desire. It is haunted by the absent memory of those who have passed through it [...].” And he concludes that: “This need to revisit, and to inhabit, is integral to the show and its conceptual structure: it is driven by a libidinal force that aims in inscribing the viewing body into the abstract exhibit.”21 At the same time, the openness of the grid, as the spatial perception of the structure shifts when the visitors walk around it, displays an intention for the work to be inhabited as a social space. This interactive aspect in An Exhibit then introduces a “corporeal sociality that precludes its being understood simply as an arrangement of panels,” positioning “the abstract grid as something inherently social.” This quality of the installation as a “social abstraction” that keeps the tension between sociability and individuality open manifests as “a desire that is not resolved in the exhibition’s ‘successful’ re-​stagings and revisitations, a desire that pesters any attempt to lay the show to rest in the annals of art history […].”22 It is these unresolved tensions at the core of the display that put into motion the tension between social and individual space, but also between art history and curatorial practice, that make the re-​staging of An Exhibit so potent and engaging for visitors; as if revisiting the installation is inscribed into the formal logic of the exhibition. In highlighting, furthermore, the tension between

Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum”  191 abstraction and sociability, there appears to be a social demand in the very conception of the work which questions the very definition of modernity that we still inhabit. This incompleteness that stems from the unresolved social demands that the exhibition brings to the fore thus anticipates its re-​stagings as part of the original structure, making it so vibrant and alive to contemporary audiences. This is one of the key challenges in exhibition reconstructions: the danger of becoming historical fetishes presenting a fossilised past, on one hand, or in revisiting the past to succeed in reclaiming the agency of the contemporary subject, on the other hand. The following section discusses some of the ambitions as well as the risks in the process of historicisation through reconstructions. When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013 In 2013, Harald Szeemann’s seminal show Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form: Works –​Concepts –​Processes –​Situations –​Information, (first shown in Bern in 1969) was re-​created at the Fondazione Prada in Venice, Italy (Figure 10.6). The reconstruction, titled When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013, was curated by Germano Celant in collaboration with the artist Thomas Demand and the architect Rem Koolhaas. As I mentioned in the introduction of this chapter, the exhibition presents the most striking yet controversial example of the recent curatorial practice in art institutions of re-​staging seminal exhibitions from the past. In addition to displaying the artworks that were initially shown in the Bern exhibition, the Venice reconstruction included the exact replication of the original exhibition space (wall partitions, floor, exact floor plan, etc.), resulting in multi-​layered spatio-​temporal overlaps between the eighteenth-​century Venetian palazzo (housing the Fondazione Prada) and the 2013 recreation of the 1969 exhibition (originally staged at the 1918 Kunsthalle Bern). According to Koolhaas, these spatio-​temporal “tears” brought an experimental dimension to the project aiming to counteract the scholastic seriousness of the archival reconstruction and to preserve the spirit of the 1969 exhibition which was “about improvisation and artistic freedom”23 (Figure 10.7). As its sub-​heading indicates, Works –​Concepts –​Processes –​Situations –​ Information, Szeemann’s 1969 exhibition aimed to introduce art as a process rather than a finished object. In doing so, it introduced to a European public sixty-​nine artists who worked within a conceptual art framework, including Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Eva Hesse, Lawrence Weiner and Robert Morris, among others. In his essay included in this volume, David Hodge remarks on the “forensic precision of the [Fondazione Prada reconstruction’s] layout” that encouraged a rather scholastic going back-​and-​forth between the three-​ dimensional works installed in the galleries and their archival documentation presented in vitrines. This painstakingly accurate experience of the archival came in contrast with “the exciting directness of the original show […]. In an especially excessive move, the curators even duplicated radiators and electrical plugs from the Bern exhibition.”24 Hodge convincingly argues that while raising questions about authenticity and access to historical truth, the

192  Natasha Adamou reconstruction “simultaneously exploited and reproduced the value of the canon.”25 Celant was not oblivious to these tensions which he explored in his exhibition catalogue essay. In the essay, the reconstruction was presented as an attempt to question the historicisation of When Attitudes Become Form and to explore the very process of canonisation. Celant acknowledged Szeemann’s show as an important moment in exhibition-​ making, “while also rueing its transformation from an open-​ended, febrile moment, into a reified placeholder.”26 Like Koolhaas, cited above, Celant also acknowledged the risk that the reconstruction would turn into a “fetishistic celebration.”27 In her essay for the exhibition catalogue, the art historian Claire Bishop writes that in order for it to be used critically reconstruction should produce “not an empty replica, a dutiful but inadequate imitation of the past” (i.e. the “eternal” picture of the past that Benjamin criticised), but an “anachronic object,” where “two authorships and two temporalities co-​exist: an archival representation of the past, and a voice that speaks to the concerns of today.”28 Many exhibition reviewers, however, were sceptical about the effects of this scrupulous re-​staging. While Szeemann’s first exhibition iteration in 1969 was breaking new ground in curatorial practice by promoting process-​based art forms over the autonomous, self-​ contained art object, the main point of critique for the meticulous archival reconstruction in 2013 was that it turned the open-​ended energy of the 1969 exhibition into an insular museological object and historical fetish, corroborating Celant’s own fears. In her review of the exhibition, Catherine Spencer, noted that, at the end, the show felt “stage-​managed, even Disneyfied.”29 In other words, Spencer’s observation places certain exhibition reconstructions in the context of entertainment economies (a Disneyland spectacle), a crucial aspect of late-​capitalist art institutions that is discussed in the following section. Experience Economies 1990s–​2020s In her seminal essay “The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum” (1990), Rosalind Krauss identified a shift in museums of contemporary art that was characterised by the rise of the “experience economy.” Krauss argued that in the 1990s the experience of the work of art was mediated by the large-​ scale architecture of contemporary museums, a “hyperspace” as she called it, producing effects of disembodiment [in the experience of the audience] that in the author’s view correlated to the dematerialised flows of global capital.30 While many contemporary re-​stagings instead seek to include the embodied spectator grounded in his/​her own historical moment, as Walsh has argued, it must be noted that the model of exhibition reconstructions also partakes in the “experience economy,” as part of that earlier shift in museums in late capitalism which Krauss criticised. In the case of When Attitudes Become

Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum”  193 Form, for example, the show provided a “Disneyfied” experience that drew in large crowds. Indeed, in her book Radical Museology: or, What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art? (2013), Claire Bishop revisited Krauss’s essay, highlighting the increasing emphasis on leisure and entertainment in contemporary art museums dictated not only by their architecture but also by the museums’ “proximity to big business” (i.e. reliance on corporate funding). These tendencies are characteristic of “the move from the nineteenth-​century model of the museum as a patrician institution of elite culture to its current incarnation as a populist temple of leisure and entertainment.”31 It can be further argued that the power dynamics at play in museums as public institutions with a “proximity to big business” manifest in “times of interregnum.” In this “institutional disparity,” Bauman wrote, “power has evaporated from the level of nation-​state [in this case the public museum] into the politics-​free ‘space of flows,’ ” resulting in “the increasing powerlessness of the extant political institutions.”32 In this politics-​free “space of flows” that the contemporary art museum occupies in late capitalism, the institutional self-​critique that is enacted through the model of reconstructions often serves as institutional validation. Crucially, the contemporary museums’ “proximity to big business” often encourages the superficial adoption of radical politics by art institutions for purposes of institutional validation. In her polemical review of the Tate Britain exhibition on feminist histories, activism and labour, titled BP Spotlight: Sylvia Pankhurst & Women and Work, Victoria Horne eloquently argued that “at a time when Tate’s reliance upon corporate sponsorship is more visible than ever, the museum has adopted the impression of inclusivity and auto-​critique.” Staging a show that revisited feminist histories, Horne claimed that “Tate Britain’s conservative curatorial framing of [socialist-​ feminist archives and struggles] within BP-​sponsored exhibition spaces, serves to make a mockery of these struggles, to signal their presumed failure and to mark a cynical recuperation by the very capitalist forces they set out to oppose.”33 Returning to Bishop’s analysis, however, the author identifies a shift in some museums away from the “experience economy” into more socially engaged practices. More specifically, she highlights the critical potential of several contemporary art museums to “represent the interests and histories of those constituencies that are (or have been) marginalized, sidelined and oppressed.”34 For Bishop, the transit from the “experience economy” of the postmodern museum to socially oriented practices in many contemporary art institutions marks a more politicised engagement of these institutions with our historical moment.35 The issue of representation and inclusivity, alongside

194  Natasha Adamou crucial demands to make visible historically under-​represented communities through the narration of suppressed histories, has been the object of much recent scholarship and debate. In this sense, there is a potential in exhibition reconstructions to enact a dialectical relationship between the historical and the contemporary while giving agency and visibility to previously marginalised peoples and communities. Rather than creating meaning for the communities through the authority of the institutional curator, however, institutions can help build social platforms in order to test and imagine future potentialities for historically suppressed communities. A controversial example of such an attempt to give central stage to artworks by neglected artists previously ignored by the Western canon was the exhibition Other Primary Structures, a re-​staging that revisited the seminal exhibition Primary Structures, which I discuss in the following section. Other Primary Structures A prominent example of an exhibition that sought to re-​write art history from a postcolonial perspective is Other Primary Structures, organised at the Jewish Museum in New York in 2014. This two-​part exhibition was a re-​examination from a global perspective of the seminal exhibition Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors (Jewish Museum, New York 1966) that introduced minimalism in New York in the 1960s. Rather than focusing on the canonical Anglo-​American artworks from the original exhibition, Other Primary Structures featured instead sculptures by artists working in the 1960s in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa, who were dealing with similar issues as their North American and British contemporaries. Jens Hoffmann, the curator of Other Primary Structures, explains that the “Other” in the exhibition’s title, does not mean merely “another,” or “additional,” but it is also informed by a postcolonial agenda, one that acknowledges the need to attend to “other” histories that have been marginalised by the dominant art-​historical narratives. As Kathryn M. Floyd notes in her chapter on the theatricality of Other Primary Structures, featuring in the present volume, the Jewish Museum put together a dramatic mise-​en-​scène that brought into dialogue “mainstream” and “othered” minimalisms of the 1960s.36 Primary Structures, the 1966 exhibition curated by Kynaston McShine, was represented by wall-​sized, black-​and-​white installation photographs that featured as a backdrop for Hoffmann’s revised version. The works by the artists who were not included in the original version were instead installed in Other Primary Structures as three-​dimensional sculptural objects, taking the central stage. In an imaginative and unique reconstruction, Other Primary Structures thus “constructed an illusionistic stage set linking past and present: the ‘Others’ seemed to appear in the 1966 galleries while Primary Structures haunted the here and now.”37 This attempt to present a revised minimalism brought the omissions and suppressed histories to light, not

Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum”  195 only in order to expand the modernist canon but also with the aim to scrutinise the reasons for those exclusions in the first place. To complete the theatrical staging of the exhibition, the last gallery included a three-​ dimensional reproduction of the 1966 exhibition in the form of a ¾ scale model of the Jewish Museum’s building. Resembling a dollhouse, the model presented scaled-​down replicas of the sculptures as they were exhibited in Primary Structures offering an engaging experience. Floyd, however, convincingly argues that the curatorial decision to create a dramatic mise-​en-​scène featuring a large-​ scale photographic backdrop, overshadowed the specific histories on art outside the Anglo-​American canon that Other Primary Structures sought to present. The very mode of installation instead became the central focus for the exhibition visitors, creating “a fragile illusion” of an expanded space that sought to integrate those histories together. At the same time, the large installation shots overwhelmed the spectators distracting them from the three-​dimensional sculptures on view. As a result, many reviewers “gave only cursory attention, beyond general comments, to the specific artworks in the show, saying little about their individual histories or the diversity of global modernisms they represented. Instead, it was the dramatic mise-​en-​scène that held their focus.”38 In other words, the theatricality of the installation promoted a seamless continuity and an imaginary integration between those diverse and often competing modernisms. Other Primary Structures, therefore, sought to revise and expand alternative histories by suppressing rather than highlighting the breaks, discontinuities, conflicts and critical positions in those histories, let alone illuminate their material realities –​that is, the local and historical specificities of the previously excluded artworks from a global perspective. Reconstructing Exhibitions in Times of Interregnum As discussed in this chapter, the encounter between contemporary exhibitions and archival histories materialises in the reconstruction of past exhibitions in order to create new narratives that address current socio-​political demands. This encounter not only prompts a reconsideration of the past from the standpoint of the present but also presents a great opportunity to construct alternative visions of the future. In his seminal essay “Archival Impulse” (2004), Hal Foster argues that: Perhaps the paranoid dimension of archival art is the other side of its utopian ambition -​-​its desire to turn belatedness into becomingness, to recoup failed visions in art, literature, philosophy, and everyday life into possible scenarios of alternative kinds of social relations, to transform the no-​place of the archive into the no-​place of a utopia. This partial recovery of the utopian demand is unexpected: not so long ago this was the most despised aspect of the project, condemned as totalitarian gulag on the Right and capitalist tabula rasa on the Left. This move to turn “excavation

196  Natasha Adamou sites” into “construction sites” is welcome in another way too: it suggests a shift away from a melancholic culture that views the historical as little more than the traumatic.39 Turning to the past in order to construct the future –​turning “excavation sites” into “construction sites,” as Foster argued –​could be one of the more productive political aims of reconstructing exhibitions. This chapter has drawn on this very tension between excavating the past and constructing the future as it is played out in the three different models of exhibition reconstructions that were examined here. The three examples of reconstructing exhibitions from the past presented in this chapter illustrate different ways of relating to historical time and how the past events may resonate with contemporary issues. In the meticulous archival reconstruction of When Attitudes Become Form, the model of anachronism was an attempt to reclaim the past in ways that are relevant to the concerns of today, according to Bishop. The reconstruction sought to stay close to historical detail, where the gaps between the different eras were conceptualised through the “temporal tear,” and rendered formally, frozen in time. In the end, they became part of the décor and fetishised rather than opening up a critical space for a discussion on the resonance of Szeemann’s seminal exhibition today. Bishop’s proclaimed dialectical dimension was lost in this exhibition: what were, indeed, the concerns of today that the meticulous reconstruction of When Attitudes Become Form addressed? Even though it paved the way for reflecting on the possibilities of reconstructing exhibitions from the past, to a large extent the Venice reconstruction was rendered as an “empty replica,” a faithful copy of an already venerated past for mass-​audience consumption. Other Primary Structures started as an attempt to create a reparative model of re-​writing art history from a postcolonial perspective in order to include previously marginalised histories. To some extent, the exhibition managed to create space to present these neglected histories, however, it partly failed to address the representation gaps critically. Jens Hoffmann’s claim for the exclusion of non-​western artists from the 1966 exhibition, for example, that determined the canon of minimalism to this day, was put down to practical reasons, that is, the lack of access to non-​western artists at that time; even if amongst the excluded artists were prominent figures of non-​western origin who were based in the USA or the UK (i.e. Rasheed Araeen, the Karachi-​ born, London-​based prominent artist, writer and curator whose work was included in the revised version of the show). Hamilton’s Growth and Form, finally, drew on re-​staging as a time-​capsule in the context of a retrospective exhibition. The re-​staging presented an opportunity for opening up a conversation about reclaiming some of the inclusive, interdisciplinary practices of Hamilton and the Independent Group (IG) (as Nixon would have it), while highlighting its contemporary relevance. The re-​staging, however, did not provide enough space for a reflexive narrative in order to further engage the

Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum”  197 contemporary audiences to this end, providing instead a partial copy of the 1950s show. In their diverse intentions and manifestations –​whether exhibition reconstructions produce faithful copies of the past, anachronic temporalities or reparative models of involvement with art history (and history more broadly) –​reconstructions proliferated at a time of recurring financial, political and cultural crises that highlighted the systemic “institutional disparity” of late capitalism (Bauman’s separation between power and politics). This chapter argued that, above all else, reconstructions can be understood as an attempt to negotiate and reclaim this gap between power and politics; oscillating between models of social inclusivity and spaces in which it is possible to rethink political agency, on the one hand, and reified placeholders of canonical art histories that re-​enact the “eternal” picture of the past, on the other hand. Paraphrasing from Branislav Jakovljevič’s article “On Performance Forensics: The Political Economy of Reenactments,” while declaring that they are giving the past exhibitions a second chance, reconstructions often “supply precisely that which its precursors renounced: permanence.”40 Thus, the emphasis of reconstructions on repeatability strives to overcome the transience of exhibitions by restoring a past event to life. This is the conservative aspect of reconstructions that can produce historical fetishes rather than creating platforms for thinking critically about contemporary social struggles. The model of reconstructions as it emerged in the first decade of the twenty-​ first century thus indicates a suspended time when “the old is dying and the new cannot be born”; both a symptom and a potential critique of the times that we live in.

198  Natasha Adamou

Figure 10.1 Detail from the installation view of “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013” in Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice 2013. Photo by the author from the exhibition catalogue, p. 616.

Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum”  199

Figure 10.2  Detail from the installation view of “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013” in Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice 2013. Photo: Thomas Demand. Photo by the author from the exhibition catalogue, p. 369.

200  Natasha Adamou

Figure 10.3  Detail from the installation view of Richard Hamilton’s An Exhibit 1957. Photo by the author from Exhibition, Design, Participation: An Exhibit 1957 and Related Projects, Elena Crippa and Lucy Steeds (eds.), Afterall Books, Exhibition Histories, Vol. 7 (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2016), p. 152.

Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum”  201

Figure 10.4  Book cover of D’Arcy Thompson’s “On Growth and Form.” (Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, Essays on Sculpture 70, 2014). Book cover photo: Natasha Adamou.

202  Natasha Adamou

Figure 10.5 Book cover of Exhibition, Design, Participation: An Exhibit 1957 and Related Projects, Elena Crippa and Lucy Steeds (eds.), Afterall Books, Exhibition Histories, Vol. 7, (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2016). Front cover image: Installation view, “An Exhibit,” Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1957, with Richard Hamilton (far left) and Terry Hamilton (far right). The artists’ estates. Courtesy the estate of Richard Hamilton. Book cover photo: Natasha Adamou.

Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum”  203

Figure 10.6 Detail from the installation view of “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013” in Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice 2013. Photo by the author from the exhibition catalogue, p. 602.

204  Natasha Adamou

Figure 10.7 Detail from the installation of “When Attitudes Become Form,” Bern 1969. Lawrence Weiner making A 36” × 36” Removal to the Lathing or Support Wall of Plaster or Wallboard from a Wall, 1968. Photo by the author from the exhibition catalogue “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013” in Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice 2013, p. 194.

Notes 1 The reconstruction of exhibitions came to a halt in 2020 when the COVID-​19 pandemic put a stop to exhibition-​making in situ in general as well as to physical reconstructions. 2 “Thomas Demand: When Attitudes Become Form” interview to Giovanna Amadasi, Klat Magazine (10 October 2013) www.klatm​agaz​ine.com/​en/​art-​ en/​tho​mas-​dem​and-​when-​attitu​des-​bec​ome-​form-​interv​iew/​33077 [Accessed 8 Nov 2022].

Reconstructing Exhibitions in “Times of Interregnum”  205 3 Germano Celant (ed.), When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013, exhibition catalogue (Fondazione Prada, 2013), p. 414. 4 Germano Celant, “A Readymade: When Attitudes Become Form,” When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969 /​Venice 2013 (Fondazione Prada, 2013), p. 389. 5 From Victoria Walsh’s paper “Museological Paradoxes and Art Historical Conundrums: Reconstructing Exhibitions as Curatorial Provocations” presented in “The Return of History: Reconstructing Art Exhibitions in the 21st Century” session, organised by Natasha Adamou, Michaela Giebelhausen and Michael Tymkiw, at the Association of Art Historians (AAH) 42nd Annual Conference, University of Edinburgh, 7–​9 April 2016. 6 Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” Illuminations (London: Fontana, 1992), p. 247. 7 Quaderni del carcere; here quoted after Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-​Smith (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), p. 276. 8 Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” p. 247. 9 Ibid. 10 Quaderni del carcere; here quoted after Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-​Smith (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), 276. 11 Mignon Nixon, Alex Potts, Briony Fer, Antony Hudek and Julian Stallabrass, October, Vol. 98, The MIT Press (Autumn, 2001), pp. 3–​ 25. www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​779​060 12 Victoria Walsh “Museological Paradoxes and Art Historical Conundrums: Reconstructing Exhibitions as Curatorial Provocations.” 13 D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form (1917). 14 www.macba.cat/ ​ e n/ ​ a rt- ​ a rti ​ s ts/ ​ a rti ​ s ts/ ​ h amil​ t on-​ r ich​ a rd/​ g ro​ w th-​ a nd-​ f orm [accessed 11 Nov 2022]. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Victoria Walsh “Museological Paradoxes and Art Historical Conundrums: Reconstructing Exhibitions as Curatorial Provocations.” 18 Growth and Form was also restaged at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid in 2014. 19 Martin Beck, “Revisiting the Form of ‘an Exhibit’ ” in Exhibition, design, participation: “An exhibit” 1957 and related projects, Elena Crippa and Lucy Steeds (eds.), (Afterall Books in association with the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, 2016), p. 208. 20 Kevin Lotery quoted in Beck, p. 213. 21 Ibid., pp. 214–​215. 22 Ibid., p. 215. 23 Rem Koolhaas in When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969 /​Venice 2013, p. 414. 24 Rebecca Coates, “Curating Histories and the Restaged Exhibition”, Interdiscipline: AAANZ Conference 2013, December 2014, 7, http://​aaanz.info/​ wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2014/​12/​Coat​es_​C​urat​ing-​histor​ies.pdf [accessed 27 June 2018].

206  Natasha Adamou 25 David Hodge, “When Competition Becomes Form: Exhibition Reconstructions and the Limits of Institutional Self-​Critique” in Reconstructing Exhibitions in Art Institutions. 26 On “reification” see: Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1967), pp. 83–​222. 27 Celant, “A Readymade: When Attitudes Become Form,” p. 390. 28 Claire Bishop, “Reconstruction Era: The Anachronic Time(s) of Installation Art,” in When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969 /​Venice 2013, p. 436. 29 Catherine Spencer, “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/​Venice 2013,” This Is Tomorrow, 2 Sept. 2013. http://​thi​sist​omor​row.info/​artic​les/​when-​attitu​des-​bec​ome-​form-​bern-​1969-​ ven​ice-​2013 [accessed 24 Oct. 2022]. 30 Rosalind Krauss, “The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum,” October, Vol. 54 (Autumn, 1990), p. 12. 31 Claire Bishop, Radical Museology: or, What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art? (Konig, 2013), p. 5. 32 Zygmunt Bauman, “Times of Interregnum,” Critical Debate, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2012, p. 52. 33 Horne, Victoria. “BP Spotlight: Sylvia Pankhurst & Women and Work, Tate Britain, 16 September 2013–​6 April 2014,” Radical Philosophy, issue 186, series 1 (Jul/​Aug 2014). www.radica​lphi​loso​phy.com/​revi​ews/​bp-​spotli​ght-​syl​via-​pankhu​rst-​women-​ and-​work [accessed 03.11.22] 34 Bishop, Radical Museology: or, What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art? (2013), p. 6. 35 Ibid. 36 See Chapter 2 in this volume for further information and illustrations: Kathryn M. Floyd, Other Primary Structures and the Theatricality of Re-​ Staging Exhibitions in Reconstructing Exhibitions in Art Institutions. 37 Kathryn M. Floyd, Other Primary Structures and the Theatricality of Re-​Staging Exhibitions in Reconstructing Exhibitions in Art Institutions. 38 Ibid. 39 Hal Foster, “An Archival Impulse,” October, Vol. 110 (Autumn, 2004), p. 22. 40 Branislav Jakovljevič, “On Performance Forensics: The Political Economy of Reenactments,” Art Journal, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Fall 2011), p. 51.

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210  Bibliography Badsha, Farzanah. “ ‘It’s about Being Able to Create’: A Conversation between Lionel Davis and Farzanah Badsha, Muizenberg, Cape Town, August 2015.” In A Labour of Love: Kunst aus Südafrika. Die 80er Jetzt, edited by Yvette Mutumba and Gabi Ngcobo (Berlin: Kerber Art, 2016), pp. 59–​60. Bethlehem, Louise. “Restless Itineraries,” Social Text 136 (2018): 47–​70. Bozzoli, Belinda. “Class, Community and Ideology in the Evolution of South African Society.” In Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives, edited by Belinda Bozzoli. (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987), pp. 1–​43. Dhlomo-​Mautloa, Bongi, Gabi Ngcobo, Michelle Monareng, Nathaniel Sheppard and Chad Codeiro.“ ‘They Couldn’t See the Immediacy of Visual Language as a Driver to People’s Social Consciousness for a Long Time’: A Conversation between Bongi Dhlomo-​Mautloa, Gabi Ngcobo, Michelle Monareng, Nathaniel Sheppard and Chad Codeiro, Wits School of Arts, Johannesburg, August 2015.” In A Labour of Love: Kunst aus Südafrika. Die 80er Jetzt, edited by Yvette Mutumba and Gabi Ngcobo (Berlin: Kerber Art, 2016), pp. 44–​46. Gready, Paul. The Era of Transitional Justice: The Aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and Beyond. (New York & London: Routledge, 2011). Greenberg, Reesa. “ ‘Remembering Exhibitions’: From Point to Line to Web,” Tate Papers 12 (2009). www.tate.org.uk/​resea​rch/​publi​cati​ons/​tate-​pap​ers/​12/​reme​mber​ ing-​exhi​biti​ons-​from-​point-​to-​line-​to-​web. Grunebaum, Heidi. Memorializing the Past: Everyday Life in South Africa after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (New York: Transaction, 2011). Grunebaum, Heidi, Premesh Lalu and Jane Taylor. “Uncontained: Itineraries of Thought on Opening the CAP Print Collection.” In Uncontained: Opening the Community Arts Project Archive, edited by Heidi Grunebaum and Emile Maurice (Belville: Centre for Humanities Research Publication, 2012), pp. 22–​32. Grunebaum, Heidi. “Uncontained and the Constraints of Historicism as Method: A Reply to Mario Pissarra,” Third Text Africa 3(1) (2013): 86–​92. Grunebaum, Heidi. “Debates on Memory Politics and Counter-​Memory Practices in South Africa in the 1990s,” Education as Change 22(2) (2018): 1–​19. Hagg, Gerard. “The State and Community Arts Centres in a Society in Transformation,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 13(2) (2010): 163–​184. Helgesson, Stefan, Louise Bethlehem and Gül Bilge Han. “Cultural Solidarities: Apartheid and the Anticolonial Commons of World Literature,” Safundi 19(3) (2018): 260–​268. Jamal, Ashraf. “Common Sympathies: Six Asides about Resistance Art.” In The People Shall Govern! Medu Art Ensemble and the Anti-​Apartheid Poster, 1979-​ 1985, edited by Antawan I. Byrd and Felicia Mings (Chicago, IL: Art Institute of Chicago, 2020), pp. 44–​50. Konieczna, Anna, and Rob Skinner (eds.). A Global History of Anti-​Apartheid: ‘Forward to Freedom’ in South Africa. (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). Lewis, Desiree. “Women at Work.” In Uncontained: Opening the Community Arts Project Archive, edited by Heidi Grunebaum and Emile Maurice. (Belville: Centre for Humanities Research Publication, 2012), pp. 150–​157.

Bibliography  211 Mduli, Same. “Memories of How We Speak It.” In A Labour of Love: Kunst aus Südafrika. Die 80er Jetzt, edited by Yvette Mutumba and Gabi Ngcobo. (Berlin: Kerber Art, 2016), pp. 32–​33. Minty, Zayd. “Post-​apartheid Public Art in Cape Town: Symbolic Reparations and Public Space,” Urban Studies 43(2) (2006): 424–​425. Mutumba, Yvette. “The Moment and the Time: A Museum Collection as a Labour of Love.” In A Labour of Love: Kunst aus Südafrika. Die 80er Jetzt, edited by Yvette Mutumba and Gabi Ngcobo (Berlin: Kerber Art, 2016), pp. 10–​16. Mutumba, Yvette. “The Visibility of Contemporary Art from African Perspectives.” Public talk at Framer Framed, Amsterdam, 2017. https://​frame​rfra​med.nl/​en/​men​ sen/​yve​tte-​mutu​mba/​ Ngcobo, Gabi. “What’s Love Got to Do with It.” In A Labour of Love: Kunst aus Südafrika. Die 80er Jetzt, edited by Yvette Mutumba and Gabi Ngcobo, (Berlin: Kerber Art, 2016), pp. 18–​23. Peffer, John. The Struggle for Art at the End of Apartheid. PhD Thesis, Columbia University, 2002. Peffer, John. Art and the End of Apartheid (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009). Rassool, Ciraj. “Community Museums, Memory Politics, and Social Transformation in South Africa: Histories, Possibilities, and Limits.” In Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/​Global Transformations, edited by Ivan Karp et al. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 286–​321. Rassool, Ciraj. “Human Remains, the Disciplines of the Dead, and the South African Memorial Complex.” In Derek Peterson, Kodzo Gavua, and Ciraj Rassool, eds., The Politics of Heritage in Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 133–​156. Rassool, Ciraj. “South African Art and Apartheid.” In A Labour of Love: Kunst aus Südafrika. Die 80er Jetzt, edited by Yvette Mutumba and Gabi Ngcobo, (Berlin: Kerber Art, 2016), pp. 24–​28. Robbe, Ksenia. “Erinnerung als Waffe der Dekolonisierung: Kunst und StudentInnen-​ Bewegung im heutigen Südafrika,” trans. by Gerhard Hauck and Reinhart Kössler. Peripherie 144 (2016): 432–​454. Robbe, Ksenia. “Confronting Disillusionment: On the Rediscovery of Socialist Archives in Recent South African Cultural Production,” Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 19(4) (2018): 398–​415. Thomas, Kylie. “Decolonization if Now: Photography and Student-​Social Movements in South Africa,” Visual Studies 33(1) (2018): 98–​110. Van Alphen, Ernst. “The Politics of Exclusion, or, Reanimating the Archive.” The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 24(49–​50) (2015): 118–​137.

Chapter 4 “1939: Exhibiting Black Art’ Revisits Groundbreaking Show at Baltimore Museum of Art,” ArtfixDaily, June 21, 2018, www.artf​i xda​ily.com/​artw​ire/​rele​ase/​2896-​1939-​ exh​ibit​ing-​black-​art-​at-​baltim​ore-​mus​eum-​of-​art. 50th Anniversary Exhibition. Also known as 1914: An Exhibition of Paintings, xDrawings and Sculpture Created in 1914 (Baltimore, M.D.: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1964).

212  Bibliography Andre, Linda. and Routhier, Jessica Skwire. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Celebrating a Museum (Baltimore, M.D.: Baltimore Museum of Art, 2014). Altschuler, Bruce. “A Canon of Exhibitions,” Manifesta Journal 11 (2011): 13 Banks, James A. “Race, Knowledge Construction, and Education in the United States: Lessons from History,” in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, eds. James. A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-​Bass, 2004), pp. 228–​239. Bedford, Christopher. “Building an Inclusive Baltimore,” YouTube Video, 2:20:54, August 7, 2017. www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​ZEHc​mfRc​sQg Boas, George. “1914: Reminiscences and Meditations.” In 1914, p. 11. Boersma, Linda and Patrick van Rossem. “Editorial: Rewriting or Reaffirming the Canon? Critical Readings of Exhibition History,” Stedelijk Studies 2 (2015). https://​stede​lijk​stud​ies.com/​jour​nal/​rewrit​ing-​or-​reaf​fi rm​ing-​the-​canon-​criti​cal-​ readi​ngs-​of-​exh​ibit​ion-​hist​ory/​ Brenner, Carla. “A Great Museum for a Great City,” The Baltimore Museum of Art: Celebrating a Museum (Museum Boymans-​van Beuningen, 2014), pp. 12–​25. Butler, Shelley Ruth. “Reflexive Museology: Lost and Found”, in International Handbook of Museum Studies 1, eds. Andrea Witcomb and Kylie Message (Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2015), pp. 159–​182. Cahan, Susan E. Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016). “Contemporary Negro Art Exhibition,” The Afro-​American, 21 January 1939. Conn, Steven. Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-​1926 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Cook, Brigitte. Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011). Daily, Jane. “Baltimore’s Confederate Monument Was Never About ‘History and Culture’ Huffington Post, August 17, 2017. Dorsey, John. “Museums Brush Up on Black Portrayals,” Baltimore Sun, April 26, 1992. Falk, John. Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience (New York: Routledge, 2016). Francis, Jacqueline. Making Race: Modernism and “Racial Art” in America (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011). Fraser, Andrea. “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique,” Artforum 44(1) (2005): 278–​283. Greenberg, Reesa. “Remembering Exhibitions: From Point to Line to Web,” Tate Papers 12 (2009), www.tate.org.uk/​resea​rch/​publi​cati​ons/​tate-​pap​ers/​12/​reme​mber​ ing-​exhi​biti​ons-​from-​point-​to-​line-​to-​web Groys, Boris. “The Politics of Installation,” Going Public (New York: Sternberg Press, 2010). Hirschland, Ellen B. and Nancy Hirschland Ramage. The Cone Sisters of Baltimore: Collecting at Full Tilt (Evanston, I.L.: Northwestern University Press, 2008). Houston, Kerr. “Past Imperfect: Restaging Exhibitions and the Present Tense,” BmoreArt, 18 April 2016. Jennings, Gretchen. “The Idea of Museum Neutrality: Where Did it Come From?” Museum Commons, June 26, 2017. (www.museum​comm​ons.com/​2017/​06/​_​_​tras​ hed.html)

Bibliography  213 Kramer, Paul A. “White Sales: The Racial Politics of Baltimore’s Jewish-​ Owned Department Stores, 1935-​ 1965,” in Enterprising Emporiums: The Jewish Department Stores of Downtown Baltimore, ed. Dean Krimmel, Paul A. Kramer and Melissa J. Martens (Baltimore: Jewish Museum of Maryland, 2001), 37–​66. Larocca, Lauren. “The Color Line: Black Artists Are Finally Receiving Recognition in the Mainstream Art World, But It Has Been a Long Uphill Battle Toward Equity, and It’s One They Are Still Fighting.” Baltimore Magazine, September 5, 2019, www.baltim​orem​agaz​ine.com/​2018/​9/​5/​black-​arti​sts-​fina​lly-​receiv​ing-​reco​gnit​ion-​ in-​mai​nstr​eam-​art-​world. Larson, Frances, Alison Petch and David Zeitlyn. “Social Networks and the Creation of the Pitt Rivers Museum,” Journal of Material Culture 12(3) (2007): 211–​239. Lorente, J. Pedro. “From the White Cube to a Critical Museography: The Development of Interrogative, Plural and Subjective Museum Discourses.” In From Museum Critique to the Critical Museum, ed. Katarzyna Murawska-​Muthesius and Piotr Piotrowski (Surrey, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 115–​128. Mallone, Laura C. “Why Are There So Many Art Exhibition Revivals” Hyperallergic 11 August 2014; Catherine Spencer, “Making it New: The Trend for Recreating Exhibitions” Apollo Magazine 27 April 2015. Murowski, Mike. “Towards a More Human-​Centered Museum: Part 1, Rethinking Hierarchies,” Art Museum Teaching, January 22, 2018. http://​artmus​eumt​each​ing. com/​2018/​01/​22/​ret​hink​ing-​hier​arch​ies/​ Myers, Julian. “On the Value of a History of Exhibitions,” The Exhibitionist 4 (2011): 24–​28 Roberts Greenfield, Kent. The Museum: Its First Half Century, Annual 1 (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1966), pp. 16–​17. Roelstraete, Dieter. “The Way of the Shovel: On the Archaeological Imaginary in Art,” E-​Flux Journal 4 (2009), www.e-​flux.com/​jour​nal/​04/​68582/​the-​way-​of-​the-​ sho​vel-​on-​the-​archeo​logi​cal-​imagin​ary-​in-​art/​ Schmid, John K. “Groundbreaking Artists Return to Baltimore Museum of Art,” Afro, 28 June, 2018, https://​afro.com/​gro​undb​reak​ing-​arti​sts-​ret​urn-​to-​baltim​ore-​ mus​eum-​of-​art/​ Simon, Nina. The Participatory Museum (Santa Cruz, C.A.: Museum 2.0, 2010). Skotnes, Andor. A New Deal for All?: Race and Class Struggles in Depression-​Era Baltimore (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013), pp. 11–​41. Spencer, Catherine. “Making it New: The Trend for Recreating Exhibitions,” Apollo Magazine, April 27, 2015. Starn, Randolph. “A Historian’s Brief Guide to New Museum Studies,” American Historical Review 110 (1) (February 2005): 68–​98. Welchman, John C. (ed.) Institutional Critique and After (Zurich and Los Angeles: JRP-​ Ringier-​Southern California Consortium of Art Schools SoCCAS, 2006). Chapter 5 Altshuler, Bruce. “Biennial Writing –​Re-​ assessing Art History.” Presentation at the General Assembly of the International Biennial Association (IBA), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, July 2014. Balvé, Beatriz. “Tucumán Arde =​a 50 años.” Presentation at 1968-​2018. A cincuenta años de la CGT de los Argentinos, Centro Cultural Paco Urondo, Buenos Aires,

214  Bibliography May 3 2018. http://​cicso.org/​2018/​06/​05/​tucu​man-​arde-​a-​50-​anos-​beat​riz-​s-​balve/​ #_​ftn1 Carnevale, Graciela. Interview by Ana Longoni, LatinArt.com, August 1, 2007. www. latin​art.com/​tra​nscr​ipt.cfm?id=​91 Carnevale, Graciela, Marcelo Expósito, André Mesquita, and Jaime Vindel. “Inventariar, desinventariar y reinventariar un archivo siempre en curso sobre las prácticas artísticas de vanguardia y sus devenires políticos, revolucionarios y activistas desde la década de 1960.” In Desinventario, Esquirlas de Tucumán Arde en el Archivo de Graciela Carnevale, edited by Red Conceptualismos del Sur (Madrid: MNCARS; Buenos Aires: Ocho Libros, 2015) pp. 7–​30. Creischer, Alice and Andreas Siekmann. “Steps for Fleeing from Work to Action Can artistic work be militant research? A field report in the project Ex Argentina”, Transversal 4 (2006). https://​tran​sver​sal.at/​tran​sver​sal/​0406/​creisc​her-​siekm​ann/​en Dandan, Alejandra and Hannah Franzki. “Between Historical Analysis and Legal Responsibility, The Ledesma Case”. In The Economic Accomplices to the Argentine Dictatorship, Outstanding Debts, edited by Horacio Verbitsky and Juan Pablo Bohoslavky. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 186–​200. Dawyd, Darío. “A 40 años del Programa del 1º de mayo. La CGT de los argentinos y la ofensiva contra la ‘Revolución Argentina’ ”, Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos, 12 July 2008. https://​doi.org/​10.4000/​nue​vomu​ndo.38022 Fernández López, Olga. “Dissenting Exhibitions by Artists, 1968-​1998.” PhD diss., Royal College of Art, 2011. Gamboni, Dario. “The Museum as a Work of Art. Site Specificity and Extended Agency”, kritische berichte 33, no. 3 (2005): 16–​27. Garrido, Romina. “A propósito de la muestra ‘1966-​1968. Arte de vanguardia en Rosario’ ”, Ramona 13, Sept 2015. http://​ram​ona.org.ar/​node/​57134 Godoy, Francisco. “Textos y contextos de las exposiciones de arte latinoamericano en el Estado español (1989-​ 2010).” PhD diss., Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2015. Groys, Boris. Art Power (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2008). Longoni, Ana and Mariano Mestman. Del Di Tella a Tucumán Arde (Buenos Aires: El Cielo Por Asalto, 2000). Longoni, Ana. “Coming Out of Silence”, Art Journal 73, no. 2 (2014): 14–​19. Longoni, Ana. “La legitimación del arte político”. Brumaria 5 (2005): 43–​52. Mahony, Emma. “The Uneasy Relationship of Self-​ Critique in the Public Art Institution”, Curator 59 (2016): 219–​238. Mandel Katz, Claudia. “Arte y Globalización: Estética de un Masacre Administrada”, Escena 33, no. 66 (2010): 125–​136. Ramirez, Mari Carmen. “Tactics for Thriving on Adversity: Conceptualism in Latin America 1960-​1980”. In Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin 1950s-​1980s, edited by Luis Camnitzer, Jane Farver, and Rachel Weiss. (New York: Queens Museum of Art, 1999), pp. 53–​71. Sansi, Roger. “Spectacle and Archive in Two Contemporary Museums in Spain”. In The Thing About Museums. Objects and Experience, Representation and Contestation: Essays in Honour of Professor Susan M. Pearce, edited by Sandra Dudley, Amy Jane Barnes, Jennifer Binnie, Julia Petrov and Jennifer Walklate (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 219–​229. Steeds, Lucy. “What is the Future of Exhibition Histories? Or, Towards Art in Terms of its Becoming Public”. In The Curatorial Conundrum, edited by Paul

Bibliography  215 O’Neill, Mick Wilson and Lucy Steeds (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), pp. 16–​25. Whitelegg, Isobel. “Brazil, Latin America, The World”. Third Text 26, no. 1 (2012): pp. 131–​140. Chapter 6 “15 Polish Painters”: 4 obrazy z najważniejszej powojennej wystawy sztuki polskiej, auction catalogue (Warsaw: Desa Unicum, 2015). “Moscow Astonished by Polish Modern Abstract Art”, The New York Times, 25 January 1959. “Poland Abandons Red Dogma in Art”, The New York Times, 31 December 1956. Arns, Inke and Walter Benjamin (eds.). What Is Modern Art? Museum of American Art (Berlin: Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien and Museum of American Art, 2006). Ashton, Dore. “Poland’s Modern Art to be Shown”, The New York Times, 4 October 1959. Bal, Mieke. “The Discourse of the Museum”. In Thinking About Exhibitions, edited by Reesa. Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne (London: Routledge, 1996). Benjamin, Walter. Recent Writings (Vancouver and Los Angeles: New Documents, 2013). Bugajski, Jill. “Tadeusz Kantor’s Public”. In Divided Dreamworlds?: The Cultural Cold War in East and West, edited by Peter Romijn, Giles Scott-​Smith, and Joes Segal (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2012), pp. 53–​72. Didi-​Huberman, Georges. Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2004). Fifteen Polish Painters (MoMA Exh. #690, August 1–​October 1, 1961). Moskalewicz, Magdalena. “Who Doesn’t Like Aleksander Kobzdej? A State Artist’s Career in the People’s Republic of Poland”. In The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures, edited by Aga Skrodzka, Xiaoning Lu, and Katarzyna Marciniak (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). DOI: 10.1093/​oxfordhb/​ 9780190885533.013.7 Moskalewicz, Magdalena (ed.). The Travellers: Voyage and Migration in New Art from Central and Eastern Europe (Tallin: Lugemik, 2017). Niemira, Konrad. “Much Ado About Nothing? Political Contexts of the 15 Polish Painters Exhibition (MoMA, 1961)”, Ikonotheka 26, 2016, pp. 167–​191. Piotrowski, Piotr (ed.). Odwilż. Sztuka około 1956 roku (Poznań: Muzeum Narodowe, 1996). Reid, Susan. “The Exhibition Art of Socialist Countries, Moscow 1958-​ 9 and Contemporary Style Painting”. In Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-​War Eastern Europe, edited by David Crowley and Susan Reid (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000). Selz, Peter. 15 Polish Painters (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1961). The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Records 1960–​1969; The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Chapter 7 Aaronovitz, R., “The Treasure Hunt that Revealed Germany’s ‘Degenerate’ Delights,” The Times, 9 June 2018, available at: www.theti​mes.co.uk/​arti​cle/​the-​treas​ure-​ hunt-​that-​revea​led-​germa​nys-​deg​ener​ate-​delig​hts-​jghjpz​vjr

216  Bibliography Anon., “Künstler gegen Hitler am Wannsee,” Berliner Abendblatt, 23 October 2018, available at: www.abe​ndbl​att-​ber​lin.de/​2018/​10/​23/​kuenst​ler-​gegen-​hit​ler-​am-​ wann​see/​ Baresel-​ Brand, A., Meike H. and Agnieszka L., eds. Bestandsaufnahme Gurlitt: “Entartete Kunst”, beschlagnahmt und verkauft, der NS-​Kunstraub und die Folgen (Munich, 2017). Barron, S., Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-​Garde in Nazi Germany, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (New York, 1991). Brown, M., “Library Explores British Defence of German ‘Degenerate Art’,” The Guardian, 12 June 2018, available at: www.theg​uard​ian.com/​artan​ddes​ign/​2018/​ jun/​12/​libr​ary-​explo​res-​brit​ish-​defe​nce-​of-​ger​man-​deg​ener​ate-​art Buchholz, E. L., “Kunst gegen Hitler,” Der Tagesspiegel, 30 October 2018, available at: www.tages​spie​gel.de/​kul​tur/​mode​rne-​in-​der-​lie​berm​ann-​villa-​kunst-​gegen-​hit​ ler/​23244​122.html. Connolly, K., “Berlin Recreates Nazi-​ Baiting Art Exhibition from 1938,” The Guardian, 5 October 2019, available at: www.theg​uard​ian.com/​world/​2018/​oct/​ 05/​ber​lin-​recrea​tes-​nazi-​bait​ing-​art-​exh​ibit​ion-​from-​1938 Frowein, C., “The Exhibition of 20th Century German Art in London 1938: Eine Antwort auf die Ausstellung Entartete Kunst in München 1937,” Exilforschung: Ein internationales Jahrbuch, vol. 2, 1984, pp. 212–​237. Goschlar, C. and Lillteicher, J., ‘Arisierung’ und Restitution: Die Rückerstattung jüdischen Eigentums in Deutschland und Österreich nach 1945 und 1989 (Göttingen, 2002). Gramlich, J., “Reflections on Provenance Research: Values –​Politics –​Art Markets,” Journal for Art Market Studies, vol. 1, no. 2 (2017), available at: www.fokum-​ jams.org/​index.php/​jams/​issue/​view/​3 [accessed 14 August 2018]. Greenberg, R., ‘ “Remembering Exhibitions”: From Point to Line to Web’, Tate Papers, no. 12, Autumn 2009, available at: www.tate.org.uk/​resea​rch/​publi​cati​ons/​ tate-​pap​ers/​12/​reme​mber​ing-​exhi​biti​ons-​from-​point-​to-​line-​to-​web [accessed 14 August 2019]. Jeuthe, G., Kunstwerte im Wandel: Die Preisentwicklung der deutschen Moderne im nationalen und internationalen Kunstmarkt 1925 bis 1955 (Berlin, 2011). Nichols, L. H., The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York, 1994). Rave, P. O., Kunstdiktatur im Dritten Reich (Hamburg, 1949), pp. 112–​114. Roethel, H. K. and Benjamin, J. K., Kandinsky: Werkverzeichnis der Ölgemälde (Munich, 1984), vol. 1, no. 220. Roters, E., Stationen der Moderne: Die bedeutenden Kunstausstellungen des 20. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland, exhibition catalogue, Berlinische Galerie (Berlin, 1988), pp. 315–​337. Schlenker, I., Hitler’s Salon: The ‘Große deutsche Kunstausstellung’ at the Haus der deutschen Kunst in Munich, 1937-​44 (Oxford, 2007). Urban, M., Emil Nolde: Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde, no. 785 (Munich, 1990). Wasensteiner, L., The Twentieth Century German Art Exhibition: Ansering Degenerate Art in 1930s London (New York, 2018). Wasensteiner, L. and Faass, M., London 1938: Mit Kandinsky, Liebermann und Nolde gegen Hitler. Defending ‘Degenerate’ German Art, exhibition catalogue, Liebermann-​Villa am Wannsee and Wiener Library (Zürich, 2018).

Bibliography  217 Watling, L., “The Irmgard Burchard Tableaux: An Anti-​Nazi Dealership in 1930s Switzerland,” in Blimlinger, E. and Mayer, M. (eds.), Kunst Sammeln, Kunst Handeln (Vienna, 2012), pp. 233–​242. Weikop, C., “The British Reception of Brücke and German Expressionism,” in Weikop, C. (ed.), Bridging History: Perspectives on Brücke Expressionism (Farnham, 2011), pp. 236–​276. Chapter 8 Barr, Alfred H. Jr. The New American Painting as Shown in Eight European Countries, 1958–​1959 (exhibition catalogue, MoMA, 1974). Barr, Alfred H. Jr. “Ideal Collection,” 6 March 1941, Alfred Barr Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., roll 2166, cited in John O’Brian, Ruthless Hedonism: The American Reception of Matisse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 229. Benjamin, Walter. Recent Writings (Vancouver and Los Angeles: New Documents, 2013. Reprinted from International Exhibition of Modern Art, 2013, exh. cat. (Belgrade: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2003). Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” trans. Harry Zohn, in Hannah Arendt (ed.), Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (New York: Schocken, 1969), pp. 271–​151. Free Sol LeWitt, 2010. https://​superf​l ex.net/​works/​free​_​sol​_​lew​itt [accessed 3 November 2022]. Goldfarb Marquis, Alice. Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary for the Modern (Chicago, IL: Contemporary Books, Inc., 1989). Gordon Kantor, Sibyl. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the Intellectual Origins of the Museum of Modern Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002). Grønstad, Asbjørn and Øyvind Vågnes. “An Interview with W.J.T. Mitchell,” Image & Narrative, no. 15, Battles around Images: Iconoclasm and Beyond (November 2006): www.imagea​ndna​rrat​ive.be/​inarch​ive/​ico​nocl​asm/​gron​stad​_​vag​nes.htm [accessed 14 April 2022]. Lambert-​Beatty, Carrie. “Make-​Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility,” October, vol. 129 (Summer 2009), pp. 54, 82. Löschke, Sandra Karina. “Material Aesthetics and Agency: Alexander Dorner and the Stage-​Managed Museum,” Interstices, vol. 14 (November 2013), pp. 28, 29. ten Thije, Steven. “The Joy of Meta: On the Museum of American Art,” Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context, & Enquiry, vol. 37 (Autumn/​Winter 2014), pp. 72–​83. ten Thije, Steven. “From a Collection of Objects to a Collection of Relationships: ‘Play Van Abbe’ and the Museum in the Age of ‘Global Art’ ”, trans. Gary Schwartz, in Mariska ter Horst (ed.), Changing Perspectives: Dealing with Globalisation in the Presentation and Collection of Contemporary Art (Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2012), pp. 130–​145. Trentini, Bruno. “The Meta as an Aesthetic Category,” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, vol. 6 no. 1 (2014): DOI: 10.3402/​jac.v6.23009

218  Bibliography Chapter 9 Bismarck, Beatrice von and Benjamin Meyer-​ Krahmer (eds.). Curatorial Things. (Leipzig: Sternberg Press, 2019). Ekeberg, Jonas. “The term was snapped out of the air: an interview with Jonas Ekeberg.” (New) Institution(alism), Issue 21 (Dec. 2013): 20–​23. Greenberg, Reesa. “‘Remembering exhibitions’: from point to line to web.” Tate Papers, no.12 (Autumn 2009). www.tate.org.uk/​resea​rch/​publi​cati​ons/​tate-​pap​ers/​ 12/​reme​mber​ing-​exhi​biti​ons-​from-​point-​to-​line-​to-​web. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-​Network Theory. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Lauritis, Beth. “Lucy Lippard and the provisional exhibition: intersections of conceptual art and feminism, 1970-​1980.” PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2009. Lippard, Lucy R. “Curating by numbers.” Tate Papers, no.12 (Autumn 2009). www. tate.org.uk/​resea​rch/​tate-​pap​ers/​12/​curat​ing-​by-​numb​ers. Lippard, Lucy R. Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object, 1966-​1972. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). Lippard, Lucy R. and John Chandler. “The dematerialization of art.” Art International, no. 12 (February 1968): 31–​36. Morris, Catherine and Vincent Bonin. Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012). Reilly, Maura. Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2018). Sheikh, Simon. “Letter to Jane (Investigation of a Function).” In Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson (London: Open Editions, 2010), pp. 61–​75. Smith, Terry. Thinking Contemporary Curating. (New York: Independent Curators International, 2012). Voorhies, James. Beyond Objecthood: The Exhibition as a Critical Form Since 1968. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017). Chapter 10 Bauman, Zygmunt. “Times of Interregnum,” Critical Debate, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2012, pp. 49–​56. Beck, Martin. “Revisiting the Form of ‘an Exhibit’  ”, in Exhibition, Design, Participation: “An Exhibit” 1957 and Related Projects, Elena Crippa and Lucy Steeds (eds.), (London: Afterall Books in association with the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, 2016), pp. 204–​215. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations (London: Fontana, 1992). Bishop, Claire. Radical Museology: or, What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art? (Konig, 2013). Celant, Germano et al. (eds.). When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969 /​Venice 2013, exh cat (Progetto Prada Arte, Milan, 2013). Coates, Rebecca. “Curating Histories and the Restaged Exhibition”, Interdiscipline: AAANZ Conference 2013, December 2014, 7, http://​aaanz.info/​wp-​ cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2014/​12/​Coat​es_​C​urat​ing-​histor​ies.pdf [accessed 27 June 2018].

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Index

Note: Page numbers in italics denote illustrations. 15 Polish Painters, 1961 (exhibition, 2016) 112, 117–​21 15 Polish Painters (exhibition, 1961) 111–​12, 113, 114–​16, 117 1939: Exhibiting Black Art at the BMA (exhibition, 2018) 72, 73, 74, 79, 80–​4, 85, 86, 87 1966/​68, Arte de vanguardia en Rosario (exhibition, 1984) 99 abstract art 31, 32, 73–​4, 79, 154–​5, 157, 190–​1; German 127, 133, 134; non-​Western 29, 64; Polish 113, 114, 115 Abstract Cabinet (Kabinett der Abstrakten) (display space) 154–​5 Adams, Alice 174 Ader, Bas Jan 174 Advancing American Art (exhibition, 1946) 15 Africa South Art Initiative 53 Agencias, Las (art event, 2001) 104 Altshuler, Bruce 31, 95–​6 American National Exhibition (1959) 113, 120 anachronism 12, 121, 122, 184, 187, 192, 196, 197 Andre, Carl 31, 38 anonymity 153, 154, 160, 163 Antagonismos, Casos de estudio (exhibition, 2001) 101, 103–​4 anti-​apartheid art –​7, 51, 52, 57, 59–​60, 61, 63, 64, 66 anti-​capitalist activism 103–​4 anti-​war activism 174 Araeen, Rasheed 40–​1, 196

archival art 195–​6 Argentinian General Workers Confederation (CGTA) 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 102, 103 Armory Show (exhibition, 1913) 77, 163 Arndt, Otto Erwin Engelbert 159 Arnold-​de Simine, Silke 58–​9 Arp, Jean 163 Art institute of Chicago 17, 52 Art Interrupted (exhibition, 2012-​14) 15 Artistas Plásticos Asociados 99 Art of the Industrial Bourgeoisie (exhibition, 1931) 161 Art Workers Coalition (AWC) 174 Ashton, Dore 114 Assmann, Aleida 53–​4 auction houses 129 Austin, J.L. 154, 157, 161 authorship 96, 120, 192 backdrops 30, 35, 36, 194, 195 Badsha, Farzanah 60 Bal, Mieke 116–​17 Baltimore (Maryland) 73, 75–​6, 77, 78, 80, 82, 83–​4 Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) 72, 73–​5, 76, 77–​84, 85, 86, 87, 88 Balvé, Beatriz 99 Barnet, Will 75 Barr, Alfred H., Jr. 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 163 Barron, Stephanie 14–​15 Bauhaus 188 Bauman, Zygmunt 185, 193, 197 Bearden, Romare 75

Index  221 Beck, Martin 189–​90 Beckmann, Max 77, 127, 128, 130, 132, 134, 138 Benjamin, Walter 102, 155, 161, 184, 185, 192 Benjamin, Walter (MoAA) 120, 153–​4, 155, 157–​8, 159, 162, 163, 164 Berndes, Christiane 153 Bethlehem, Louise 52 Bienal do Mercosul 100 Bienal Internacional de São Paulo 114 Biennale de Paris (1959) 114 Bishop, Claire 12, 22, 192, 193, 196 Blackburn, Robert 75 Blaqeuir, Nelida 105 blockbuster exhibitions 17–​18 Blum, Hans 55, 57, 58 Bolger, Doreen 78 Bonin, Vincent 171, 172, 174, 176 Borja-​Villel, Manuel 103, 104 Botschaften aus Sudafrika (exhibition, 1987) 55 BP Spotlight: Sylvia Pankhurst & Women and Work (exhibition, 2013-​14) 193 Bradford, Mark 73–​4 Brady, Mary Beattie 76, 82 Braque, Georges 77, 160 Breeskin, Adelyn 74–​5, 76, 77 Brenner, Carla 78, 79 Brest, Jorge Romero 99 Brexit referendum 131–​2, 189 Brooklyn Museum 171, 173, 176 Brown, Samuel J. 76, 81 Buchloh, Benjamin 14 Buergel, Roger 102, 104 Burchard, Irmgard 131 c.7,500 (exhibition, 1973) 174, 175, 180 Ca’ Corner della Regina (Venice) 25, 183, 191, 198, 199, 203 Cahill, Holger 74 California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) (Valencia) 175 Campendonk, Heinrich 160 canonisation 13, 15, 72–​3, 111–​12, 116, 117–​18, 123, 192 capitalism 185, 186, 188, 192–​3, 197 Carnevale, Graciela 100, 101, 102–​3, 105, 106 Caro, Anthony 32

Celant, Germano 11, 13, 19, 20, 21, 23, 183, 184, 186, 191, 192 Centre Civic La Mina (Barcelona) 104 Centro de Artes Visuales (CAV) 99 Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias Sociales (CISCO) 97, 98, 101 Cézanne, Paul 160 Chandler, John 172 Chicago, Judy 176 Ciclo de Arte Experimental (art event, 1968) 99, 100, 101 Claude Monet: 1840-​1926 (exhibition, 1996) 17 Coates, Rebecca 20–​1 Codeiro, Chad 62–​3 Cohen, Elaine Lustig 34 Cold War 15, 51, 52, 55, 111, 112, 114, 119 community arts 51, 52–​3, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63–​7 Community Arts Project (CAP) (South Africa) 53, 54, 57, 61, 63, 64 conceptual art 14, 100–​2, 106, 171, 172, 173, 174–​5, 176, 177, 191 Conceptualisms of the South Network (RedCSur) 99–​100, 103, 106 Contemporary Negro Art (CNA) (exhibition, 1939) 72, 73, 74, 76–​82, 83, 84 Cook, Vivian 74, 76, 77, 82 Cooks, Bridget 84 Cooperative Women’s Civic League (CWCL) 74, 75, 76, 80 copies 102, 119, 120, 122, 135, 154, 155–​6, 157, 158, 159–​61, 162, 163, 197; of installation photographs 118, 119, 121, 153, 159 Corinth, Lovis 127, 133, 143 Creischer, Alice 104, 105 Crippa, Elena 187 Crosby, Caresse 74 Cubism and Abstract Art (exhibition, 1936) 154, 156, 158, 159, 160 cultural diplomacy 112, 114 curatorial studies 15, 72, 187 Dada 188 Davis, Lionel 60 de-​articisation 157–​9, 161, 162 de Bruijne, Matthijs 105 Defending “Degenerate” German Art (exhibition, 2018) 134–​6, 148, 149

222 Index Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) (exhibition, 1937) 14, 127, 128, 161 Degenerate Art (exhibition, 1991) 14–​15 Degenerate Art Research Centre 129 Deleuze, Gilles 30 Demand, Thomas1 11, 12, 23, 26, 183–​4, 186, 191, 199 Denon, Vivant 156 Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste see German Lost Art Foundation Didi-​Huberman, Georges 112, 120–​1 Dix, Otto 127 documenta 2 (exhibition, 1959) 113–​14 documenta 5 (exhibition, 1972) 173 documenta XII (exhibition, 2007) 102–​3 Dominik, Tadeusz 113 Dorner, Alexander 154, 155, 156, 158, 161, 163 Dowty, Morgan 73, 84 Dreier, Katherine S. 155 Duchamp, Marcel 163 Dyaloyi, Ricky 61 Ekeberg, Jonas 173 Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art 171, 173, 176, 177 Elkan, Benno 143 émigrés 130, 131, 132, 133, 135 Entartete Kunst see Degenerate Art Esche, Charles 153 Ex-​Argentina project (2001–​6) 103, 104–​5 Exhibit, An (exhibition, 1957) 189–​90, 200, 202 Exhibit, An (exhibition, 2014) 189–​91 Experiencias Visuales (art event, 1967, 1968) 99, 100 Expressionism 127, 133 Face to Face (exhibition, 2015) 120 Fantastic Art, DADA, Surrealism (exhibition, 1936) 154, 159 Fax, Elton 81 Federated Union of Black Artists (FUBA) 63, 65 Feilden Fowles (firm) 35 feminist art 173, 175, 176 Fernandis, Sarah C. 74, 77, 80, 82 Ferrari, Léon 98, 101 Festival of Britain (1951) 187, 189 fetishisation 13, 185, 191, 192, 196, 197

financial crisis (2008) 184–​6, 189 Floyd, Kathryn M. 194, 195 Fondazione Prada (Venice) 183, 191 Fontana, Lucio 153, 162 Foster, Hal 195–​6 Fried, Michael 31, 38–​40 Gamboni, Dario 96 García, Ana Claudia 105 German Historical Museum (Deutsches Historisches Museum) 159 German Lost Art Foundation (Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste) 129 Gerowitz, Judy 32 Global Conceptualism (exhibition, 1999–2000) 100–​1 globalization 55, 173 Glueck, Grace 32 Godoy, Francisco 101 Goethe Institute 104 Gramsci, Antonio 185 Great Depression (1929) 77, 184 Great German Art Exhibition (Grose deutsche Kunstausstellung) (exhibitions, 1937–44) 127, 128, 159 Greenberg, Clement 174 Greenberg, Reesa 2, 19, 20, 54–​5, 56, 72, 126–​7, 134, 135, 136, 176–​7 Greenfield, Kent Roberts 77 Grootveld, Menno 162 Grose deutsche Kunstausstellung see Great German Art Exhibition Grosvenor, Robert 32, 41 Grosz, George 127 Growth and Form, 1949/​1951 (exhibition, 2014) 184, 188–​9, 190, 196–​7 Growth and Form (exhibition, 1951) 187–​9 Groys, Boris 12, 17, 101, 102 Grunebaum, Heidi 53, 55–​6 Grup de Treball 104 Grupo de Arte Callejero 105 Grupo de Artistas de Vanguardia 102, 174 Guggenheim Museum 113 Guillotte, Gamynne 73, 84 Gurlitt, Hildebrand, art collection 131 Haacke, Hans 174 Hamilton, Richard 184, 186, 187–​9, 190, 196, 200, 202 Harmon Foundation 76

Index  223 Heemskerck, Jacoba van 145 Herrera, Maria Jose 100, 101 Herring, James V. 74, 75 Hesse, Eva 11, 191 Heterotopias. Medio siglo sin-​lugar: 1918–​1968 (2000–​1) 101–​2, 103 Heubler, Douglas 172 Hiken, Ambur 33, 34 historical materialism 185 historicisation 13, 54, 65, 184, 185, 191, 192 Hitler, Adolf 130, 159 Hodge, David 191–​2 Hoffmann, Jens 29, 30–​1, 33, 34, 35, 36–​8, 39, 40, 194, 196 Holocaust 134 horizontality 97, 186, 187 Horne, Victoria 193 How Do We Want to be Governed? (exhibition, 2004) 104 Hythlodaeus, Raphael 162 ICA (London) 187, 189 Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale, An (exhibition, 2013) 22–​4 Impressionism 127, 133 inclusivity 29, 30, 40–​2, 73, 79, 186, 187, 189, 193–​4, 196, 197 Independent Group (IG) 186–​7, 196 Information (exhibition, 1970) 174 installation photographs 101, 102, 103, 105, 130, 132, 133; copies 119, 120, 122, 153, 159; reproductions 30, 33–​5, 36, 134, 135, 194, 195 Institut Barri (Barcelona) 104 International Association of Art Critics 114 International Exhibition of Modern Art, 2013 (exhibition, 2013) 162–​3 “interregnum” 185–​6, 193, 197 Inventario 1965-​1975 (exhibition, 2008) 106 Inverted Utopias (exhibitions, 2004) 101 Istanbul Biennial (exhibition, 2009) 120 Jakovljevič, Branislav 197 Jamal, Ashraf 64, 66–​7 Jewish Museum (New York) 29–​38, 39–​40, 41–​5, 194–​5 Johannesburg Art Gallery 52, 68 Johnson, Malvin Gray 81 Johnson, Sargent C. 76, 81

Jones, Lois Mailou 75 Judd 29, 31, 32, 36, 38, 41 Julius I, Pope 156 Kandinsky, Wassily 127, 130, 133, 135, 138, 141, 145, 153, 159 Kantor, Tadeusz 114, 115 Karp, Ivan 17–​18 Kawara, On 163 Kępiński, Zdzisław 114 King, Martin Luther, Jr 76 Kingsley, Jennifer 73, 84 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig 127, 133, 138 Klee, Paul 77, 127, 130, 133, 145 Kobzdej, Aleksander 114, 115 Kokoschka, Oskar 127, 133, 144, 159–​60 Kolle, Helmut 144 Koolhaas, Rem 11, 23, 183, 191, 192 Kosolapov, Alexander 158 Kosuth, Joseph 172 Kramer, Hilton 33–​4 Kratz, Corinne 17–​18 Krauss, Rosalind 192–​3 Kunsthalle Bern 11, 12, 19, 24, 183, 191, 204 Labour of Love, A (exhibition, 2015) 51–​3, 54–​5, 56–​8, 59–​63, 65, 66, 67, 68 Lackner, Stephan 128 Lambert-​Beatty, Carrie 154 Lamelas, David 35 Landesmuseum (Hanover) 154 Landmark Exhibitions: Contemporary Art Shows Since 1968 (symposium, 2008) 176 Latham, John 174 Latour, Bruno 177 Lawrence, Jacob 74–​5, 76, 79, 81 Lebenstein, Jan 113–​14, 115 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 158 Lewis, Desiree 61 Lewis, Norman 75, 79 LeWitt, Sol 29, 31, 156, 172, 191 Li, Mu 158, 159 Liebermann, Max 127, 132, 133, 139, 140, 141, 142 Liebermann-​Villa am Wannsee (Berlin) 126, 132–​4, 135, 136, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145 Lippard, Lucy 31, 171–​2, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177

224 Index Lissitzky, El 154 Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form: Works –​Concepts –​ Processes –​Situations –​Information (exhibition, 1969) 11–​12, 19–​20, 24, 183, 184, 191, 192, 196, 204 Locke, Alain 72, 74, 77, 79–​80, 81, 82 London 1938 (exhibitions, 2018–19) 126, 127, 132–​6, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 148, 149 Longoni, Ana 99, 105 Lorentz, Stanisław 114 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) 14–​15 Lotery, Kevin 190 Louis XIV 156 Ludwig Museum (Cologne) 104, 105 Making of Modern Art, The (exhibition, 2017–​21) 153, 154–​62, 163, 164, 165 Malevich, Kazimir 160 Man, Machine, and Motion (exhibition, 1956) 189 Marc, Franz 127 Marchesi, Mariana 100, 101 Marquis, Alice Goldfarb 157, 160 Maryland Historical Society 14 Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art (exhibition, 2012–13) 171–​6, 177, 178, 179 Maurice, Emile 53 McCarthyism 75 McCracken, John 32 McCray, Porter 113, 114, 116, 119 McCray, Porter (MoAA) 119–​20, 121–​2 McShine, Kynaston 29, 30, 31–​3, 34, 37, 39, 40, 174, 194 Mduli, Same 64–​5 Medici, Cosimo de’ 156 Medu Ensemble 52, 66–​7 Merkel, Angela 131 Mestman, Mario 99 Meyer, James 32 migration 23, 75, 131, 133, 136 miniatures 30, 34, 35–​6, 37, 40, 120, 159, 160, 162 minimalism 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 38, 40, 194–​5, 196 Modern Art in USA (1956) 111 modernism 14, 38, 79, 119, 153, 157, 174, 188, 189, 190, 195; German 127, 128, 131, 133; global 29–​30,

35, 40–​1; historiography 119–​20; installation photographs 33, 34; repetition 111, 112 Modersohn-​Becker, Paula 127, 133, 141, 142 Moholy-​Nagy, László 155, 163 Mondrian, Piet 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 162, 163 Monet, Claude 17 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de 156 Moody, Ronald 81 Morais, Frederico 100, 101 More, Thomas 162 Morris, Catherine 171, 172, 174, 176 Morris, Robert 11, 29, 31, 33, 36, 38, 191 Motley, Archibald 81 Muafangejo, John 59–​60, 62 Musée du Louvre 156, 160 Museo de Bellas Artes Buenos Aires 100 Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes (Rosario, Argentina) 99 Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (MNCARS) (Madrid) 101 Museum of American Art (MoAA) (Berlin) 112, 118, 119, 120, 121–​2, 153–​5, 159–​61 Museum of Antiquities (MoA) (Berlin) 155 Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) (Barcelona) 101, 103–​4, 105–​6, 188–​9 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (New York) 31, 113, 114, 117, 118, 121, 157, 160, 174; in exhibitions 153, 154, 155, 158, 159–​61, 162; traveling exhibitions 111–​12, 115–​16, 117, 119, 120 Mutumba, Yvette 51, 58, 63 National Socialism 115, 126, 127–​9, 130, 131, 132, 133–​5, 136, 154; concept of art 159, 161–​2; exhibitions 14, 127, 128, 159, 161 Nauman, Bruce 174 Nelkenstock, Ernst 130 Nelkenstock family 133 neo-​conceptual art 173 neoliberalism 15, 16–​18 New Burlington Galleries (London) 127, 128, 131, 137, 138, 139 New Institutionalism 173

Index  225 New Objectivity 127 Ngcobo, Gabi 51, 58, 59, 61–​2, 66 Nhlengethwa, Sam 52, 58 Nixon, Mignon 186–​7, 196 Noak, Ruth 102 Nolde, Emil 130, 133, 135, 144 Normalidad, La (exhibition, 2006) 104, 105 Nowosielski, Jerzy 115 O’Doherty, Brian 34 Ongania, Juan Carlos 97, 103 Operativo Tucumán 97, 99, 103 Oppenheim, Dennis 174 Osborne, Peter 20 Other Primary Structures (exhibition, 2014) 29–​31, 33, 34–​8, 39–​40, 41–​5, 184, 194–​5, 196 Painleve, Jean 188 Paradiso, Aurelie 35 parafiction 154, 155, 157, 161, 162, 163 Pasmore, Victor 190 Pechstein, Max 133, 135 Peffer, John 53, 64 Pelmus, Manuel 22, 23, 24 People’s Culture Project (South Africa) 53 performatives 154, 157, 161, 162 Phillips, Ewan 128, 138, 139 Phokela, Johannes 63 Picabia, Francis 163 Picasso, Pablo 77, 156, 160, 163 Pirici, Alexandra 22–​3, 24 Pizzara, Mario 53 plausibility 161–​2 Poland 111, 113–​15, 117 Polly Street Centre 53 Pop Art 188 Pope, John Russell 78 Porter, David 74 positivism 121, 188 post-​impressionism 114, 115 Potworowski, Piotr 115 Prada Foundation (Venice) 11–​14, 19–​21, 22, 24 Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors (exhibition, 1966) 29, 30, 31–​4, 194, 195, 196 provenance research 126, 128–​31, 132–​3, 134, 135, 136 Queens Museum of Art (New York) 100

Ramirez, Mari Carmen 100, 101 Rassool, Ciraj 56, 63, 65 realism 114, 115, 157 RedCSur see Conceptualisms of the South Network Reilly, Maura 176 religious art 157, 163 remembering exhibitions 2, 72–​3, 79, 84, 126–​7, 134, 136, 176–​7; South Africa 54–​5, 56–​7, 58, 64, 65–​6 Renzi, Juan Pablo 98 repetition 111, 116–​17, 118, 122, 155 representation 41–​2, 66, 72, 193–​4, 196 Rivers, Haywood “Bill” 75, 76 Roberts, John 16 Robins, Corrine 33, 35 Rockburne, Dorothea 174 Rockefeller, John D. 115 Rohlfs, Christian 133 Rorke’s Drift Arts and Crafts 53, 63 Rose, Barbara 31 Rothko, Mark 116–​17 Sachs, Albie 59 Sallee, Charles L., Jr. 76 Savremena umetnost u SAD (exhibition, 2006) 120 Selz, Peter 113, 114, 115, 116, 119 Sheikh, Simon 34, 173 Sheppard, Nathaniel 63 Siegelaub, Seth 173 Siekmann, Andreas 104, 105 Slevogt, Max 127, 133, 143, 149 Smith, Albert Alexander 81 Smith, Hughie Lee 81 Smith, Roberta 37 Smith, Terry 16, 171 Snow, Michael 174 socialist realism 114, 115 social practice art 173 South African National Gallery 57 Soweto uprising (1976) 53 Spencer, Catherine 192 Stalin, Joseph 113 Stalinism 111, 112, 113, 115 Starzyński, Juliusz 113, 114 Stationen der Moderne (Stations of Modernism) (exhibition, 1988) 128 Steeds, Lucy 95 Steps to Fleeing from Work to Action (exhibition, 2004) 104, 105 Stewart, Susan 36, 40 surrealism 188

226 Index Szeemann, Harald 11, 12, 173, 183, 184, 191, 192, 196 Tate Britain (London) 193 Tate Modern (London) 18, 81, 176, 184, 186–​7, 188, 189 Teitge, Sandra 23 “temporal tear” 184, 186, 191, 196 theatricality 30–​1, 36–​7, 38, 39–​40, 42, 183, 194–​5 Thiel, Josef Franz 55 Thije, Steven ten 153, 161, 162 Thompson, D’Arcy Wentworth, On Growth and Form 188, 201 Thrash, Dox 76, 81 Thupelo workshops 64, 65 Torcuato Di Tella Institute (ITDT) 99 Travellers, The: Voyage and Migration in New Art from Central and Eastern Europe (exhibition, 2016) 118–​119 Treide, Henry E. 77, 82 Tucumán Arde (art events, 1968) 95, 96, 97–​103, 104–​6, 174 Tucumán (Argentina) 95, 96–​7, 98, 99, 105 Twelve Contemporary American Painters and Sculptors (exhibition, 1953) 111 Twentieth Century German Art (exhibition, 1938) 126, 127–​8, 130–​1, 132–​5, 136, 137, 138, 139 Ukeles, Mierle Laderman 175–​6 Uncontained: Opening the Community Arts Project Archive (exhibition, 2012-​13) 53–​4, 56, 57, 60, 64–​6 Universal Forum of Cultures 2004 104 University of Western Cape 53 Utopian language 162 Van Abbe, Henri Jacob 158 Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven) 153, 154–​62, 163, 164, 165

Van Alphen, Ernst 54 Vatican 155, 156 Venice Biennale 19–​20, 22–​4, 73, 77, 162–​3 Vietnam War 174 Visual Century: South African Art in Context, 1907–2007 (2011) 56 Vogt, Andy 35 Voinea, Raluca 22, 23–​4 Walsh, Victoria 187, 192 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi Confiscated Art 129, 131 Weber, Max 77 Weiner, Lawrence 172 Wells, James Lesesne 81 Wells, Rachel 30 Weltkulturen Museum (WKM) (Frankfurt) 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59 Westheim, Paul 131 When Attitudes Become Form (exhibition, 2013) 11–​14, 19–​21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 183–​4, 186 White, Charles 75 Whitten, Jack 74, 79–​80 Wiener, Alfred 134 Wiener Library Holocaust Archive (London) 126, 134–​5, 136, 148, 149 Wilson, Fred 14, 78 Wits School of Art (Johannesburg) 51, 61, 62 Woodruff, Hale 75, 81 workshops 57, 61, 66, 103–​4, 156 World Trade Organisation 103 World War I 77 World War II 75, 113, 189 Younger, Evelyn Brown 76 Zachęta National Gallery of Art (Warsaw) 118–​119 Zimmerman, Frederick 115