E XH

Whitechapel Gallery
London
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts

H I B
I T I
O N
Edited by Lucy Steeds Documents of Contemporary Art
DEFINING ‘EXHIBITION’ Raqs Media Collective On Curatorial Responsibility,
Walter Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of Its 2010//100
Technological Reproducibility, 1935–36//26 David Teh Who Cares a Lot?, Ruangrupa as
Martin Beck The Exhibition and the Display, 2009//27 Curatorship, 2012//105
Katsuhiro Yamaguchi Experimental Workshop and
the Deterritorialization of Art, 1991//33 IN THE EXHIBITION MOMENT
OHO (Marko Pogacnik) Anonymous Untitled Proposal, Situationist International The World as Labyrinth,
1966//35 1960//116
Seth Siegelaub On Exhibitions and the World at Large: Konrad Lueg and Gerhard Richter Report on
In Conversation with Charles Harrison, 1969//36 ‘A Demonstration for Capitalist Realism’, 1963//119
Hélio Oiticica The London Experience: Underground, Matzuzawa Yutaka Anti-Civilization Exhibition,
1970//40 1965//121
Daniel Buren Exhibiting Exhibitions, 1972/92//43 Working Group for ‘The Model’ (Palle Nielsen) A Model
Patricia Falguières ‘Inside the White Cube’ – In More for a Qualitative Society, 1968//122
Senses Than One, 2008//44 Mierle Laderman Ukeles Maintenance Art Manifesto:
Louise Lawler Prominence Given, Authority Taken: Proposal for an Exhibition ‘CARE’, 1969//123
In Conversation with Douglas Crimp, 2000//49 Carl Andre, Hans Haacke, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt,
Philippe Parreno In Conversation with Daniel et al. Untitled Statement in Response to Documenta
Birnbaum, 2007//55 5, 1972//126
Stuart Morgan Vice-Versa, 1992//58 Lucy R. Lippard ‘c. 7,500’: An Exhibition, 1973//127
Andrea Fraser ‘Services’: A Working-Group Exhibition Huang Rui Stars Art Exhibition, 1979//128
(1994), 1996//60 Rasheed Araeen Magicians of the Earth: On ‘Magiciens
Marion von Osten If White is Just a Colour, the Gallery de la Terre’, 1989//129
is Just a Sight?, 2002//67 Yvonne Rainer The Work of Art in the (Imagined) Age
AA Bronson Response to The Next Documenta Should of Unalienated Exhibition, 1990//136
be Curated by an Artist, 2004//72 Liam Gillick Ill Tempo: Looking Back at Future Art,
Thelma Golden and Glenn Ligon ‘With Our Faces to 1996//138
the Rising Sun’: A Dialogue, 2006//73 Qiu Zhijie The Prediction in the Age of Post-Exhibition,
Pablo Lafuente Art and the Foreigner’s Gaze: A Report 2001//142
on Contemporary Arab Representations, 2007//81 Wan-kyung Sung, Charles Esche and Hou Hanru 2002,
Chika Okeke-Agulu From the Editor, Nka: Journal of Gwangju, Pause, 2002//148
Contemporary African Art, 2008//92 Lisette Lagnado On ‘How to Live Together’, 2006//152
Anton Vidokle Exhibition as School in a Divided City,
2006//96
EXHIBITION HISTORIES
Elena Filipovic When Exhibitions Become Form: A Brief
History of the Artist as Curator, 2012//156 in the way
Judith Barry Designed Aesthetic: Exhibition Design
and The Independent Group, 1987//168
Art & Language ‘The Air-Conditioning Show’
Conference, 2008//173
Piero Gilardi Temporary Artistic Communities: In
Conversation with Francesco Manacorda, 2008//177
Peter Wollen Notes from the Underground, 1993//184
Moira Roth On the Context of Womanhouse (1972),
1980//188
Geeta Kapur On Dialogic Exhibition-Making: In
Conversation with Natasha Ginwala, 2010//192
Margarita Tupitsyn The Decade BC (Before Chernenko)
in Contemporary Russian Art, 1985//194
El Hadji Sy Objects of Performance: A Story from
Senegal, 1995//200
Patrick D. Flores The Curatorial Turn in Southeast Asia
and the Afterlife of the Modern, 2008//202
Miguel A. López How Do We Know What Latin
American Conceptualism Looks Like?, 2010//209

Hans Ulrich Obrist on Walter Hopps, Artforum, February 2006

Lucy Steeds dedicated to such work in relation to ‘Contemporary Western Art’. Yet here
Introduction//Contemporary Exhibitions: Art at Large contemporaneity appears to be considered the preserve of Western art, especially
of Europeans gathered in Paris, contrasted with a timelessness assumed for
in the World
African traditions.4 Nonetheless a parallel show in Dakar at the time, organized
by artist Iba N’Diaye, presented diverse work under the title ‘Tendencies and
The art market may still be trading in individual works, but it is the exhibition that is Confrontations: Contemporary Arts’, with contemporaneity in art practice
the unit of artistic significance, and the object of constructive intent. recognized across Africa and the African diaspora.
– Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not At All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art, 2013 What continues to sustain contemporary art exhibitions today is an urge to
locate art in an international present or, where negotiations do not rely on nation
The first exhibition mounted by London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, which states, in a present we might call transnational. Either way, the ambition is to
took place in 1948, was titled ‘40 Years of Modern Art’. In discussions among the relate distinct geo-social realities within a common now. One might even go so
ICA’s founders concerning the name of their organization, Herbert Read had far as to say that contemporary art exists primarily in the event – the now – of its
recommended the use of ‘contemporary’, in place of ‘modern’, in order to mark a exhibition. Seen in this way, focusing on exhibitions of contemporary art does
conceptual distance from New York’s Museum of Modern Art.1 And, if the word not risk collapsing into study of the messenger rather than the message: art
‘modern’ crept back in for the title of the inaugural show, then this was playfully remains in the foreground, to be studied in its foregrounding. Yet certain things
complicated by the ensuing exhibition: ‘40,000 Years of Modern Art’. Across these might indeed be relegated to the background in this scenario, such as the
two shows the label ‘modern art’ connoted, in fact, an established museological biography of those contributing to or producing exhibitions, on the one hand,
means and style of presentation – one, as later described by artist Brian O’Doherty, and the collection of art – its possession as an asset to be secured with a view to
where ‘art exists in a kind of eternity of display’.2 Exhibitions staged at the ICA by permanence – on the other.
artists and architects in the 1950s offered exciting challenges to this display mode, Consideration of contemporary art’s exhibition means prioritizing its
and they provide some of the earliest examples of contemporary art exhibitions becoming public – its moment of meeting a public or, rather, plural publics. In
considered in this book. Such shows were conceived in conversation with design many instances discussed in this book, it is artists who create the exhibitions at
work of the period in the US and continental Europe, and this relationality, which issue. But the point of featuring those instances is not to focus on the individual
rejected a reach towards some universal eternity, is significant in securing their (or collective) creative act, but on the event of art’s signification – the occasion
claims to contemporaneity over modernity. when its meaning and import are collectively debated. More broadly, the
The word ‘contemporary’ gains a hold in the title of exhibitions when disparate experiences and dissonant discussions of art that emerge in the
indicating work made in distant locations but sharing the current time. To return moment of exhibition are a basis on which the cultural realities of our places and
to the example of London’s ICA, a show of the work of ‘Contemporary Venetian our times are negotiated in relation to other cultural realities.
Artists’ was held in 1956 and ‘Contemporary Art From Africa’ was presented in Emphasizing art’s exhibition in this way usurps the privilege previously
1967, but the phenomenon was more widespread. A ‘Contemporary World Art accorded, in modernist thought, to the artist’s subjectivity or to art’s so-called
Exhibition’, for instance, took place in Tokyo in 1950, including over a hundred autonomy and its putatively universal appeal. It certainly need not lead to
recent works by artists from Japan, Europe and the United States, and the first curators being hailed as the chief protagonists for contemporary art: the point is
edition of the Triennale–India in Delhi in 1968, uniting work from over thirty not to revere the subjectivity and judgement of the curator instead of the artist;
countries, identified itself with ‘Contemporary World Art’.3 Interestingly, in these nor indeed, when artists make exhibitions, to stress the integration of the
two Asian contexts, by comparison with the British, contemporaneity did not respective roles in terms of another subjectivity to be conveyed. Rather, the aim
anchor other geographic situations to one’s own but instead jointly mapped is to shift and widen the focus in order to take in the multiple agencies responsible
several locations all equally in the moment current at the time. We might then for exhibitions: to consider not only artistic and curatorial contributions – where
reflect on Dakar exhibitions of 1966, in the context of the First Worldwide these may merge, or remain distinct even to the point of antagonism – but also
Festival of Negro Arts. At the new Musée Dynamique – and afterwards in the the work of those concerned with other dimensions, aspects such as design or
Parisian Grand Palais – a major show of traditional African art included a section interpretation materials and more broadly the role of the institutional or

12//INTRODUCTION Steeds//Contemporary Exhibitions: Art at Large in the World//13

alternative context. It is also important that visitor agency – and the agency of art (or indeed its being a medium for curators or artist-curators),11 we might talk
secondary audiences, gaining access through historical study – be taken into instead in terms of the potential exhibitions have to be discursive formations
account. A focus on art’s exhibition at the expense of the curatorial does not with multiple fields of possibility, activating critical exchanges about art that
leave us contemplating the mechanics of exhibition-making but, rather, the span the local and worldwide, without reference to centres and peripheries.
crucial question of how art realizes its affective and discursive potential – how The opening text in the first section of this book does specific conceptual work
art takes shape in experience and what debates it kindles.5 on which such an understanding might build. Walter Benjamin wrote this in the
It is noticeable that most critical attention in the last five years, within an mid 1930s, just as an era of experimentation in exhibition-making was about to be
English-language context, has focused on the curated biennial as the key form of engulfed by World War II – experimentation instigated notably by modern artists,
contemporary exhibition-making.6 Indeed it is the biennial show of contemporary in the form of a Dada Fair in Berlin,12 for example, or a Devetsil Bazaar in Prague,13
art that philosopher Peter Osborne refers to in the opening quote above, where he a Surrealist installation in Paris,14 or El Lissitzky’s ‘demonstration spaces’ in Dresden
interprets this cultural form as servicing capitalist ‘constructive intent’.7 Yet there and Hanover.15 Benjamin, however, focuses on the impact of photography and film
is reason to resist the tendency to prioritize the biennial form when discussing – in the age of technological reproducibility – on the work of art; indeed he does
contemporary art’s exhibition, precisely to the extent that such shows are defined not use the word ‘exhibition’ except when yoked to ‘value’. In doing this he quietly
by their instrumentalization by national governments and corporate sponsors. If reminds us of Marx’s notions of use-value and exchange-value. Exhibition-value is
these agents may be said to marshal internationally and transnationally what Tony explicitly contrasted by Benjamin with the cult-value of art, which he attributes to
Bennett has described in relation to national museums of the nineteenth century previous eras and ties to the practice of ritual; exhibition-value, by comparison, is
as the ‘exhibitionary complex’ – that is, display for the purposes of controlling a based on the practice of politics. This identifies not party politics, or not only the
populace8 – then many of the shows discussed in this book, including some within workings of fascism and communism at the time of writing, but something broader
a biennial frame, seek to challenge this sort of top-down social manipulation. and more basic: art’s collectively affective and discursive potential in a public
The eclectic variety of contemporary art’s exhibition is sampled here. In the domain via the act of exhibition.16 Moreover, Benjamin goes on to introduce
first section texts are gathered concerning the ‘what?’ and ‘why?’ of the subject, another term to name this potential: ‘exhibitability’.17
collectively challenging any singular attempt to define what ‘exhibition’ might Many of the following texts in this book instantiate this exhibitability. First,
mean. The second section offers a selection of material produced in the making however, a productive digression is offered by artist Martin Beck, who analyses
or immediate reception of shows. The final section is an anthology from the from today’s perspective the postwar situation for Western exhibitions beyond
growing field of exhibition histories. In all three sections the texts are organized exhibitions of art. Beck’s compelling description of modernist exhibitions
chronologically in terms of the examples being discussed, if only because the allows us to contrast them with shows of contemporary art. While he brilliantly
form and logics of later examples sometimes relate to those produced earlier. In enfolds the roles of both emancipated spectator and controlled consumer, we
several cases a text that appears in one section might plausibly have come in might instead cast ourselves as critical participants in the articulation of
another, but the inflection given by the one chosen is deliberate, ideally without contemporaneity.18 The art projects of the early 1950s by Jikken Kobo (or the
this being limiting. Experimental Workshop) in Tokyo, which are the basis for the following text in
this book, address us in this way. The contemporaneity at that time related to
I. Defining ‘Exhibition’ Art Informel in Paris and to Action Painting in New York,19 yet the gallery space
Relatively few texts have been written addressing contemporary art’s exhibition was not the forum for the work at issue, which elided sculptural installation
as such – asking what it might be, involve or do, and why.9 In the introduction to and spatial design with music and dance performance.20 When Katsuhiro
an early anthology in the field, titled Thinking about Exhibitions, the subject at Yamaguchi, a member of Jikken Kobo, reflected on their work forty years later
issue was described as ‘the medium through which most art becomes known’.10 and suggested they ‘did not place much emphasis on art exhibitions as such’,21
However, there is a risk here of naturalizing exhibitions, neutralizing the it was the museological, annual or biennial and indeed department-store
agencies, forms and processes of exhibition, while positioning art back within a conventions for exhibitions, establishing themselves in Tokyo at the time,22
modernist frame of reference, as quasi-autonomous and seeking safe reception that he distanced the group from, rather than the event of their work becoming
in a universal audience. In place of an exhibition being a medium of contemporary public and being discussed.

14//INTRODUCTION Steeds//Contemporary Exhibitions: Art at Large in the World//15

 The problems with, and ongoing possibilities for, conventional exhibitions are exposition’ to the academicism associated with ‘exhibition’).29 Clearly the term
presented in several texts in this section (also featuring in the two following might simply be redefined to be less rarified or traditional, freed from the
sections) and they are often seen from artists’ perspectives. Museum and other strictures of pre-existing formats, but there is also reason to resist its excessive
institutional shows of contemporary art are discussed, as are commercial gallery application – for instance where eluding general exposure is partly the aim, at
shows and the oldest and more recent biennials, also Documenta. These exhibitions least in the first place, as with some mail art projects. In this case we might
do not necessarily take conventional forms and, even when they do, these may return to Benjamin’s notion of exhibitability – to art’s galvanizing of people – and
prompt unconventional critical responses – as a satirical fable by Stuart Morgan, ask how this might function across a distributed network of individuals in the
lampooning the exposures of exhibiting and horrors of overexposure, nimbly absence of a shared forum.
demonstrates.23 The celebrity status of selected London artists at the turn of the The concluding essay in this section gives an example of how exhibitions may
1990s, which Morgan’s text evokes, capitalized on something of modernist Paris be set within a broader context of events that expand on the possibilities of
and New York earlier in the century, with associated echoes of Marcel Duchamp’s sharing a forum. The Jakarta International Video Festival, ‘OK Video’, initiated by
hammy pronouncement in the 1960s that ‘Exhibitions are frightful.’24 ruangrupa in 2003, recurs every two years and occupies – among other venues
Sometimes artists, curators or writers choose to identify something as a – the National Gallery of Indonesia. Yet the fact that this project uses a museum
contemporary art exhibition that might not immediately be considered as such. and takes place biennially is less significant than its live, polyvocal and permeable
Whether inside, outside or ignoring galleries, shows may also be seen to exist as format. As analysed here by David Teh, the artists responsible, in their capacity as
performance events, programmed discussions, screenings, publications or curators, have demonstrated how exhibition projects may become open-source .
activist projects, for example, or as combinations of such things. Gerry Schum’s
description of ‘Land Art’, his 1969 television-broadcast-as-exhibition, flags the II. In the Exhibition Moment
event-based ambition of many alternative projects presented as exhibitions: ‘the The second section gathers texts concerning contemporary art’s exhibition that
art objects and art ideas come to existence only in the moment of transmission’.25 were written to accompany a show, or for reading in direct relation to a show
Yet even paper-based shows of the 1960s, subsequently collected for public or without quite offering a review or a history.
private consultation – and also mislaid or destroyed, of course – often had a There is an artistic audit of a cancelled exhibition (by the Situationist
particular anchor in the moment of their first appearance. Consider Charles International in 1960), a report on a show in a furniture store billed as a
Harrison introducing his conversation with Seth Siegelaub from 1969, which is ‘Demonstration for Capitalist Realism’ (by Konrad Lueg and Gerhard Richter in
reproduced in the first section of this book, with a description of one of the 1963), and a text that itself seeks to constitute a show in the mind of the reader/
latter’s calendar projects as ‘a group exhibition in March 1969 which took the visitor (by Matsuzawa Yutaka in 1965). Later come a speech by an artist railing
form of a catalogue with one page and one day for each of thirty-one artists against an exhibition to which he has contributed (Rasheed Araeen in 1989) and
invited to participate, distributed free to a worldwide mailing list’.26 In this an essay by another dissident artist, this time from among those whose work was
conversation, Siegelaub is addressed and speaks as an exhibition organizer – dubbed with the label of ‘relational aesthetics’ (Liam Gillick in 1996). There are
and, together with many of his peers, he would resist the preference of younger also tracts concerning conceptual art exhibitions of the late 1960s to early 1970s
generations for the title ‘curator’.27 Later in this book it is artists, in fact, who are – two of these texts highlighting how inappropriate the presumption of the third
responsible for the page-based exhibitions that are reproduced or referenced.28 is that artists are male – while also included is a diatribe against the prevalence of
Sometimes artists, curators or writers choose to question the label ‘exhibition’ conceptual art exhibitions, more loosely understood, three decades later (Qiu
for contemporary art. Here the motivation is often a side-stepping of institutional Zhijie in 2000). The two concluding texts, written by biennial curators, describe
baggage or sales imperatives, or a desire to reach publics beyond those described how their projects were shaped and inspired by artists; the first involving
as ‘exhibition goers’. (Moving ahead to the second section of this book, Hélio curatorial devolution to collectives responsible for artist-run spaces (Gwangju
Oiticica hails that which is ‘extra-exhibition’ (1969), while in the third section 2002) and the second guided by the writings of Hélio Oiticica (São Paulo 2006).
Art & Language (writing in 2008) reflect on their own assertion in the 1960s of From 1979 comes the preface to the first Beijing exhibition by the Stars
the ‘non-exhibition’. Margarita Tupitsyn likewise notes that those participating group of artists, where they identify themselves as labouring art explorers,
in Apt Art, in the Soviet Union of the 1980s, preferred ‘anti-show’ and ‘working conscious of the responsibilities of their place and time. This preface was

16//INTRODUCTION Steeds//Contemporary Exhibitions: Art at Large in the World//17

initially published as a poster that accompanied the outdoor exhibition, which the longer-standing pattern of this reflexive curatorial practice35 – has tended to
took place on the street side of the park by the Chinese National Art Gallery. slip into the art-historical cliché of canonization, shoring up so-called landmark
Open for two days before being shut down by police, the closed show spawned exhibitions, instead of putting this form of historiography into question.
protest speeches and a march.30 Elena Filipovic’s opening essay in this section anticipates ‘a history of the
Yvonne Rainer, writing a preface to the publication that followed two shows artist as curator’ to come,36 while most other texts gathered here consider specific
in New York a decade later, endorses these – as we might do the Stars shows – for historical situations in which those who might be identified as artist-curators
‘push[ing] the debates around art and politics into a new dimension’.31 More have been active. The concluding essay, by Miguel López, draws on the ‘queer
broadly, Rainer’s text inspired the titling of the present book: her specific usage cartography’ proposed by Beatriz Preciado in order to raise questions about
of the word ‘exhibition’, rather than ‘exhibitions’ or ‘exhibiting’, for example, is so historiography based on identity and identification.37 In particular he charts the
exacting that it becomes striking. While its use in the present context is more switch point between artists’ participation in the ‘Experiencias ’68’ exhibition in
commonplace, we may still stress, as she does, the actions and processes involved Buenos Aires and the ‘Tucumán Arde’ episode, also in Argentina, that same year,
in the event of exhibition, over and above any claims to resolved form. while simultaneously analysing art-historical and curatorial approaches to those
events significantly later.
III. Exhibition Histories
By comparison with art history, aesthetics, ethnography, museum studies and Returning to Peter Osborne’s diagnosis of the contemporary art exhibition as the
even curatorial studies, exhibition histories is a new field, not yet academically object of ‘constructive intent’, we might ask after counter indications. Osborne is
entrenched. One way in which it might productively break with all these earlier particularly concerned with ‘capitalist constructivism of the exhibition form’,
disciplines is through pluralized formation from across a worldwide network. that is, with a turn to exhibitions for their potential use-value as models within
The selection of texts in this section, as many contributed by artists as academics, a speculative programme of capitalist social construction.38 Yet if we do not
gives a platform to those writing from disparate geopolitical positions and about restrict ourselves to Western models and their export, a more general and
disparate geopolitical situations. brighter prognosis suggests itself: an exhibition might act as a forum for the
Clearly there are overlaps between exhibition histories and more established experience and critical articulation of cultural contemporaneity. To conclude by
fields. It is often forgotten, for instance, that when T.J. Clark raised his rallying cry expanding on the possibilities implied here, it is worth revisiting Walter
for a social history of art, while teaching at a London art school in the mid 1970s, Benjamin’s text from the mid 1930s that opens this collection. Might the
he called not only for the ‘history of the conditions of artistic production’ to be exhibitability of art – which he identifies as a progressive political force in the
written, but also for a move ‘towards an account of how the work [of art] took on modernist era of technological reproducibility – now be reconsidered on the
its public form’.32 In fact, a case could be made for exhibition histories as a basis of a return, paradoxically, to art’s ritualistic aspects?
productively ‘minor’ mode that stutters powerfully within the registers of art Writing about the exhibition-value of art in relation to its cult-value, Benjamin
history, while making strange or ‘deterritorializing’ the language of that ‘major’ considers not only the Western historical tradition of art but also the worldwide
discipline.33 Or we might return to Benjamin – to his 1937 essay ‘Edward Fuchs: phenomenon of prehistoric mark-making. While prehistoric art has frequently
Collector and Historian’ or his 1940 ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ – and been written about in a Western context in terms derived from the painting and
argue that exhibition histories potentially offer contemporary art his model of sculpture of the classical, mediaeval and modern eras, it may also be seen as the
cultural history.34 This cultural history need not take written form, in fact works vestigial remains of performance practices, and therefore remote from Western
first brought together in one place and time may be reassembled in another – as art history. For example, the animals and abstract patterns depicted on prehistoric
represented in this section of the book by an essay written to accompany such a cave walls might have been meaningful for the community mainly in the event of
project. It is fitting, given Benjamin’s vision, that the exhibition in this particular their making, becoming less significant over time except to the extent that
instance – the first Apt Art show of 1982, transposed by artist Victor Tupitsyn from whatever events were willed through their creation came to pass. Today, in the
the USSR to the US within a few years of the original version – was not known in era of social media and open-source software – with contemporary art and
the new local context prior to its representation there. The wave of more recent exhibition practice moving towards cross-pollination around the world,
exhibition installations that seek to do the work of exhibition history – and indeed increasingly eclipsing modernist practice and its circulation modes – we might

18//INTRODUCTION Steeds//Contemporary Exhibitions: Art at Large in the World//19

productively reconsider this notion of live or performative potentiality. We might editions of the Bienal de La Habana, for example, see Rachel Weiss, et al., Making Art Global (Part
ask whether the politics-based potential of art – actualized in the event of its 1): The Third Havana Biennial 1989 (London: Afterall Books, 2011); and reviewing the situation in
exhibition, as announced by Benjamin – might be complemented or inflected by Asia, for example, see Ute Meta Bauer, Hou Hanru and the Gwangju Biennale Foundation, eds,
‘ritual’ practices, if these are rethought so that there is no longer a reliance on the Shifting Gravity: World Biennial Forum No. 1 (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2013).
‘cult’ but a grounding instead in intersubjectivity. Here, contrary to Benjamin’s 7 Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not At All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art (London and New York:
concerns, art is not subservient to its accrued ‘cult-value’ but rather, activated by Verso, 2013) 167. See also, for instance, Charlotte Bydler, The Global Art World, Inc. (Uppsala,
new forms of affective and discursive ritual – local or micro, as much as global or Sweden: Uppsala University, 2004) and Lucy Steeds, ‘“Magiciens de la Terre” and the Development
macro, informal and shifting rather than fixed and formalized. The question then of Transnational Project-Based Curating’, in Steeds, et al., Making Art Global (Part 2): ‘Magiciens de
becomes: how can exhibitions rise to the challenge of diversifying the progressive la Terre’ 1989 (London: Afterall Books, 2013).
notion of exhibition-value that was articulated in the modernist era, and develop 8 See Tony Bennett, ‘The Exhibitionary Complex’, New Formations, no. 4 (Spring 1988) 73–102; and
through the multitude of cultural rituals that mark the contemporary? subsequently republished in books also worth consulting more broadly: Reesa Greenberg, Bruce
W. Ferguson and Sandy Nairne, eds, Thinking about Exhibitions (London and New York: Routledge,
1 See Ben Cranfield, ‘“Not Another Museum”: The Search for Contemporary Connection’, Journal of 1996) 81–112; and Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago, eds, Grasping the World: The Idea of the
Visual Culture, vol. 12, no. 2 (August 2013) 313–31. Museum (Farnham: Ashgate, 2004) 413–41. For the development of this thought, see Tony
2 Brian O’Doherty, ‘Inside the White Cube: Notes on the Gallery Space, Part 1’, Artforum, vol. 14, no. Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).
7 (March 1976) 25; reprinted in O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space 9 For one clear and general statement by a contemporary art curator, see Elena Filipovic, ‘What is
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999) 15. an Exhibition?’, Mousse Magazine, no. 30 (September 2011) 163–89. Not infrequently, and as
3 See Tomoko Mamine, ‘Displaying “Globality”: Art Exhibitions and Art Criticism in Japan in the sampled in this book, one of the aims of contemporary art exhibitions is to redefine what such
1950s’, Third Text, vol. 27, no. 4 (July 2013) 502–9; Sovon Som, Triennale India, special issue of Lalit things might be.
Kala Contemporary, no.33 (1990); and texts by Nancy Adajania and Devika Singh in Shanay 10 Greenberg, Ferguson and Nairne, eds, Thinking about Exhibitions, op. cit., 2. See also Bernd Klüser
Jhaveri, ed., Western Artists and India: Creative Inspirations in Art and Design (Mumbai: The and Katharina Hegewisch, eds, Die Kunst der Ausstellung (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1991).
Shoestring Publisher, 2013). Both books consider modern as well as contemporary art exhibitions, without seeking to
4 L’Art nègre: sources, évolution, expansion (Paris: Grand Palais/Senegal: Musée Dynamique, 1966). distinguish between them.
5 For essays on the curatorial, see, for instance: Paul O’Neill, ‘The Curatorial Turn: From Practice to 11 See the final chapter of Paul O’Neill, The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), op. cit.,
Discourse’, in Judith Rugg and Michèle Sedgwick, eds, Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and 87–129.
Performance (Bristol: Intellect, 2007) 13–28; Beatrice von Bismarck, ‘Curatorial Criticality: On the 12 See, for instance, Brigid Doherty on Wieland Herzfelde’s ‘Introduction to the First International
Role of Freelance Curators in the Field of Contemporary Art’, in Barnaby Drabble, Marianne Dada Fair’ (1920), October, no. 105 (Summer 2003), 93–104.
Eigenheer and Dorothee Richter, eds, Curating Critique (Frankfurt am Main: Revolver, 2007) 62–9; 13 See, for instance, Timothy O. Benson, ed., Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and
Maria Lind, ‘The Curatorial’, Artforum, vol. 48, no. 2 (October 2009) 103–5. Books on the curatorial Transformation, 1910–30 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art/Cambridge,
by all three authors have subsequently been published: P. O’Neill, The Culture of Curating and the Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2002).
Curating of Culture(s) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2012); B. von Bismarck, Jörn 14 See, for instance, Ian Dunlop, The Shock of the New: Seven Historic Exhibitions of Modern Art
Schafaff and Thomas Weski, eds, Cultures of the Curatorial (Berlin and New York: Sternberg Press/ (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1972); Lewis Kachur, Displaying the Marvellous: Marcel
Leipzig: Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, 2012); M. Lind, ed., Performing the Curatorial within Duchamp, Salvador Dalí and Surrealist Exhibition Installations (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The
and beyond Art (Berlin and New York: Sternberg Press, 2012). See also Jean-Paul Martinon, ed., The MIT Press, 2001).
Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013) and the Curatorial 15 See, for instance, Maria Gough, ‘Constructivism Disoriented: El Lissitzky’s Dresden and Hannover
Dictionary of tranzit.org at http://tranzit.org/curatorialdictionary/index.php/dictionary/ Demonstrationsräume’, in Nancy Perloff and Brian Reed, eds, Situating Lissitzky: Vitebsk, Berlin,
6 For edited surveys see Pascal Gielen, ed., The Art Biennial as a Global Phenomenon: Strategies in Moscow (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2003) 76–125.
Neo-Political Times, special issue of Open 16 (Rotterdam: NAi, 2009) and Elena Filipovic, Marieke 16 As already indicated, ‘public’ need not be thought of as monolithic, nor strictly opposed to the
van Hal and Solveig Øvstebø, eds, The Biennial Reader (Bergen: Bergen Kunsthall/Ostfildern-Ruit: private. See, for instance, Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books,
Hatje Cantz, 2010). Subsequent books have tended to narrow the field of focus; on the early 2002).

20//INTRODUCTION Steeds//Contemporary Exhibitions: Art at Large in the World//21

17 For more on ‘exhibitability’ as a translation of Ausstellbarkeit see the extract from Benjamin’s text Garde as Projectile’, in T.O. Benson, ed., Central European Avant-Gardes, op. cit., 114.
reprinted in this volume, 26–7, note 1. 30 See Xu Wenli and Liu Qing et al., ‘A Letter to the People’, text of a poster from October 1979 (trans.
18 Contrast artist Liam Gillick’s less positive take on exhibitions as ‘the articulation of the Phillip Bloom) in Wu Hung and Peggy Wang, eds, Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents
contemporary’ – see Gillick, ‘Contemporary art does not account for that which is taking place’, (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010) 8–10.
in B. von Bismarck, J. Schafaff and T. Weski, eds, Cultures of the Curatorial, op. cit. 31 Yvonne Rainer, text reprinted in this volume, 136–7.
19 In a January 1968 article by Haryu Ichiro, the inaugural moment for contemporary art in Japan 32 T.J. Clark, ‘The Conditions of Artistic Creation’, Times Literary Supplement (24 May 1974) 561–2.
is dated to the mid 1950s for this reason – see Reiko Tomii, ‘“International Contemporaneity” 33 See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (1975), trans. Dana Polan
in the 1960s: Discoursing on Art in Japan and Beyond’, Japan Review, no. 21 (2009) 126. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) 1986.
20 More plausible candidates for transnational comparison with Jikken Kobo’s events, in 34 See Howard Caygill, ‘Walter Benjamin’s Concept of Cultural History’, in David S. Ferris, ed., The
particular, are those in France of the mid 1950s involving Nicolas Schöffer and Maurice Béjart, Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
although here, as with the interdisciplinary collaborations on performances in Paris before 35 See Reesa Greenberg, ‘Remembering Exhibitions’, Tate Papers, no. 12 (October 2009): www.tate.
World War II (e.g. Parade, 1917, Relâche, 1924), the individuals responsible were named, rather org.uk/download/file/fid/7264; and ‘Archival Remembering Exhibitions’, Journal of Curatorial
than their operating under a collective noun. Studies, vol. 1, no. 2 (June 2012).
21 Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, ‘Experimental Workshop and the Deterritorialization of Art’ (trans. 36 Elena Filipovic, text reprinted in this volume, 156–68.
Stanley N. Anderson), The 11th Exhibition Homage to Shuzo Takiguchi: Experimental Workshop 37 Miguel A. López, text reprinted in this volume, 209–25.
(Tokyo: Setani Gallery, 1991) 23. US artist Allan Kaprow also distances himself from the term 38 See Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not At All, op. cit., 158–68.
exhibitions when writing about Assemblage, Environments and Happenings in 1966; indeed he
presents the ‘happenings’ of the Gutai group in Japan in this context, albeit under a preface that
seems conspicuously keen to suggest that John Cage was working in this field first.
22 See Tomoko Mamine, ‘Displaying “Globality”’, op. cit., 502–9.
23 Ian Hunt, Stuart Morgan’s literary executor and the editor of two volumes of his writings, notes:
‘He did like comic writing and knew a great deal about it. Nathanael West’s writing was a
favourite, and Raymond Chandler.’ Email to the author, 23 September 2013.
24 Marcel Duchamp (1966) in Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (London: Thames &
Hudson, 1971) 82.
25 Gerry Schum, letter to Gene Youngblood, in Gerry Schum and Ursula Schum-Wevers, eds,
Fernsehausstellung: Land Art (Berlin: Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum, 1969) n.p.
26 Charles Harrison, ‘On Exhibitions and the World at Large’, Studio International, vol. 178, no. 917
(December 1969) 202.
27 Equally indicative of the time, Harrison and Siegelaub refer to exhibition organizers, artists and
audiences as male. There are correctives to such thinking in the second section of this book.
28 Specifically: Brian O’Doherty, whose 1967 edition of Aspen magazine is discussed in the opening
section of this book by Patricia Falguières as one of the first group exhibitions of conceptual art;
Matsuzawa Yutaka, whose ‘Anti-Civilization Exhibition’ text of 1965 is reproduced in the second
section of this book; and Art & Language, who write in the final section about their ‘Air-Conditioning
Show’, which initially existed in their limited-edition publication Frameworks of 1967.
29 Compare the modernist moves of, for example, Karel Teige, who described the 1923 Devetsil
initiative in Prague, fifteen years later, as follows: ‘We called it the Bazaar of Modern Art because
we wanted to avoid the word “exhibition”, which reminded us of the boredom that we had
endured in official salons.’ Quoted in Karel Srp, ‘Poetry in the Midst of the World: the Avant-

22//INTRODUCTIONn Grierson, ‘Postwar Patterns’, 1946 Steeds//Contemporary Exhibitions: Art at Large in the World//23