The Curatorial

Conundrum

RESEARCh?

Practice?
WHAT TO
What to

What to
Study?

LUMA Foundation and The Center for

Curatorial Studies, Bard College Edited by:
Paul O’Neill,
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts Mick Wilson,
London, England Lucy Steeds

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 Lucy Steeds

16

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What Is the Future of
Exhibition Histories?
Or, toward Art in Terms of Its
Becoming-Public
Lucy Steeds

25/02/16 06:18
 the explosive force of this thought, which Engels carried with
him for half a century, goes deeper. It places the closed unity
of the disciplines and their products in question.
—Walter Benjamin1

In this text I want to address the possibilities offered by exhibition

histories. I won’t argue for this promising field of research and
inquiry as being a discipline, not least since part of the promise
stems from indiscipline—that is, in responding to contem-
porary art with whatever modes and terms it makes historically
necessary. Instead I will look at exhibition histories operating
within universities, museums, and beyond, reviewing work in
three overlapping realms: pedagogy, scholarship, and practice.
At the heart of my own current work in the field lies an
attempt to rethink the dialectic between “exhibition value” and
“cult value,” as proposed by Walter Benjamin in 1930s Paris.2
Starting to develop that here, I will revisit his insistence on art’s
“exhibitability,” to see how this might be repurposed for the
present technological and globalized era.3 Before doing that,
however, I will reflect on the teaching and writing of exhibition
histories to date.
To set the tone it is useful to reflect on Benjamin’s critique
1 of art history and cultural history as disciplines in his time.

What to Study?
Walter Benjamin, “Eduard
Fuchs: Collector and Historian” The quote above shows that he troubled the limits of academic
(1937), trans. Howard Eiland disciplinarity, on the basis of a letter written by Friedrich
and Michael W. Jennings,
in Walter Benjamin: The Work Engels in 1893, and he goes on to question “the unity of art
of Art in the Age of its
Technological Reproducibility, itself,” as an object of study. He writes: “the reception of a work
And Other Writings on Media, of art by its contemporaries is part of the effect that the work
eds. Michael W. Jennings,
Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. of art has on us today.”4 This might argue precisely in favor of
Levin (Cambridge, MA: The
Belknap Press of Harvard the field of exhibition histories—indeed he goes on to point out
University Press, 2011), p. 117. how the initial becoming-public of a work of art cannot be
2 considered an isolated moment, but operates in tandem with
Walter Benjamin, “The Work
of Art in the Age of its subsequent public events in which it takes part. However,
Technological Reproducibility” Benjamin also warns us of the risks of pursuing “a new and even
(1935), trans. Michael W.
Jennings, Grey Room, No. 39, more problematic” disciplinary unity, and by extension we must
Spring 2010, pp. 17-19. I refer
readers to later versions of this further question the unity of exhibitions themselves.5 To be
famous essay for variations on clear: the object of focus for exhibition histories remains
the ideas in this initial draft.
unsettled for me—as unsettled as the boundaries of contempo-
3
Ibid., p. 18. I appreciate this rary art, or indeed, it points to the problems of defining the latter.
translation of Benjamin’s
essay for its insistence on
Benjamin’s term “exhibitability” 1. Teaching Exhibition Histories
[Austellbarkeit].
It would be flawed, to the point of perversity, to teach contempo-
4 rary art curators-in-the-making only about past shows—as
Benjamin, “Eduard Fuchs:
Collector and Historian,” p. 118. nonsensical, in fact, as training artists only in art history. Neverthe-
5 less, it clearly constitutes one potentially useful way to stimulate
Ibid., p. 124. Benjamin is students to think through their own work on new shows, and
describing the risks of pursuing
cultural history in particular. to understand the potential impact of the methodologies they
17

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 may apply. I worry, though, if the teaching of this material veers
toward hagiography, with students becoming fixated on the
career trajectories of quasi-canonized curators—even more
so when contact with such curators plays a dominant or
preferred role on curatorial courses. In many ways these
concerns apply more generally to the transformation of higher
education—that is, to its ceasing to operate as a public sphere,
underwritten by open and active debate, and its becoming
business-like, underwritten by a stubborn faith in markets,
brands, and their controlling elites. They are relevant specifically,
however, when we take into account that curators assume
the role of creating publics for art—of mediating in public
spheres on behalf of art—since the values of publicness are
precisely in jeopardy in higher education. In these circum-
stances we may turn to teaching exhibition histories—to discus-
sion of the becoming-public of art, in disparate historical
instances—in order to insist on the importance of public
spheres, and to reassert the notion of discourse over a roll-call
of names, insisting on open discussion over the closed-off
flexing of privilege.
In the art college where I teach, and indeed across the
umbrella organization (or the subsuming corporate entity, which
takes the form of a university), all postgraduate students find
themselves graded for ‘Personal and Professional Development.’
Lucy Steeds

Here the study of exhibition histories might play a surprise

role in the ‘professional development’ of art students—surpris-
ing because it may reactivate pedagogical principles over
business priorities. Through interrogating exhibition histories,
art students can critically explore how the way in which their
work meets its publics determines the way in which it will
be seen and discussed. As a result, the public manifestation
of their artwork becomes the issue, in tandem with its produc-
tion, instead of the training in careerist self-promotion.
In universities and colleges where art history is taught as
an academic subject without the applied element that is funda-
mental to curatorial and art students, exhibition histories typi-
cally constitute a particular direction for study, incorporated as
a sub-genre. However, there is reason to ask whether exhibition
histories might in fact be a spur to rethink some core concerns
of art history today—as I’ll explore further on. To conclude at
this point: whether within curatorial studies, exhibition studies,
the teaching of art, or art history, the promise of exhibition
histories is an education in the public life of art. A promise that,
when fulfilled, puts it beyond sheer strategic usefulness in
relation to professional practice.
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6
See, for instance, Bruce
Altshuler, The Avant-Garde
in Exhibition (New York, NY:
Harry N. Abrams, 1994); Salon
to Biennial, Exhibitions that
Made Art History, 1863-1959
(London: Phaidon, 2008);
and Biennials and Beyond,
Exhibitions that Made Art
History, 1962-2002 (London:
Phaidon, 2011). In addition,
within the Exhibition Histories
book series, see Rachel Weiss,
“A Certain Place and a Certain
Time: The Third Bienal de La
Habana and the Origins of the
Global Exhibition,” in Making
Art Global (Part 1): The Havana
Biennial 1989, Rachel Weiss et
al. (London: Afterall, 2011).
7
See, for instance, Claire Bishop’s
history of participatory art,
Artificial Hells (London and
New York, NY: Verso, 2012).
8 in German, Kafka is hailed by Deleuze and Guattari for making
T.J. Clark, “The Conditions
of Artistic Creation,” Times
Literary Supplement (May 24,
1974) pp. 561-562.
9 ments they offer is the following: “A minor literature is not
Ibid.
10
See Lucy Steeds, “Contemporary
Exhibitions: Art at Large in
the World,” in Exhibition, ed.
Lucy Steeds (London and
Cambridge, MA: Whitechapel
Gallery and The MIT Press,
2014) p. 18.
11
Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor
Literature (1975), trans. Dana
Polan (Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press,
1986) p. 16.
12
Lisette Lagnado, “Anthro-
pophagy as Cultural Strategy,”
in Cultural Anthropophagy: The
24th Bienal de São Paulo 1998,
eds. Lisette Lagnado and Pablo
Lafuente (London: Afterall,
2015) pp. 8-62.
13
Martin Beck, “Revisiting
the Form of an Exhibit,”
in Exhibition, Design,
Participation: “an Exhibit”
and Related Shows of the
1950s, eds. Elena Crippa and
Lucy Steeds (London:
Afterall, 2016).
19
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2. Writing Exhibition Histories
The writing of exhibition histories may develop from within
the writing of art history,6 or it may be annexed to the latter.7
Both possibilities were anticipated by T.J. Clark in 1974,
when calling for “the social history of art” to be written, and
specifically not just the ideological “history of the conditions of
artistic production,” but also “an account of how the work [of
art] took on its public form.”8 Yet there are exciting possibilities
if we make the publicness, or the becoming-public of art our
primary concern, only then turning to the matter of production.
What I’d like to explore is whether exhibition histories may
thereby further complicate the diverse current understandings
of what art history might be. The point here is not to go through
a branding exercise, to make a territorial claim, or—as Clark
accused various diversifications of art history in the 1970s of
doing—to chase “hot-foot in pursuit of the New.”9 Instead, I first
want to tease out an idea that I’ve floated before, which draws
on the understanding of “minor literature,” proposed by Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their 1975 celebration of the
writings of Franz Kafka.10 As a Prague-born Jew who published
strange and subverting (“deterritorializing”) that familiar
language, concomitantly with issuing a political program and
What to Study?
collective utterance. Among the more direct summary state-
the literature of a minor language but the literature a minority
makes in a major language.”11
Let me try and draw some analogies without squeezing all
the power from Deleuze and Guattari’s famous essay. In my
experience, when writing exhibition histories most effectively
it is not primarily art history that curators, artists, and other
non-historians produce. For instance, when curator Lisette
Lagnado reflected recently on the 24th Bienal de São Paulo,
curated in 1998 by Paulo Herkenhoff, she not only explained the
key curatorial influence of a notion borrowed from François
Lyotard—that of épaisseur, a quality that might be paraphrased
as a density loaded with silent meaning—but in describing the
installation of the show she put this very concept to work in her
prose.12 The crux of her historical project was to reinvigorate
in text what she had perceived to be significant when visiting
the Bienal exhibitions.
Or consider artist Martin Beck’s analysis of an Exhibit—the
1957 installation in Newcastle and London by Richard Hamilton
and Victor Pasmore (with the involvement of Lawrence Alloway)—
in which he deals with the fact that he knows the show best
through a succession of recreations, addressing these as so
many ‘ghosts’ to be probed and questioned.13 The historical task
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Lucy Steeds
14
Since I do not give concrete
examples in what follows here,
see, for example, “Goshka
Macuga, Picture Room, 2003”
(No. 7 in The Artist as Curator
series), Mousse, No. 48, April-
May 2015; and “Biennial
Exhibition Histories, Against
the Grain: Juraci Dórea’s
Projeto terra in São Paulo,
Venice, and Havana,” in Making
Biennials in Contemporary
Times: Essays from the World
Biennial Forum no. 2, eds. Galit
Eilat et al. (Amsterdam: Biennial
Foundation and São Paulo:
Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
and ICCo—Instituto de Cultura
Contemporânea, 2015).
15
Clark, pp. 561-562.
20
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he set himself is the channeling of diverse related spirits, or
dispossessed souls.
From the keyboards of Lagnado and Beck, the ‘minor’
mode we might call exhibition histories rears its head in the
registers of art history, destabilizing the language of this domi-
nant, ‘major’ discipline. Their prose does not immediately
read as art history—it does not obviously bear the hallmarks of
the different established schools of art historical thought—yet
it works away at, and complicates writing in that field. Moreover,
their work could be said to be charged with a political necessity,
to the extent that it is galvanized by a collective will to resist
art’s commodification: both authors respond to an experiential
(multisensory and durational) past event of art’s publicness,
rather than to the art object’s enduring identity, in the sense that
this latter constitutes it as a fixed asset. Clearly this political
work can be undertaken by art historians too—and indeed there
is trenchant critique within the discipline concerning the force
of the market—but a necessity is arguably lacking there. Inherent
to writing historically about the event of art’s exhibition, rather
than about art as such—and to its collection by museums, if
not by private individuals and corporations—is precisely dealing
with the precariousness of contingent, shifting, and disputed
meaning and worth. To tackle the other primary characteristic of
the ‘minor’ mode as set out by Deleuze and Guattari, Beck and
Lagnado write not only as themselves, nor on behalf of individu-
als, but collectively: they write together with the initial collectiv-
ity that produced the exhibitions under discussion—which is
to insist on there being a collective agency at issue—and in order
to reconvene a community in the after-event.
When I write within the field of exhibition histories myself,
I do so with an education in art history and cultural history.14 And I
marvel at T.J. Clark’s ambition in the early 1970s to rethink the
whole task and method of art history, while teaching the subject
at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London (now sub-
sumed within the same university/corporation as my own
college). Yet it is already over fifteen years since the US College
Art Association felt it urgent enough to ask “Whatever Happened
to the Social History of Art?” I would like to try and repurpose
Clark’s mission, asking: What “new set of concepts” do we need
to “import,” “keep… in being” and “build… into the method of
work” now?15 And it is here that I want to experiment by drawing
on the conceptual work of Walter Benjamin.
Without announcing his departure from Karl Marx’s
exchange-value and use-value, Benjamin argued that art should
be discussed in terms of its cult value and exhibition value. More
broadly, he suggested that art might be understood in terms of
its working to reconcile humanity with nature. Exemplary for his
25/02/16 06:18
 proposal of cult value was prehistoric mark-making, which he
saw as an instrument in mystical or faith-based activity, con-
cerned with the mastery or control of nature. He writes: “the
earliest artworks originated in the service of rituals—first
magical, then religious.”16 Such artwork is described by Benjamin
as having minimal exhibition value, in the sense of having little
need to be seen publicly: “what matters is that the spirits see
it.”17 He concludes: “Artistic production begins with constructs
[Gebilde] that stand in the service of magic. What is solely
important for these constructs is that they are present, not that
they are seen.”18 In sum, art’s cult value is anchored in ritual
practice directed at forces of nature.
By contrast, what is exemplary for Benjamin’s proposal of
exhibition value is modern photography—with Eugène Atget’s
pictures of deserted Paris streets around 1900 given as a
particular instance—and, especially, popular films of the 1920s.
This work he sees as not only a product of modern technology,
but also as instrumental in affirming this new technology, or in
reconciling humanity to it. He writes: “emancipated” from ritual,
modern technology “stands opposed to contemporary society
as a second nature and, to be sure, as economic crises and wars
prove, it is a nature no less elemental than that given to primeval
society.”19 Moreover, the new art of Benjamin’s time has a

What to Study?
“hidden political significance” in that its examples “demand a
specific kind of reception. Free-floating contemplation is no
longer appropriate to them. They unsettle the viewer; he feels
challenged to find a particular way to approach them.”20 And the
viewer, herself a “quasi-expert,” meets this challenge, engaging
with both enjoyment and criticality.21 In sum, art’s exhibition
value lies in its need to be encountered, and, in that event,
intellectually negotiated: it indicates art’s social function, at
the forefront of social debate and empowerment.
To nail what might already be clear, Benjamin argues
in fact for a progressive shift, away from art being based in
16 ritual, which prioritized cult value, decisively toward a function-
Benjamin, “The Work of Art in
the Age of its Technological ality based in politics, prioritizing exhibition value. Instead,
Reproducibility,” p. 16. I want to suggest that both values, if somewhat differently
17 inflected, can be seen to be crucially in play today. One could
Ibid., p. 18.
conclude that I wish to extend Benjamin’s thesis and antithesis
18 into a teleological synthesis, but I will reserve a demonstration
Ibid., p. 17.
of how exhibition value and cult value are in fact both in play,
19
Ibid., p. 18. Translation lightly differentially, in not only prehistoric art but also modern art, for
edited for clarity in the another time. For now, I want to elaborate my inflection of
present context.
Benjamin’s dialectic of value in order to reapply it to contempo-
20
Ibid., p. 19. rary art, before turning to the implications for writing the history
of this art, and the reasons to construe this in terms of exhibition
21
Ibid., p. 26. histories in particular.
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Lucy Steeds
22
Ibid., p. 13.
23
Ibid.. Italics added.
24
Ibid., p. 17.
25
For a finely nuanced response
to these issues in Benjamin,
to which this essay is indebted,
see Howard Caygill, The
Colour of Experience (London:
Routledge, 1998).
26
Walter Benjamin, “The Work
of Art in the Age of its Tech-
nological Reproducibility,” p. 17.
22
160218_Bard_interior_FINAL.indd 22
Invigorating cult value today involves rejecting ritual as a
practice only of superstition or magical belief, organized, or
alternative religion. Instead we bring into play all the collective
or socially determined activity that we instinctively engage
in, which is produced intersubjectively rather than with self-
conscious deliberation. Turning now specifically to contempo-
rary art, I want to argue that its cult value lies in the ritual
engagement of publics—that is, their collective and performa-
tively negotiated engagement—in art’s here and now. To a
limited extent this involves reinstating “the here and now of the
work of art,” hailed by Benjamin for having been eclipsed by
art’s modern-day reproducibility.22 However, this is not “the here
and now of the original” artwork, which “constitutes the concept
of its authenticity,” and insists on its unique identity, but instead
it is the here and now of art’s display—whether in a museum,
on the streets, at an Internet URL, or anywhere else.23 The cult
value of contemporary art, understood along these lines, is its
performative potentiality—in a given context—for convening
collectivities, or, we might say, for galvanizing being-in-common.
The value of art judged in these terms lies not in its social use
toward the mastery of nature—as suggested by Benjamin—but
in affirming our entanglement within nature; in reconciling us
with the ‘natural’ forces, we might say of sociality, or indeed
animality, that may drive us.
By contrast, to echo the contrast drawn by Benjamin, the
exhibition value of contemporary art, such as he advocated
for modern art, is tied to “politics.”24 (The political dimension in
relation to the ritualistic could be debated productively, but
for simplicity I want to keep cult and exhibition value apart
here.) As eloquently discussed by others, Benjamin’s writing on
politics, when otherwise addressing the work of art, can be
ambiguous, even while he simultaneously characterizes a brutal
modernist artistic choice between fascism and communism.25
Yet if we set aside the stark political divisions of 1930s Europe,
we may clarify the ambiguity over the practice of politics that
anchors art’s exhibition value, interpreting this in terms not only
of ideological debate, but also of wider and more diverse
conceptual and ethical discussions.26 Analyzing contemporary
art on this basis, then, means assessing how it prompts and
contributes to such debates and discussions. At the level
of social function, the value of art judged in these terms does
not necessarily lie in reconciling humanity to new technologies
construed as a ‘second nature,’ as argued by Benjamin, but
instead in a grappling by humanity with humanity itself.
The implications of all this for art history are twofold.
First, in order to do justice to art’s cult value we need to
research and evoke the decisive events in which it has met its
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 publics historically. Indeed, through evocation, we may test
the possibilities to extend and diversify the audiences for these
past occasions. Secondly—and with regard to art’s exhibition
value—we need to investigate and analyze the political impor-
tance of the events by which art becomes public, examining
art’s intellectual and ethical force in these contexts, historically,
and in relation to the present. In other words, then, we find
ourselves contemplating the tasks of exhibition histories.
In the process of effecting these shifts of focus and
emphasis, we may mark a break with some of the problems of
art history that Benjamin had already diagnosed in the 1930s,
although they continue to trouble us today. We may specifically
work against both the canonization and commodification of
art. Within the field of exhibition histories, we may choose to
write about artwork included in lavishly archived museum
shows and biennials, but equally—even if they are only traceable
orally—about remote installations and unannounced perfor-
mances. We need to write plurally, from diverse perspectives,
with different sets of expertise and varying standpoints. We
need to question the unity not only of art, but of the public
sphere—to challenge our definitions of art and of publics—in
order to better understand the multitude of overlapping situa-
tions we find ourselves in today.

What to Study?
Of course, exhibition histories need not be written only on
the printed page. I find the online possibilities hugely exciting,
not least since they allow for text and image combinations that
are impossible otherwise. Equally, with art institutions increasingly
looking back to their past shows for the making of new exhibi-
tions, there is a gathering interest in how to make convincing
displays of archival material in gallery spaces that do justice to
the idea of a spatial experience. There are also significant
initiatives that defy easy categorization, such as Chimurenga’s
library-based residencies, in which historical material on
Pan-African cultural festivals of the 1960s and 1970s is re-activated.
To conclude I will briefly turn to the ambition to reinstate, in
some way, exhibitions.

3. Restaging Historical Exhibitions

27
See, for instance, Reesa Seeking to recreate something of a past exhibition is now so
Greenberg, “Remembering popular that different lexicons have been developed that
Exhibitions,” Tate Papers,
No. 12, October 2009, available distinguish between the relationships established by the new
online at www.tate.org.uk/
download/file/fid/7264 shows and their historical reference points.27 We find bids to
(accessed November 10, 2015); remake or reconstruct shows, as if their starting point were
and “Archival Remembering
Exhibitions,” Journal of a destroyed object needing to be replicated, but also bids to riff
Curatorial Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2,
June 2012. Also Alessandra off or to cover an original, as if it were a tune. I tend to find this
Troncone, “Il Piacere di Rifare,” aspect of exhibition histories disappointing—all too often it
Flash Art Italia, No. 310,
May-June 2013, pp. 84-87. seems to be about shoring up curatorial ‘landmarks’ (from the
23

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See pp. 234-235
María Berríos & Jakob
Jakobsen, The Revolution Must
Be a School of Unfettered
Thought, 2014
Installation (mechanical theater
of sound, light, video, and
Lucy Steeds
images; poster; tabloids),
variable dimensions, 30 min.
45 sec.
28
This wording was used on
the poster displayed outside
the installation and in the
newspaper distributed in
connection with the work.
29
Lucy Steeds et al., Making
Art Global (Part 2): “Magiciens
de la Terre” 1989 (London:
Afterall, 2013).
30
This event inaugurated a
weekend of screenings and
discussions co-organized
by Afterall and Tate Film. More
here: http://www.afterall.
org/2014/04/08/Magiciens_
Reconsidered_programme.pdf
(accessed November 10, 2015).
31
Weiss et al., op.cit.
24
160218_Bard_interior_FINAL.indd 24
past) or about curatorial positioning (concerning the present)—
and all too frequently it involves institutional self-congratulation.
Most successful, perhaps, are bids to re-enact or restage
shows—as if they were performances—maybe because those
involved seek to learn something in the process as well as share
their findings with new audiences.
One example of the latter might be The Revolution Must
Be a School of Unfettered Thought, contributed by Jakob
Jakobsen and María Berríos to the 31st Bienal de São Paulo in
2014. This show within a show described itself as “a dramatised
echo of the Third World Exhibition and the Cultural Congress
of Havana 1968.”28 It included digitized film footage of the
international congress of 1968, and documentary photographs
of the accompanying exhibition; it added smoke, lights, stage
direction, and dialogue. It shared its historical research with
visitors, and added scholarship, but it also took up something of
the motivations behind the original initiative, and reworked
the original didactic form in order to pursue the old ends for a
new historical and geopolitical situation. As such, it also offered
implicit critique of the contemporary art extravaganza—the
Bienal de São Paulo—in which it played a role.
Galleries and exhibition halls aside, for me one of the most
exciting spaces for restaging exhibitions is the cinema or
auditorium. Some remarkable films do much more than simply
document the shows they cover. Consider Sigmar Polke’s
Untitled (Venice, empty pavilion et al.) of 1986, in which the artist
experimentally exposed and superimposed footage of the
deserted space in which he would represent Germany for the
42nd Venice Biennale. Yet even straight film or video documen-
tation has the capacity to powerfully convey the relation
between art and exhibition context, in both physical and histori-
cal sense. When, for instance, launching a book on the contro-
versial 1989 Paris show Magiciens de la Terre in London a quarter
of a century later, I found it rewarding to screen extended TV
coverage from the time.29 Not only because something of the
kinesthetic experience of the exhibition, in its two distinct
venues, was thereby conveyed, but also because it simultane-
ously threw into relief some of the architectural and conceptual
challenges that arguably have since been inherited by Tate
Modern, where the screening took place.30
At the same time, we might ponder the apparent lack of
any filmic documentation—indeed of any official photographs
even—of the third Havana biennial of contemporary art held
in 1989, the subject of a preceding book.31 The very difficulty of
restaging this show in any meaningful way now should not
lessen our interest in the possibilities it offered the art that it
brought together, in the light of present concerns. And this
25/02/16 06:18
 points to the vast number of still more fleeting and decidedly
less official public events for contemporary art that might well
warrant committed investigation now.
Whatever the state of the archival resources available, the
task of exhibition histories involves using past shows of con-
temporary art to place the present in a critical condition—that is,
if it is to do any justice to Benjamin’s radical thinking in the
1930s. The point is not to “augment the weight of the treasure
accumulating on the back of humanity,” but to “provide the
strength to shake off this burden so as to take control of it.”32

See p. 236
Sigmar Polke, Untitled (Venice,
empty pavilion et al.), undated
(1983-1986) 
Film stills / 16mm transferred
to video, color, silent, 28 min.
29 sec.

What to Study?

32
Benjamin, “Eduard Fuchs:
Collector and Historian,” p. 125.
25

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 234

María Berríos & Jakob

Jakobsen, The Revolution Must
Be a School of Unfettered
Thought, 2014

160218_Bard_interior_FINAL.indd 234
Installation (mechanical theater
of sound, light, video, and
images; poster; tabloids),
variable dimensions, 30 min.
45 sec.

25/02/16 06:19
 235

160218_Bard_interior_FINAL.indd 235 25/02/16 06:19

 236

Sigmar Polke, Untitled (Venice,

empty pavilion et al.), undated
(1983-1986) 
Film stills / 16mm transferred to

160218_Bard_interior_FINAL.indd 236
video, color, silent, 28 min.
29 sec.

25/02/16 06:19
 The Curatorial Conundrum
What to Study? What to Research?
What to Practice?

Publishers Image Credits

LUMA Foundation The editors and publishers have endeavored to
identify and contact all copyright holders of
Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College images used in this publication, but have not
The MIT Press always been successful. If an image has not been
identified, and you are aware of its origins and/or
Editors its copyright holders, please contact the Center
for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, so we can
Paul O’Neill, Mick Wilson, Lucy Steeds ensure rectification in future editions.

Design p. 24/pp. 234-235: Reproduced with permission

Project Projects, New York from the artists and Arquivo Histórico Wanda
Svevo/ Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
p. 25/p. 236: © The Estate of Sigmar Polke /
Managing Editor DACS, London
Gerrie van Noord, London pp. 40, 43, 47/pp. 237-239: Screenshots courtesy
the authors
p. 70/p. 240: Image courtesy of the artist
Printer p. 71/p. 241: Image courtesy of the artist
Die Keure, Belgium p. 123/p. 242: Photograph © Aurélien Mole
p. 124/p. 243: Photograph © Aurélien Mole
LUMA Foundation p. 125/p. 244: Photograph © Aurélien Mole
p. 127/pp. 246-247: © Leo Eloy / Fundação Bienal
Breuerlakehouse de São Paulo
Im Hausacher 35 p. 131/p. 245 (top): Image Galit Eilat
CH-8706 Feldmeilen p. 135/p. 245 (bottom): Image Galit Eilat
Switzerland p. 140 (top)/p. 250 (top left): Courtesy the artist,
photograph by Boris Cvjetanović
p. 143 (top): Photograph by Ivan Kuharić
Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College p. 143 (bottom)/p. 250 (bottom): Photograph by
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504 Ivan Kuharić
USA p. 144: Photograph by Joaquín Cortés, Román
Lores / Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina
www.bard.edu/ccs/ Sofía, Madrid
p. 145 (top)/pp. 248-249: Photograph by Ivan
The MIT Press Kuharić
One Rogers Street p. 145 (bottom): Courtesy the artist, photograph
by Ivan Kuharić
Cambridge, MA 02142-1209 p. 168 (top)/p. 251 (top): Image courtesy the
USA Dashrath Patel Museum
http//:mitpress.mit.edu/ p. 168 (bottom)/p. 251 (bottom): Image courtesy
the Dashrath Patel Museum
p. 171/p. 252: Image courtesy Nancy Adajania
ISBN: 978-0-262-52910-5 p. 178/p. 253: © Alfredo Jaar, courtesy Galerie
Lelong, New York
Publication © 2016 LUMA Foundation; Center for p. 196, 204/pp. 254-255: Photo: Anil Rane
Curatorial Studies, Bard College

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