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Cataloguing critique: experimental forms of documentation in American art, 1970-1977

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Cataloguing critique: experimental forms of documentation in American art, 1970-1977

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CATALOGUING CRITIQUE:
EXPERIMENTAL FORMS OF DOCUMENTATION IN AMERICAN ART, 1970-1977

by
KATHERINE KERRIGAN

A DISSERTATION Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ART HISTORY)

December 2013

Copyright 2013 Katherine Kerrigan

ii
Dedication

For my Father

iii
Acknowledgements
This dissertation is indebted in large part to my work with my advisor, Richard
Meyer. Richard has inspired me intellectually and given me the courage to become a
better scholar. Whether he is aware of it or not, he has taught me an important lesson in
academia and in life: to have faith in my own abilities and to trust my own instincts. I
owe my achievements in USC’s graduate program to his constructive guidance. I would
also like to thank Nancy Troy, for always challenging me and serving as an esteemed role
model at all times. And my heartfelt gratitude also goes to David James, who introduced
me to American avant-garde film, and is perhaps the kindest, best teacher I have ever had
the privilege of knowing.
My experience at USC has been well structured and enjoyable due to the
assistance of the Art History staff—Jeanne Herman, Barbara Elwood, and Tracey
Marshall. I am grateful for the attention and patience they have always showed me.
Further, these acknowledgements would not be complete without mentioning Vanessa
Schwartz and Kate Flint, who have both served as directors of the Visual Studies
Graduate Certificate program. Participating in the Visual Studies program, and getting to
know students in other fields of the Humanities, undoubtedly shaped my scholarly work.
My archival research was supported through generous travel funding from both the
Department of Art History and the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate program. Further,
the final year of my research and writing were funded by a generous Dissertation
Completion Fellowship from the Graduate School at USC.
My husband James has supported me through all of my years of graduate school.
He has always been there for me as a constant source of sanity and compassion. Bess
iv
Murphy, a colleague and close friend, has consistently served as a sounding board and
considerate critic in all of the best ways. I would also like to thank my dearest friends,
Emily, Elizabeth, Liz, Heather, Beville, Carrie, Amy, and Kat, for their words of
encouragement during my loneliest hours of writing, as well as my niece Mary Margaret,
nephews Jackson and Stuart, and beautiful goddaughter Auline, for always bringing a
smile to my face. Above all, I thank my parents, for their unstinting support and love.
And Dad, thank you for pulling me through at the very end when I needed you most.

v
Table of Contents

Dedication……………………………………………………………………………........ii
Acknowledgements………………………………..……………………………………..iii
List of Figures………………………………...…………………….………………….…vi
Abstract…………………………………………………………….……...………….…xix
Introduction……………………………………………………………………..………....1
Chapter One: Precedents: Seth Siegelaub’s Catalogs as Exhibitions……………………13
Figures to Chapter One…………………………………………….....……….....40
Chapter Two: Early Experimental Museum Catalogs……………...……………………66
Figures to Chapter Two…………………………………………….....……….....95
Chapter Three: “an anti-catalog”: Publishing as Protest in 1976…...……….………...135
Figures to Chapter Three………………………………….……….....………...175
Chapter Four: Experimental Catalogs of Women Artists by Women Curators……….207
Figures to Chapter Four……………………………………………………….235
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...273
Bibliography……………………………….…………………………………………...278

vi

List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Heavy Industry Publications advertising books by Ed Ruscha, ca. 1968.
Archives of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

40
Figure 1.2 Detail, Heavy Industry Publications advertising books by Ed Ruscha,
ca. 1968.

41
Figure 1.3 Daniel Spoerri’s “catalogue” for his 1962 exhibition at the Galerie
Lawrence in Paris. Topographie Anecdotée du Hasard (An Anecdoted
Topography of Chance), New York: Something Else Press, 1962.

42
Figure 1.4 Marcel Broodthaers’s Muses Oeuf Frites Pots Charbon (Mussels Eggs
French Fries Pots Coal), 1966.

42
Figure 1.5 Duplicate of letter written by Siegelaub soliciting works of art for The
"25" show, 1966.

43
Figure 1.6 Seth Siegelaub, editor. “The Xerox Book.” (Carl Andre, Robert Barry,
Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Lawrence
Weiner). 1968. 370 pages/plates. Paper cover. 21 x 27.5 cm., 7 original
25-page works, by the 7 artists.

44
Figure 1.7 Mock-up draft of title page for Xerox Book, 1968.

45
Figure 1.8 Mock-up draft of title page for Xerox Book, 1968.

46
Figure 1.9 One of 25 pages by Carl Andre, Xerox Book, 1968.

47
Figure 1.10 Squares used by Carl Andre for Xerox Book, 1968. Archives of the
Museum of Modern Art, New York.

48
Figure 1.11 Title page for Sol LeWitt, Xerox Book, 1968.

49
Figure 1.12 One of 25 pages by Sol LeWitt, Xerox Book, 1968.

49
Figure 1.13 One of 25 pages by Joseph Kosuth, “Photograph of Xerox Machine
Used,” Mock up for Xerox Book, 1968. Archives of the Museum of
Modern Art, New York.

50
Figure 1.14 One of 25 pages by Robert Barry in Xerox Book, 1968. Archives of the
Museum of Modern Art, New York.
51
Figure 1.15 One of 25 pages by Robert Barry in Xerox Book, 1968. Archives of the
Museum of Modern Art, New York.
52
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Figure 1.16 Photograph of the artists who participated in the January show (Robert
Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, and Lawrence Weiner),
photograph by Seth Siegelaub, 1969.

53
Figure 1.17 Photograph of Seth Siegelaub standing on steps of 44 East Fifty-second
Street in Manhattan, location of the January 5–31, 1969 exhibition.
Photograph by Robert Barry, 1969.

54
Figure 1.18 Siegelaub's gallery floor plan for January 5–31, 1969, c. 1968-69.

55
Figure 1.19 Installation photograph of January 5-31, 1969. The catalogs were
displayed on a coffee table next to a couch in the entryway.

56
Figure 1.20 Installation photograph of January 5-31, 1969, artist Adrian Piper in the
front room of the exhibition that contained the catalog.

56
Figure 1.21 Seth Siegelaub, editor. “March 1969.” Cover. (Terry Atkinson, Michael
Baldwin, Robert Barry, Rick Barthelme, N.E. Thing Co., James Lee
Byars, John Chamberlain, Ron Cooper, Barry Flanagan, Alex Hay,
Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Stephen Kaltenbach, Joseph Kosuth,
Christine Kozlov, Richard Long, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg,
Dennis Oppenheim, Alan Ruppersberg, Robert Smithson, De Wain
Valentine, Lawrence Weiner, and Ian Wilson). 1969. 36 leaves. Paper
cover; stapled on top. 17.8 x 21.6 cm.

57
Figure 1.22 Seth Siegelaub, letter of request to artists invited to submit work for the
March 1969 exhibition.

58
Figure 1.23 Seth Siegelaub, second page of March 1969 exhibition catalog, 1969.

59
Figure 1.24 Barry Flanagan’s response to Siegelaub’s letter of request to artists
invited to submit work for the March 1969 exhibition.

60
Figure 1.25 Jan Dibbets. Untitled. 1969. Photolithographed postcard, 4 1/16 x 6”
(10.3 x 15.2 cm). Publisher: Seth Siegelaub, New York.

61
Figure 1.26 Cover of “July/August Exhibition Book,” Studio International 180, no.
924, July-August 1970.

62
Figure 1.27 The Art Workers’ Coalition’s 13 Demands, submitted to Bates Lowry,
director of The Museum of Modern Art, 1969.

63
Figure 1.28 Seth Siegelaub, Mock-up draft of the Artist's Contract in English, c.
1971.

64
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Figure 1.29 Handwritten draft of appeal to artists written by Siegelaub, 1970.

65
Figure 2.1 Original exhibition catalog cover, Harlem on My Mind: Cultural
Capital of Black American, 1900-1968, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, 1969.

95
Figure 2.2 Information. Cover of exhibition catalogue. New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1970.

96
Figure 2.3 Guerilla Art Action Group (GAAG) members John Hendricks and Jean
Toche removing a painting by Kasimir Malevich, White on White
(1918) from the wall at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1969.

97
Figure 2.4 Guerilla Art Action Group (GAAG) manifesto, posted on the wall of the
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1969.

98
Figure 2.5 Studio International cover, 1970; photograph by Jan van Raay of (left to
right) Jon Hendricks, Tom Lloyd, and Jean Toche.

99
Figure 2.6 Ad Hoc Women Artists’ Committee at the Whitney Annual, 1970

100
Figure 2.7 Installation photograph of Hans Haacke, MOMA-Poll, 1970. Interactive
installation with clear plastic voting boxes, text panel, chart of results, at
Information exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

101
Figure 2.8 Installation photograph of Hans Haacke, MOMA-Poll, 1970. Interactive
installation with clear plastic voting boxes, text panel, chart of results, at
Information exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

102
Figure 2.9 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

103
Figure 2.10 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

104
Figure 2.11 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

105
Figure 2.12 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

105
Figure 2.13 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of 106
ix
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

Figure 2.14 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

106
Figure 2.15 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

107
Figure 2.16 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

107
Figure 2.17 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

108
Figure 2.18 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

108
Figure 2.19 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

109
Figure 2.20 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

110
Figure 2.21 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

111
Figure 2.22 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

112
Figure 2.23 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

113
Figure 2.24 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.
114
x

Figure 2.25 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.
.
114
Figure 2.26 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

115
Figure 2.27 Interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1970

116
Figure 2.28 Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New
York: Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

117
Figure 2.29 Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New
York: Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

118
Figure 2.30 Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New
York: Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

119
Figure 2.31 Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New
York: Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

120
Figure 2.32 Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New
York: Museum of Modern Art, 1970..

120
Figure 2.33 Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New
York: Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

121
Figure 2.34 Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New
York: Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

122
Figure 2.35 Endpapers of Information exhibition catalog. New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1970.

123
Figure 2.36 Endpapers of Information exhibition catalog. New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1970.

124
Figure 2.37 Installation view of the exhibition, Paris: May 1968. Posters of the
Student Revolt. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. November 23,
1968 through February 24, 1969. Photograph by James Mathews.

126
Figure 2.38 Installation view of the exhibition, Paris: May 1968. Posters of the
Student Revolt. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. November 23,
1968 through February 24, 1969. Photograph by James Mathews.

xi

Figure 2.39 Installation view of the exhibition, Paris: May 1968. Posters of the
Student Revolt. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. November 23,
1968 through February 24, 1969. Photograph by James Mathews.

127
Figure 2.40 Floor plan of Spaces exhibition. The Museum of Modern Art, New
York. December 30, 1969 through March 1, 1970.

128
Figure 2.41 Cover of the “Spaces” exhibition catalog. New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1969.

128
Figure 2.42 Installation view of the orientation room of the exhibition, Spaces. The
Museum of Modern Art, New York. December 30, 1969 through March
1, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

129
Figure 2.43 Installation view of Michael Asher’s installation in the exhibition,
Spaces. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. December 30, 1969
through March 1, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

129
Figure 2.44 Installation view of Franz Erhard Walther’s installation in the
exhibition, Spaces. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. December
30, 1969 through March 1, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

130
Figure 2.45 Installation view of Larry Bell’s installation in the exhibition, Spaces.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. December 30, 1969 through
March 1, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

131
Figure 2.46 Installation view of Dan Flavin’s installation in the exhibition, Spaces.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. December 30, 1969 through
March 1, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

132
Figure 2.47 Installation view of Robert Morris’s installation in the exhibition,
Spaces. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. December 30, 1969
through March 1, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

133
Figure 2.48 Installation view of the Pulsa Group’s installation in the exhibition,
Spaces. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. December 30, 1969
through March 1, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

134
Figure 3.1 Catalog cover, E.P. Richardson, American Art: An Exhibition from the
Collection of John D. Rockefeller, 3rd. San Francisco: M. H. De Young
Museum, 1977.

175
Figure 3.2 John Singleton Copley, Mrs. Daniel Sargent (Mary Turner Sargent),
1763, oil on canvas, 49 1/2 x 39 1/4 (125.7 x 99.7 cm).

176
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Figure 3.3 Front covers, The Fox, Issues 1-3

177
Figure 3.4 Artists Meeting for Cultural Change, flyer calling for protests at The
Whitney Museum of American Art and the Rockefeller Center, New
York, 1976

178
Figure 3.5 Art Workers Coalition, One Blood Dollar, 1976

179
Figure 3.6 Photocutout of Hiram Power’s Greek Slave placed on the Whitney
canopy by Robert Venturi for the 1976 exhibition “200 Years of
American Sculpture”

180
Figure 3.7 Front cover, The Catalog Committee of Artists Meeting for Cultural
Change, “an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

181
Figure 3.8 Art-Language: Draft for an Anti-Textbook 3, no. 1 (September 1974).

182
Figure 3.9 Title Page, The Catalog Committee of Artists Meeting for Cultural
Change, “an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

183
Figure 3.10 Back cover, The Catalog Committee of Artists Meeting for Cultural
Change, “an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

184
Figure 3.11 George Catlin’s painting showing a group of plains Indians fleeing a
prairie fire, as reproduced alongside Jimmy Durham’s essay “Mr. Catlin
and Mr. Rockefeller Tame the Wilderness” in “an anti-catalog.” New
York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

185
Figure 3.12 Blackbear Bosin, Prairie Fire, published in the March 1955 issue of
National Geographic, as reproduced in “an anti-catalog.” New York:
The Catalog Committee, 1977.

185
Figure 3.13 Jimmie Durham, detail of “On Loan from the Museum of the American
Indian”, 1985.

186
Figure 3.14 Jimmie Durham, Current Trends in Indian Land Ownership, detail of
“On Loan from the Museum of the American Indian”, 1985.

187
Figure 3.15 Jimmie Durham, Current Trends in Indian Land Ownership, installation
photograph including “Pocahontas’s Underwear,” 1985.

188
Figure 3.16 Detail of “Pocahontas’s Underwear,” 1985.

188
Figure 3.17 Jimmie Durham, detail from “On Loan from the Museum of the
American Indian”, 1985.

189
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Figure 3.18 Jimmie Durham, Thuhn Datsi, 1984

190
Figure 3.19 Jimmie Durham, Thuhn Datsi, 1984

191
Figure 3.20 Page 11 of “an anti-catalog” entitled “Demystifying American Art,
“an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

192
Figure 3.21 Thomas Pollock Anshutz, The Ironworkers’ Noontime, 1880, oil on
canvas, 17 x 23.9 in.

193
Figure 3.22 Thomas Hovenden, The Last Moments of John Brown, ca. 1884

194
Figure 3.23 Cover of the April 1976 issue of Smithsonian, as reproduced in “an anti-
catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

195
Figure 3.24 Photograph of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, as
reproduced in “an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee,
1977.

196
Figure 3.25 Photograph of the Denver Art Museum, as reproduced in “an anti-
catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

197
Figure 3.26 Joshua Johnson, Mrs. White and Daughter Rose, ca. 1808-09

198
Figure 3.27 Thomas Hart Benton, The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green
Valley, 1934, oil, tempura on canvas.

Figure 3.28 John Singer Sargent, Caroline de Bassano, Marquise d'Espeuilles,
1884. As reproduced in “an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog
Committee, 1977.

199
Figure 3.29 John Singer Sargent, Caroline de Bassano, Marquise d'Espeuilles, 1884

202
Figure 3.30 Joseph Badger, Anna Porter Brown (Mrs. Nathaniel Brown), circa
1970, As reproduced in “an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog
Committee, 1977.

203
Figure 3.31 Joseph Badger, Anna Porter Brown (Mrs. Nathaniel Brown), circa
1970, oil on canvas, 47 3/4 x 36 7/8 (121.3 x 93.7 cm).

204
Figure 3.32 Photograph reproduced on page 26 of “an anti-catalog.” New York: The
Catalog Committee, 1977. The caption reads: John D. Rockefeller I
began giving away nickels, and later dimes, as part of a self-conscious
campaign to improve his public image.

205
Figure 3.33 Photograph reproduced in “an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog 206
xiv
Committee, 1977.

Figure 3.34 Photograph reproduced in “an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog
Committee, 1977.

206
Figure 3.35 John F. Peto, The Cup We All Race For, ca. 1900

207
Figure 4.1 Poster advertising “c.7,500” at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford,
Connecticut, 1973.

236
Figure 4.2 Lucy Lippard, First notecard in “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

237
Figure 4.3 Lucy Lippard, Second notecard in “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

238
Figure 4.4 Lucy Lippard, Third notecard in “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

239
Figure 4.5 Installation view, “c.7,500.”

240
Figure 4.6 Installation view, “c.7,500.”

240
Figure 4.7 Installation view, “c.7,500.”

241
Figure 4.8 Lucy Lippard, Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show
held at the Seattle Art Museum Pavilion, Seattle, Washington,
September 5 - October 5, 1969. The catalogue consists of 137 printed 4
x 6 inch index cards containing artists' proposals and conceptual works.
This copy missing Alan Saret and Frank Viner - as issued - otherwise
complete. Artists include Vito Acconci, Morrie Alhadeff, Carl Andre,
Keith Arnatt, Art & Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher,
John Baldessar, Robert Barry, Robert Barthelme, Gene Beery, Mel
Bochner, William Bollinger, Jonathan Borofsky, Daniel Buren, Donald
Burgy, R. Castro, Greg Curnoe, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan
Dibbets, Christos Dikeakos, Robert Dootson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry
Flanagan, Anne Gerber, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Alex Hay, Michael
Heizer, Eva Hesse, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Stephen Kaltenbach,
On Kawara, Edward Kienholz, Bob Kinmont, Joseph Kosuth, Christine
Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Lucy R. Lippard,
Roelof Louw, Duane Lunden, Thomas Maythem, Bruce McLean,
Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, John Perreault,
Adrian Piper, Liliana Porter, Polly Rawn, Robert Rohm, Allen
Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, George
Sawchuk, Richard Serra, Randolph Sims, Robert Smithson, Keith
Sonnier, N.E. Thing, Jeffrey Wall, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson, Jinny
Wright.

242
Figure 4.9 Lucy Lippard, Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show 243
xv
held at the Seattle Art Museum Pavilion, Seattle, Washington,
September 5 - October 5, 1969. The catalogue consists of 137 printed 4
x 6 inch index cards containing artists' proposals and conceptual works.
This copy missing Alan Saret and Frank Viner - as issued - otherwise
complete. Artists include Vito Acconci, Morrie Alhadeff, Carl Andre,
Keith Arnatt, Art & Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher,
John Baldessar, Robert Barry, Robert Barthelme, Gene Beery, Mel
Bochner, William Bollinger, Jonathan Borofsky, Daniel Buren, Donald
Burgy, R. Castro, Greg Curnoe, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan
Dibbets, Christos Dikeakos, Robert Dootson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry
Flanagan, Anne Gerber, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Alex Hay, Michael
Heizer, Eva Hesse, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Stephen Kaltenbach,
On Kawara, Edward Kienholz, Bob Kinmont, Joseph Kosuth, Christine
Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Lucy R. Lippard,
Roelof Louw, Duane Lunden, Thomas Maythem, Bruce McLean,
Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, John Perreault,
Adrian Piper, Liliana Porter, Polly Rawn, Robert Rohm, Allen
Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, George
Sawchuk, Richard Serra, Randolph Sims, Robert Smithson, Keith
Sonnier, N.E. Thing, Jeffrey Wall, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson, Jinny
Wright.

Figure 4.10 Pages of the catalog published in conjunction with 955,000 exhibition at
the Vancouver Art Gallery, January 13 - February 8, 1970.
The catalog consists of… index cards in random order including [101]
cards compiled by the artists themselves, [21] text cards by [Lucy R.
Lippard], [3] title page cards, 1 acknowledgements card, 2 lists of the
council members and officers, 1 forward by the council president, [2]
list of artists, [5] selective bibliographies, 1 list of films shown, [and] 1
addenda to [the] artists.

244
Figure 4.11 Envelope used for sending the contents of the 955,000 exhibition
catalog to the Vancouver Art Gallery, January 13 - February 8, 1970.

245
Figure 4.12 Exhibition catalog published in conjunction with the 2,972,453
exhibition organized by Lucy R. Lippard with the collaboration of Jorge
Glusberg, for the Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAYC), Buenos
Aires, Argentina, opening December 4, 1970. The third catalogue in an
ongoing series by Lippard. Includes 27 cards with artists' names printed
upon them, bearing biographical information and statements or
documentation of sorts, in addition to 16 other cards which bear
information about the exhibition and statements by Lippard and
Glusberg. Artists include Eleanor Antin, Siah Armajani, David
Askevold, Stanley Brouwn, Victor Burgin, Pierpaolo Calzolari, Don
Celender, James Collins, Christopher Cook, Gilbert & George, Ira Joel
Haber, and Richards Jarden.
246
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Figure 4.13 Judith Stein’s contribution to the “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

247
Figure 4.14 Mierle Laderman Ukeles ’s contribution to the “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

248
Figure 4.15 Doree Dunlap’s contribution to the “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

249
Figure 4.16 Ulrike Nolden’s contribution to the “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

250
Figure 4.17 Ulrike Nolden’s contribution to the “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

250
Figure 4.18 Announcement for Eccentric Abstraction exhibition, Fischbach Gallery,
New York, September 20 through October 8, 1966.

251
Figure 4.19 Catalog cover for Works on Paper/Women Artists. Brooklyn Museum,
New York, 1975.

252
Figure 4.20 “Addresses of the Artists,” in catalog for Works on Paper/Women
Artists. Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1975.

253
Figure 4.21 Joan Semmel, Erotic Yellow, 1973

254
Figure 4.22 Joan Semmel, Antonio and I, 1974

254
Figure 4.23 Joan Semmel, Contemporary Women: Consciousness and Content,
exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum Art School, 1977.

255
Figure 4.24 Artwork by May Stevens, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

256
Figure 4.25 Women Artists: 1550-1950, by Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda
Nochlin; 368 pp.; 204 photographs, 32 in full color; catalog, artists’
bibliographies, general bibliography, index. Published by the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art and Alfred A. Knopf, N.Y., 1976.

257
Figure 4.26 Artwork by Harmony Hammond, reproduced on the Contemporary
Women: Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn
Museum, 1977.

258
Figure 4.27 Artwork by Cynthia Carlson, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

258
Figure 4.28 Artwork by Louise Nevelson, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

259
Figure 4.29 Artwork by Joan Semmel, reproduced on the Contemporary Women: 259
xvii
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

Figure 4.30 Artwork by Michelle Stuart, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

260
Figure 4.31 Artwork by Louise Bourgeois, reproduced on the Contemporary
Women: Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn
Museum, 1977.

260
Figure 4.32 Artwork by Anne Healy, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

261
Figure 4.33 Artwork by Joan Snyder, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

261
Figure 4.34 Artwork by Eva Hesse, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

262
Figure 4.35 Artwork by Mary Beth Edelson, reproduced on the Contemporary
Women: Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn
Museum, 1977.

263
Figure 4.36 Artwork by Pat Steir, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

263
Figure 4.37 Artwork by Judith Bernstein, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

264
Figure 4.38 Artwork by Anita Steckel, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

265
Figure 4.39 Artwork by Audrey Flack, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

265
Figure 4.40 Artwork by Pat Lasch, reproduced on the “Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content” exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum,
1977.

266
Figure 4.41 Artwork by Hannah Wilke, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

266
Figure 4.42 Artwork by Joyce Kozloff on the Contemporary Women: Consciousness
and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

267
Figure 4.43 Artwork by Buffie Johnson reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.
267
xviii

Figure 4.44 Artwork by Judy Chicago, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

268
Figure 4.45 Artwork by Sylvia Sleigh, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

268
Figure 4.46 Artwork by Miriam Schapiro, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

269
Figure 4.47 Artwork by Lynda Benglis, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

269
Figure 4.48 Artwork by Marisol, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

270
Figure 4.49 Artwork by Ellen Lanyon, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

270
Figure 4.50 Artwork by Nancy Grossman, reproduced on the Contemporary
Women: Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn
Museum, 1977.

271
Figure 4.51 Artwork by Mary Frank, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

271
Figure 4.52 Lynda Benglis, 1974 Artforum magazine intervention advertisement.

272
Figure 4.53 Cover of Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, vol. 1,
no. 1, January 1977.
273

xix
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on catalogs and other publications that served as
critiques of conventional art and museum practice by artists and curators of American art
during the 1970s. This study attends to both experimental forms of curating and the
publications that accompanied them, as well as to the catalog as an exhibition or
curatorial process in itself. The objects of this study, often collaboratively produced, were
lodged between the traditional categories of art, catalog, exhibition, and book.
“Cataloguing Critique” explores the idea of “curating” a catalog, when artist curators
work as authors, editors, and producers. By looking closely at particular curatorial and
publication projects of the early to mid 1970s, this project endeavors to highlight the
importance of the exhibition catalog as a site of expression, political critique, and
collective action among American artists at the time.
These case studies provide examples in which artists and curators radically
experimented with the formal and conceptual possibilities of the printed catalog. In each
of them, the catalog fulfills a function beyond that of documentation. The manipulation
of images, text, and attention to format, layout, and binding play a part in the objects of
this study as they do in other printed artistic media. This conception of the catalog as a
space of exploration parallels the growth in artists’ books and self-published magazines
in the twentieth century. If artists’ books and magazines live at the margins rather than
the established center, then the catalogs examined in this project lie somewhere in
between. The artists, curators, critics, and collectives featured in this project operated in
dialogue with institutions at some level, seeking to augment or even undermine an
xx
exhibition by presenting supplementary, alternative, or oppositional ideas and images
within the catalogs they produced.
The subjects of this study show how, in the late 1960s and 1970s, curators, artists,
and critics increasingly called into question the purpose of the museum as a passive and
ideologically neutral space of display. The precedent of non-traditional, experimental
catalogs explored early in the dissertation paved the way for activist and feminist
approaches to formulating, documenting, and also critiquing exhibitions. Thus this
project also contributes to existing scholarship on collective action among American
artists during this period to mount political critiques through their actions or their art
production. The objects of this study fall within that same context, and an expanded view
of American art history should include them.
Rather than emphasize the differences among experimental exhibition catalogs in
post-war American art, this project seeks to foreground what this material has in
common. The producers of these objects revised the audience’s expectations about how
catalogs function. They redefined the role of the traditional catalog from that of
documentation to one with the potential to express critical or contradictory viewpoints
and to become a distinct art object in its own right--separate to, or in place of, the
exhibition. The 1970s witnessed a real slippage among functions of positions in the art
world, especially in the function of the curator. While challenging the aesthetic and
institutional framing of art practice, the case studies in this dissertation demonstrate that
this shift in curatorial practice changed the practical relationship between artist and
curator—and, as a result, the relationship between curator and institutions.

1

Introduction

Not since Marcel Duchamp’s ‘readymade’ urinal of 1917 has it been safe
to assume that artists necessarily make things. An artist’s declaration,
Duchamp insisted, is insufficient to produce art.

Duchamp’s current heirs in making statements, not things, are variously
called dematerialized, conceptual or anti-object artists. They try to
operate beyond the realm of static, permanent objects made to be shown—
and sold—in galleries. To document their ideas, the anti-object artists use
words, photos, diagrams and maps—the stuff of books. And it is in the
traditional exhibition catalogue that the anti-object artists have found
their most eloquent means of expression.
1

This dissertation focuses on catalogs and other publications that served as
critiques of conventional art and museum practice by artists and curators of American art
during the 1970s. This study attends to both experimental forms of curating and the
publications that accompanied them, as well as to the catalog as an exhibition or
curatorial process in itself. The objects of this study, often collaboratively produced, were
lodged between the traditional categories of art, catalog, exhibition, and book.
“Cataloguing Critique” explores the idea of “curating” a catalog, when artist curators
work as authors, editors, and producers. Why did artists, curators, and art historians find
this medium appropriate or useful as a form of critique or a site of intervention? By

1
Howard Junker, “Idea as Art,” Newsweek (August 11, 1969), 81.
2
looking closely at particular curatorial and publication projects of the early to mid 1970s,
this project endeavors to highlight the importance of the exhibition catalog as a
site of expression, political critique, and collective action among American artists at the
time.
The case studies in this project demonstrate that artists and curators radically
experimented with the formal and conceptual possibilities of the printed catalog. An
existing body of literature exists on the political potential of independently produced
artists’ books or artists’ magazines. If artists’ books and magazines live at the margins
rather than the established center, then the catalogs examined in this project lie
somewhere in between. The artists, curators, critics, and collectives featured in this
project operated in dialogue with institutions at some level, seeking to augment or even
undermine an exhibition by presenting supplementary, alternative, or oppositional ideas
and images within the catalogs they produced.

Chapter one concerns precedents for new political possibilities in the exhibition
catalog and the exhibition in print. It examines the practice of Seth Siegelaub, who in the
late 1960s and early 1970s, bypassed the art world with exhibitions that took place
outside of galleries or were united in publications that were art rather than being about
art. In Siegelaub’s shows, the information presented in the catalog was the primary
content of the show, as there was no exhibition site or gallery to be visited.
The second chapter examines early unconventional, politicized catalogs for
exhibitions at major art museums. For example, the Museum of Modern Art’s 1970
“Information” exhibition catalog looks like a conceptual artist’s book, with informal
3
typewritten text, news photography and other non-art imagery, and a diverse
interdisciplinary reading list. The “Information” exhibition, curated by Kynaston
McShine, was intended to introduce the products of some four years of relatively
underground conceptual art to a broader public. When it opened, however, many of the
artists had revised their contributions to express their outrage at the Vietnam War. The
“Information” show presented an opportunity for conceptual artists to use the museum, as
well as the accompanying catalog, as a medium with which to work.
Chapter three concerns the Artists Meeting for Cultural Change (AMCC)’s 1976
publication, “an anti-catalog.” The AMCC, a collective of artists, critics, and art
historians, published “an anti-catalog” in response and in opposition to the 1976 Whitney
Bicentennial exhibition of American art. The AMCC’s ambitious social theory of
American art addressed many details about the history of American art, and about
American history, that the official exhibition catalog deemed irrelevant. Though
originally intended as a response to the Whitney’s Bicentennial exhibition, “an anti-
catalog” grew into a critical look at art museums and art exhibitions in general. If “an
anti-catalog” had a limited audience, it nonetheless raised questions not previously
considered theoretically.
The fourth and final chapter focuses on experimental forms of catalogs of work
by women artists. For instance, in 1973 Lucy Lippard curated “C. 7,500,” a traveling
show of conceptual art made by women artists. The exhibition began at the California
Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, and traveled to nine additional venues. The
accompanying catalog explored an unbound format that challenged the very definition of
4
an exhibition catalog. “C. 7,500” and its experimental catalog format provided a way for
Lippard to respond to the charge that women were not participating in conceptual art.
The fourth chapter also looks in depth at “Contemporary Women: Consciousness
and Content,” an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in 1977. Curator Joan
Semmel described the show as an effort to bring the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
(LACMA)’s bicentennial exhibition “Women Artists, 1550-1950” up to date. Semmel’s
catalog could likewise be viewed as a response LACMA’s catalog, which argued that the
roughly 150 works by American and European women artists do not share any special
visual characteristics due to their female authorship. “Contemporary Women” asserted
that certain thematic ideas occur with uncommon frequency in women’s art after 1950.
And, to underscore this point, Semmel produced a poster to serve as the entire catalog for
the show with reproductions on the front and her essay on the back. The names of the
artists represented surround the reproduced artworks on the poster--arranged in a square
grid--in alphabetical order with no effort to match the artist with her work. The logic of
the poster design follows that of Semmel’s argument--that these are all women artists and
the experience of being a woman artist informed the work and provides enough context
for the show.

These case studies provide examples in which artists and curators radically
experimented with the formal and conceptual possibilities of the printed catalog. In each
of them, the catalog fulfills a function beyond that of documentation. The manipulation
of images, text, and attention to format, layout, and binding play a part in the objects of
this study as they do in other printed artistic media. This conception of the catalog as a
5
space of exploration parallels the growth in artists’ books and self-published magazines
in the twentieth century. A body of literature exists on the political potential of
independently produced artists’ books or artists’ magazines. Johanna Drucker has studied
artists’ books as vehicles to advocate a change of consciousness, while Gwen Allen has
upheld the artists’ magazine as an alternative to the mainstream art press and commercial
gallery system. In the post-war era, while artists used the magazine to document their
work, they also began to explore it as a medium in its own right, creating works expressly
for the mass-produced page.
The subjects of this study show how, in the late 1960s and 1970s, curators, artists,
and critics increasingly called into question the purpose of the museum as a passive and
ideologically neutral space of display. The precedent of non-traditional, experimental
catalogs explored early in the dissertation paved the way for activist and feminist
approaches to formulating, documenting, and also critiquing exhibitions. Thus this
project also contributes to existing scholarship on collective action among American
artists during this period to mount political critiques through their actions or their art
production. The objects of this study fall within that same context, and an expanded view
of American art history should include them.

Rather than recounting a history of activist art of the late 1960s and early 1970s,
this project concerns the rhetoric of political action as employed by particular artists,
critics, and curators in the 1970s. The responses to a questionnaire in the September
1970 issue of Artforum demonstrate that by 1970, many American artists believed that art
itself carried political implications and therefore felt that the most important thing to do
6
was to keep making art and questioning the contexts in which it was shown.
2

Julia Bryan-Wilson has argued that some artists during this period began to see art
space as an extension of the political sphere (and not just a space of reflection), while
others began to question the gallery itself as an appropriate site for their work. In Art
Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era, Bryan-Wilson argues that, in
response to the political turbulence generated by the Vietnam War, a group of American
artists and critics sought to expand the definition of creative labor by identifying
themselves as “art workers.” She examines how Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Lucy
Lippard, and Hans Haacke’s efforts to politicize their art and practice of everyday life
made them function, as what she termed as “art workers,” especially in relation to their
participation in the Art Worker’s Coalition (AWC) and the New York Art Strike.
Drawing on the energies of the antiwar movement and the traditions of Fluxus
performance and Situationism, groups like the AWC staged actions outside mainstream
cultural institutions to call attention to the complicity of these institutions with broader
forms of social and political domination.
In Art, Politics and Dissent Francis Frascina demonstrates how, by 1967, many of
the contradictions and differences in the art world’s responses to Vietnam, to Civil Rights
and to the early stages of the women’s movement became marked.

For example, the New

2
The September 1970 issue of Artforum published responses to the following: “A
growing number of artists have begun to feel the need to respond to the deepening
political crisis in America. Among these artists, however, there are serious differences
concerning their relations to direct political actions. Many feel that the political
implications of their work constitute the most profound political action they can take.
Others, not denying this, continue to feel the need for an immediate, direct political
commitment. Still others feel that their work is devoid of political meaning and that their
political lives are unrelated to their art. What is your position regarding the kinds of
political action that should be taken by artists?” “The Artist and Politics: A Symposium,”
Artforum 9, September 1970, 35-39.
7
York Angry Arts Week (1967) was a collective program of cultural events and protest
with roots in a variety of precedents including Dada, performance and happenings, and
radical politicized theatre. The Collage of Indignation, one product of Angry Arts Week,
resulted partly from the example of the ‘Artists Tower of Protest’ in Los Angeles in early
1966. Participating artists published texts raising issues about the role of ‘art’ and of ‘art
criticism’ in relation to ‘protest’. The questions raised would resonate in the art world for
the next decade as artists and critics continued to be divided between those whose work
was becoming more politicized and those whose work was not.

In an essay in the exhibition catalog for Tradition and Conflict: Images of a
Turbulent Decade, 1963-1973, Lippard describes how by 1968 the slowly evolving
public opposition to the Vietnam War came to a head, sweeping large numbers of artists
into organized resistance. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and events in
Southeast Asia made a newly conscious white constituency aware of the ties between
oppression of Third World people abroad and at home.
In November 1968, Lippard, along with painter Robert Huot and activist Ron
Wolin, put together a “peace show” of Minimal Art at Paula Cooper’s new SoHo gallery
to benefit the antiwar movement, bringing a new aesthetic constituency into the context
of “politics and art.” For the two-year duration of the AWC, with which Lippard was
heavily involved, the organization targeted the Museum of Modern Art (and later other
New York museums). AWC members increasingly realized connections between
museums’ trustees and their roles in directing the military-industrial complex. In May of
1970 (two months prior to the Information exhibition) the AWC engendered Art Strike--
the largest artists’ manifestation on political issues since the 1930s. Responding to the
8
murders of protesting state college students at Kent and Jackson State, and to the
bombing of Cambodia, Art Strike closed down many New York museums and galleries
and held a huge mourning demonstration on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum
(which stayed open), featuring a funeral wreath and line of white-on-black placards that
read “Art Strike Against Racism, War and Repression.”

The AWC lasted until 1971. Its last action involved a protest at the Guggenheim
Museum following the cancellation of artist Hans Haacke’s solo exhibition, which
featured Haacke’s “social systems”--work about absentee landlords that was thought at
the time to involve a trustee of the museum. The protest included a conga line led by
Yvonne Rainer up the ramp, with participants chanting “no more censorship.” In A
Different War: Vietnam in Art, Lippard draws connections between the activities of the
AWC and conceptual art, stating that it was “apt that the AWC’s last major event was
concerned with conceptual Art, because in some sense conceptualism was the most
“revolutionary” work from 1965 to 1973. It provided an internal, institutional critique,
bearing the same relationship to the art of that time as the Free Speech Movement bore to
the antiwar movement as a whole.”

For Lippard, conceptual art reflected an idealism
among artists. She argues that its dematerialized forms emerged from a countercultural
desire for a democratized (but hardly populist) art, for liberation from traditional art
contexts, and for decentralization of powerful cultural institutions.

In Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity, Alexander Alberro recounts the
events that led to a need for a critical reassessment of the idea that cultural institutions are
neutral, and do not restrict, prohibit, or exclude anything on ideological grounds. He
places the movement in the social context of the rebellion against existing cultural
9
institutions, as well as the increased commercialization and globalization of the art world.
Alberro argues that this newfound skepticism of the art world formed a crucial stage in
the emergence of the concept of “institutional critique”--an art practice that seeks to make
apparent the intersections where not only political and economic but also ideological and
state, and cultural and corporate, interests meet.

Rather than employing traditional media such as painting, drawing, and printing
(necessary for direct engagement with wide audiences), Conceptual artists radically
deemphasized the importance of materiality in artmaking. This move toward what
Lippard and John Chandler called “dematerialization” is typically understood as a
reaction against both Greenbergian modernism and the increasing commodification of the
art object.

Conceptual art attempted to subvert the function of art objects within capitalism,
precisely by not being objects that could be easily marketed or purchased. Describing
these potentials of conceptual Art, Lippard wrote in the catalogue for Six Years: The
Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972: “It seemed in 1969... that no one,
not even a public greedy for novelty, would actually pay money, or much of it, for a
xerox sheet referring to an event past or never directly perceived, a group of photographs
documenting an ephemeral situation or condition, a project for a work never to be
completed, words spoken but not recorded; it seemed that these artists would therefore be
forcibly freed from the tyranny of a commodity status and market orientation.”

Benjamin Buchloh has traced the development of conceptual art from what he calls
the aesthetics of administration to the critique of institutions.

For Buchloh, these two
10
strands of conceptualism develop from two different interpretations of the readymade.
The term readymade refers to a mass-produced commodity object that becomes
transformed into a work of art following the actions of the artist, who selects it then
defunctionalizes and decontextualizes it (the earliest and most well-known readymade
being Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, a urinal he selected, signed, then turned on its side
prior to submitting it for exhibition). The aesthetics of administration follows from what
Buchloh reads as an overly simplistic interpretation of the readymade. According to the
author, it simply follows the Duchampian notion ‘it’s art if I name it as such’--a tendency
Buchloh identifies in the work of artist Joseph Kosuth and the collective Art and
Language. Buchloh argues that this approach reaffirms modernism’s positivism and
reinstatement of capitalist experience,.

Buchloh’s resistance to making any connection between conceptual art and politics
during its development in the 1960s was criticized in an editorial response by Kosuth and
Siegelaub. Siegelaub writes: “Despite claims and occasional footnote references to the
contrary, Buchloh’s text is a formalistic and idealistic one, a sort of tautological “art
history as art history as art history,” which has little, if any, relationship to the social,
economic, or cultural, i.e. historical period which it pretends to describe. Although the
text claims to deal with the production of art between 1962 and 1969, it is hard to
imagine how one can deal with that period without mentioning, even in a passing
footnote, for example May ’68 or the U.S. War in Vietnam, which marked the period,
even the art world.”
3

3
Joseph Kosuth and Seth Sieglaub, “Joseph Kosuth and Seth Siegelaub Reply to
Benjamin Buchloh on Conceptual Art.” October 57, Summer 1991, 153.

11

For Siegelaub and others, the very deployment of negation in art was theorized as
political, insofar as it was meant to suggest and register the profound complicity of
cultural institutions in the Vietnam War as a defense of Western values: something that
also presupposes a high level of investment in official culture and high culture’s
influential status in society as an extension of state power. I have focused this literature
review on conceptual art, rather than other movements--such as those within Feminist,
Pop, or African-American art--because the articulation of advanced art practice, meaning
what was seen at the time as the most ambitious art of the period (most notably work
labeled conceptual, but also post-minimalist, process, earthwork) by critics was often
written in politicized terms. The dissertation, however, does not focus intently on
conceptual art. Yet the utilization of the catalog as an active space of expression,
experimentation, and critique emerged in large part during this time because of its
overlap with conceptualism as the dominant mode of progressive art.
Rather than emphasize the differences among experimental exhibition catalogs in
post-war American art, this project seeks to foreground what this material has in
common. The producers of these objects revised the audience’s expectations about how
catalogs function. They redefined the role of the traditional catalog from that of
documentation to one with the potential to express critical or contradictory viewpoints
and to become a distinct art object in its own right--separate to, or in place of, the
exhibition.
This dissertation poses the question: How do we fit the roles of curators such as
McShine, Lippard (also a critic), Semmel (also an artist), the Siegelaub (also a dealer),
and the AMCC (a collective) into the history of art? By experimenting with exhibition
12
catalogs, they broadened the possibilities of ways in which art can be displayed and
viewed by audiences. In some cases, these curators, rather than primarily selecting works
to exhibit, chose artists from whom to commission projects.
4
The 1970s witnessed a real
slippage among functions of positions in the art world, especially in the function of the
curator. While challenging the aesthetic and institutional framing of art practice, the case
studies in this dissertation demonstrate that this shift in curatorial practice changed the
practical relationship between artist and curator—and, as a result, the relationship
between curator and institutions.

4
These projects reflect the emergence of the so-called independent curator, working as a
freelancer for multiple exhibitions. Harald Szeemann’s departure from his position as
director at the Kunsthalle Bern, following his 1969 exhibition “Live in Your Head: When
Attitude Becomes Form” has often been cited as the advent of the independent curator.
13
Chapter One
Precedents: Seth Siegelaub’s Catalogs as Exhibitions

The practice of art dealer and curator Seth Siegelaub was an important precedent
for new political possibilities for the exhibition catalog and the exhibition in print.
Siegelaub was a primary catalyst of New York’s conceptual art scene. His representation
of leading figures such as Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, and Lawrence
Weiner exceeded dealers’ normal involvement in the promotion of artists they
represented. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Siegelaub bypassed the art world with
exhibitions that took place outside of galleries or were united in publications that were art
rather than being about art. Group shows that Siegelaub organized from 1968 to 1971
presented artists’ submissions to the catalog as the primary, and sometimes only, content
of the show.
Siegelaub explained the significance of what he aimed to achieve: “Until 1967,
the problems of exhibition of art were quite clear, because at that time the ‘art’ of art and
the ‘presentation’ of art were coincident. When a painting was hung, all the necessary
intrinsic art information was there. But gradually there developed an ‘art’ which didn’t
need to be hung. An art wherein the problem of presentation paralleled one of the
problems previously involved in the making and exhibition of a painting: i.e. to make
someone else aware that an artist had done anything at all. Because the work is not
visual in nature, it did not require the traditional means of exhibition, but a means tat
14
would present the intrinsic ideas of the art.”
5
Siegelaub’s exhibitions described in this
chapter constitute examples of what critic Lucy Lippard coined as the dematerialization
of art. Siegelaub, largely remembered for his cultivation and promotion of conceptual art,
was at the time what Kosuth referred to as a “curator at large,”
6
and his catalogs as
exhibitions are exemplary of his attempts to extend the field of curating beyond the
physical boundaries of the gallery.
Self-published artwork had become a way of circumventing the gallery system.
7
In
1962 artist Ed Ruscha published his first artist book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, in an
edition of 400 numbered copies. Five years later he reprinted it in an unnumbered edition
of 500 copies. A third edition of 3000 copies came out in 1969. By 1969, Ruscha was by
then a well-known artist, whose paintings and drawings were being promoted in a major
establishment gallery. His decision to keep old titles in print while regularly creating new
ones effectually underscored the irrelevance of the limited edition. Between 1962 and
1968, Ruscha produced eight artists books (fig. 1.1 and 1.2).
8

5
Siegelaub in “On Exhibitions and the World at Large: Seth Siegelaub in Conversation
with Charles Harrison,” Studio International 178, no. 917 (December 1969), 202.
6
Joseph Kosuth, Art After Philosophy, in Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson,
Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999), 177.
7
In this way, self-published artwork from this period was indebted to the literary small
press revolution. See Barbara Moore and Jon Hendricks, “The Page as Alternative Space:
1950 to 1969 (1980),” in Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook, ed. Joan
Lyons (New York: Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1985), 94.
8
Ruscha’s books published between 1962 and 1968 included Twentysix Gasoline
Stations (1962), Various Small Fires (1964), Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965), Every
Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), Thirtyfour Parking Lots (1967), Royal Road Test
(1967), Building Cards (1968), and Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass (1968). In
the following ten years he created ten more: Crackers (1969), Real Estate Opportunities,
1970, Babycakes with Weights (1970), A Few Palm Trees (1971), Records (1971), Dutch
Details (1971), Colored People (1972), and Hard Light (1978).
15
Some artists working in Europe had found that they could use the independent book
form to supplement an exhibition, in place of a catalog. Siegelaub would have been aware
of Daniel Spoerri’s “catalogue” for his 1962 exhibition at the Galerie Lawrence in Paris.
This small pamphlet, Topographie Anecdotée du Hasard (An Anecdoted Topography of
Chance) used the objects on Spoerri’s table at a particular moment as the inspiration for a
series of autobiographical insights into the Spoerri’s life (fig. 1.3). In addition to the
original French edition the Topographie has been reproduced in English, German, and
Dutch, making it one of the most widely published artists’ books. Another important
example of the catalog-as-artwork is Marcel Broodthaers’s Muses Oeuf Frites Pots
Charbon (Mussels Eggs French Fries Pots Coal) (fig. 1.4). Created for his 1966
exhibition at the Wide White Space Gallery in Antwerp, Broodthaers shows the same
attention to typography and layout as any of his more elaborate publications.
Critic Clive Phillpot has highlighted the linkages between the making of artists’
books and self-publishing with conceptual artists’ concerns with writing. According to
Phillpot: “For many conceptual artists the book was the most appropriate means to record
and disseminate their ideas, theories, diagrams, or drawings, or to embody their artworks.
At this time many artists were also concerned with writing—as art or about art—thus,
they too were led naturally to use the book form. The interest of several pop artists in
book production also peaked in the late sixties. Indeed, this moment seems to have been a
fruitful time for publishing.”
9

Siegelaub took the idea of supplementing an exhibition with an independent artists’

9
Clive Phillpot, “Some Contemporary Artists and Their Books,” in Artists’ Books: A
Critical Anthology and Sourcebook, ed. Joan Lyons (New York: Visual Studies
Workshop Press, 1985), 99.
16
book rather than a catalog one step further by doing away with the gallery exhibition
altogether. As an art dealer, he functioned more as a conduit of information between the
artist and the public than as purveyors of objects. During the late sixties and early
seventies Siegelaub exhibited ideas rather than traditional art objects--through the
medium of books, catalogs and/or mailing lists. In addition to promoting the non-object
based works produced by a young cadre of conceptual artists, the media Siegelaub chose
enabled him to disseminate their artistic output economically. Works could be produced
frequently without subsidy, and therefore could exist outside the commercial
marketplace.

The "25" Show: Painting and Sculpture (1966)
After working at SculptureCenter in New York, Siegelaub opened his own gallery
in 1964, “Seth Siegelaub Contemporary Art and Oriental Rugs,” on Fifty-sixth Street in
Manhattan. After three months he abandoned selling rugs and changed the name to “Seth
Siegelaub Contemporary Art.” Siegelaub viewed his role as more project facilitator than
curator, and he quickly transitioned away from traditional art exhibitions. Favoring
alternative displays in his gallery, he began experimenting with new ways of showing and
disseminating art and information.
In 1966, Siegelaub mounted The "25" Show: Painting and Sculpture.
10
The show
was novel in that he organized the entire exhibition with minimal wall labels or
explanation, hoping to present the artists’ work free of any imposed order. A letter

10
Artists with work in The "25" Show included John Chamberlain, Willem de Kooning,
Hans Hofmann, Ellsworth Kelly, Franz Kline, Martin Maloney, Robert Motherwell,
Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock, Kenneth Price, Ad Reinhardt, David Smith, Jack
Tworkov, Lawrence Weiner, and Larry Zox.
17
soliciting artwork for the show outlines Siegelaub’s intents in organizing The "25" Show:
“1) To ‘see’ painting or sculpture requires a process of reduction (elimination) of those
things ‘around’ Art, 2) The individual artist has his (her) own Terms, and 3) The process
of placing and organizing work (style, history, for instance) makes it too many
concessions to the logical process of thought and language at the expense of art (fig.
1.5).”
11

Following The "25" Show Siegelaub closed the gallery to work as an independent
curator. Siegelaub later explained his motivations for finding new ways of publicizing art
and disseminating information as an independent curator in a self-orchestrated
“interview” with Charles Harrison published in the December 1969 issue of Studio
International. Harrison appears in name alone; Siegelaub framed all the questions and
answers.
12
Allegedly quoting Harrison, but using his own words, Siegelaub asserted that
he had been “principally concerned with artists for whom work does not necessarily
result in the creation of anything visible or discrete. More energetically and more
imaginatively than any other defender of the conceptual in art he [Siegelaub speaking of
himself in the “voice” of Harrison] has worked to provide new conditions of exhibiting
and publishing whereby the ideas of artists may be made as widely available as possible
without the risk of spurious identities becoming attached to them.”
13
Siegelaub used the
medium of the art magazine interview to promote the artists he represented as well as his

11
Seth Siegelaub, in a letter to Miss Roberts, January 26, 1966, Museum of Modern Art
Archives, Seth Siegelaub Papers, I.A. 49.
12
As reported to Alexander Alberro by Harrison, February 4, 1994.
13
Charles Harrison (Siegelaub) in “On Exhibitions and the World at Large: Seth
Siegelaub in Conversation with Charles Harrison,” Studio International 178, no. 917
(December 1969), 202.
18
own role as curator and originator of new exhibition and dissemination strategies.
Siegelaub understood that more people are aware of an artist’s work either
through the printed media or conversation rather than by direct confrontation with the art
itself. He argued, “For painting and sculpture, where the visual presence—colour, scale,
size, location—is important to the work, the photograph or verbalization of that work is a
bastardization of the art. But when art concerns itself with intrinsic (communicative)
value is not altered by its presentation in printed media.”
14
According to Siegelaub, the
use of catalogs to communicate and disseminate art provides the most neutral means to
present new work by artists. The catalog acts as primary information for the exhibition, as
opposed to secondary information about art in magazines or traditional “secondary”
exhibition catalogs.

Xerox Book, 1968
Siegelaub continued his experimentation with exhibitions-as-books in 1968 with
Xerox Book. He invited seven artists (Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph
Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, and Lawrence Weiner) to each create twenty-five
pages to be copied and included in the book. Specifically, Siegelaub requested that each
artist submit a twenty-five-consecutive-page project on standard eight-and-one-half-by-
eleven-inch paper to be reproduced xerographically (fig. 1.6, 1.7, and 1.8). His goal was
to create a publication that could be produced and distributed at relatively low cost. The
title of the catalog-- Xerox Book--ended up being a bit of a misnomer. To produce this
number of volumes with a Xerox machine proved to be prohibitively expensive, so the

14
Siegelaub in “On Exhibitions and the World at Large: Seth Siegelaub in Conversation
with Charles Harrison,” Studio International 178, no. 917 (December 1969), 202.
19
usual offset lithography was used to make the first edition of 1000 copies. Yet the name
of the intended publication lives on.
The twenty-five pages included by Andre (fig. 1.9 and 1.10) show a multiplication
of tumbling tinted boxes. Andre’s repeated use of the boxes, represented slightly
differently on each page, can be read as in inference to both the sequential page-turning
of the act of reading and the multiplied layering possible in using a Xerox machine for
the composition of the book. As with Andre’ work, the contributions to the Xerox Book
were often heavily engaged with the constraints, and intrinsic “site-specific” variables of
their medium.
For his section, LeWitt created a system of twenty-four combinations of line
drawings (fig. 1.11 and 1.12) entitled Drawings Series I, II, III, IV. LeWitt used a simple
vocabulary of the four basic directions in which lines can be drawn: horizontal, vertical,
45-degree diagonal right and 45-degree diagonal left. LeWitt designed twenty-four
drawings made by rotating the lines (drawn inside squares) in four sections of four. Not
long after he created Drawings Series I, II, III, IV for Xerox Book, LeWitt realized his
first wall drawing, making the radical move from drawing on paper to the wall.
Kosuth’s contribution lists the whole book’s components in order, as if attempting
to contain the entire catalog/art project/exhibition in words. The “pre-xeroxed” works in
the archival files for the show include, as labeled by Kosuth: “photograph of xerox
machine used (fig. 1.13), xerox machine’s specifications, photograph of offset machine
used, offset machine’s specifications, photograph of collation machine used, collation
machine’s specifications, photograph of binding machine used, binding machine’s
specifications, photograph of paper used, specifications of paper used, photograph of ink
20
and toner used, specifications of ink and toner used, photograph of glue used in binding,
specifications of glue used in binding, composite photograph of workers at xerox,
composite photograph of artists and director of project, composite photograph of carl
andre’s project, composite photograph of robert barry’s project, composite photograph of
douglas huebler’s project, composite photograph of joseph kosuth’s project, composite
photograph of sol lewitt’s project, composite photograph of robert morris’s project,
composite photograph of Lawrence Weiner’s project, photograph of whole book.”
15

In an interview with artist and scholar Patricia Norvell in April 1969, Siegelaub
explained that “In the Xerox Book everyone has twenty-five pages, and there’s a concern
in probably all cases with the repetition of something. But there are seven different
aspects of repetition. And of the projects in these, only Doug Huebler (fig. 1.14).and
Joseph Kosuth don’t deal with the addition of pages, don’t deal with the amount of pages
in the process of the Xerox. Carl [Andre]’s involved the successive addition, the random
addition of certain standard elements, Bob Barry’s involved the accumulation of dots (fig.
1.15).”
16

Norvell expressed her surprise that the artists included in Xerox Book created
different images on each page of his contribution, whether it be abstract or not, and not
with the whole system of the Xerox machine. Siegelaub responded: “My thought about
Xeroxing--of course I have control over what the men did--was that I chose Xerox as
opposed to offset or any other process because it’s such a bland, shitty reproduction,
really just for the exchange of information. That’s what Xerox is all about. I mean, it’s

15
Seth Siegelaub Papers, Museum of Modern Art Archives, [I.A.30].
16
Siegelaub, in an interview with Patricia Norvell, April 17, 1969, published in
Alexander Alberro and Patricia Norvell, eds., Recording Conceptual Art (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001), 39.
21
not even, you know, defined. So Xerox just cuts down on the visual aspect of looking at
the information.”
17

Norvell emphasized again that most of the artists’ choices were not necessarily
appropriate for the Xerox machine. Siegelaub somewhat dodges the question: “Well,
perhaps... [Pause] I expect that because of the art that’s being made today there’s a whole
network of experience that is peripheral to the art. People like myself--anyone who
doesn’t make the art--are going to change, too, the idea of individual ownership of works
of art and things like that, which are obviously becoming very passé conditions.”
18

Siegelaub was better able to articulate his goals for Xerox Book in a discussion with Hans
Obrist in 1999: “What I was trying to do was standardize the conditions of exhibition
with the idea that the resulting differences in each artist’s project or work, would be
precisely what the artist’s work was about. It was an attempt to consciously standardize,
in terms of an exhibition, book, or project, the conditions of production underlying the
exhibition process.”
19
The “works” in Xerox Book, therefore, could be considered
reproductions themselves.

January 5-31, 1969 (1969)
After completing Xerox Book, Siegelaub organized the opening (for the month of
January 1969) of a ‘gallery’ and publishing of a catalog for a group show of Barry,
Huebler, Kosuth, and Weiner (fig. 1.16). January 5–31, 1969 was Siegelaub’s second

17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.
19
Siegelaub, in an interview with Hans Ulrich. Obrist, in A Brief History of Curating.
(Zurich: JRP/Ringer, 2008),122.
22
group exhibition in which the catalog constituted a primary (though not only)
manifestation of the project. Also referred to as the January Show, the exhibition existed
for one month only in a temporary space at 44 East Fifty-second Street in Manhattan (fig.
1.17). Siegelaub displayed work by the four artists in one room and the catalog in another
(fig. 1.18 and 1.19).
The title January 5–31, 1969 was used to signify the show’s duration. The length of
the show was not only a literal fact but a pragmatic one as well. Siegelaub, then only
twenty-six years old, had been looking for a “gallery” space to show his artists’ work.
Another New York art dealer, Manuel Greer, assisted Siegelaub by convincing a business
friend of one of his clients to allow him to make use of a vacant office suite in the
McLendon Building (at 44 East 52
nd
Street). The midtown office space seemed suitable
for what Siegelaub had in mind.
20
However, it would only be available for the time of the
exhibition, since another business would be moving into the suite in February.
The press release for the January show emphasizes the temporary nature of the
exhibition space and briefly explains that the heart of the show is the catalog.
21
The
catalog contains no introduction to give the show a “critical” justification. Instead, each
artist provided a brief theoretical position (with the exception of Barry). Each of the
thirty-two entries to the catalog included an accurate and objective statement of fact by
the artist about the artwork. For example, entry #25—a work by Lawrence Weiner—read:

20
The suite consisted of two rooms of equal size. The previous tenants had left the office
building in early December. According to Alberro, this was precisely the type of space
for which Siegelaub was searching, since it was completely outside traditional art
institutional structures. See Alberro, Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity, p. 184
f.n. 63.
21
Press release for January 5–31, 1969, Museum of Modern Art Archives, Seth
Siegelaub Papers [I.A.40].
23
“One standard Air Force dye marker thrown into the sea.” Another by Barry read: “88 mc
Carrier Wave (FM), 1968 88 megacycles; 5 milliwatts, 9 volt DC battery.”
Not all of the work included in the exhibition was shown in the offices. Siegelaub
considered the visual presentation of work by the four artists to be ancillary, even
unnecessary to the fact that the art existed in its primary form as information. The office
lobby area, which included a desk, couch, a couple of lamps, and a coffee table with the
catalogs, was an important component of the exhibition. Siegelaub hired the young artist
Adrian Piper to work as the “receptionist” (fig. 1.20). The gallery had little in the way of
visual interest to offer visitors. Siegelaub intended instead for it to serve simply as a place
to sit, read, hang out, and perhaps view the few examples of work on the wall, whose
presence was considered incidental to their representation in the catalog.
Weiner’s contribution to the show, entitled, One standard Air Force dye marker
thrown into the sea, involved removing a section of wall from one of the offices.
Mounted on another wall, unframed, without glass, were Kosuth’s clippings of ad space
he had taken out in various newspapers, which contained categories of the word
‘definition’ from a thesaurus.
22
Huebler placed a group of photographs taken on a drive
from Massachusetts to New York in plastic sleeves on a window ledge. Barry displayed
1600 KC Carrier Wave (AM), a small plaque on the wall signifying a specific amount of
radiation released in the environment.

For Siegelaub—who would eventually abandon the art world completely and move
to France in 1971—the look of the office space was not so important. What became

22
Kosuth’s work constituted part of his early Art As Idea As Idea series, which the artist
had begun in 1967.
24
central was the fact that the exhibition had no conventional association with an art gallery
or museum in any physical sense. Siegelaub decided to push the concept of the exhibition
even further by downplaying the January show as a gallery exhibition and emphasizing
instead its presence as information within a modestly printed catalog.
23

Siegelaub explained to Norvell: “Galleries or museums begin to become a cliché
situation, because they’re not equipped to deal with the art that’s being made today. You
know, they conform and it’s new wine in the old bottles again. But I think that’s
becoming very obvious.”
24
Siegelaub subverted the traditional use of the exhibition
space and the catalog, as well as the critical journalism that often accompanies the show.
Following the close of January 31, 1969, in February 1969, the four artists included in
the show participated in a series of individual interviews with the fictious “Arthur R.
Rose,” published in Arts Magazine.
25
It is generally agreed that Kosuth offered the use of
the name “Arthur R. Rose” (which he had previously adopted as a pseudonym) as the
name of the interviewer; however, each artist, perhaps with the help of Siegelaub,
developed questions and answers for himself.
Siegelaub continues his interview with Norvell, telling her that:
…in a certain sense, that’s why I’ve been able to function, because
I create an environment that has nothing to do with space. I’m not
associated with space. I don’t have that load. You know, I have much
more flexibility which I’ll be taking greater advantage of in the next year.
So it’s like another situation. And the gallery becomes... If a man is not
involved with art that concerns itself with space--the way, for instance,

23
Seth Siegelaub, January 5-31, 1969, New York, 1969.
24
Siegelaub, in an interview with Patricia Norvell, April 17, 1969, Recording Conceptual
Art, 38.
25
“Four Interviews: Barry, Huebler, Kosuth, Weiner,” Arts Magazine 45, no. 4 (February
1969), 22-23.
25
sculpture of any type does--but if a man is principally involved with ideas,
well, you don’t need a gallery to show ideas.
.... A gallery becomes a superfluity. It’s superfluous. It becomes
unnecessary. [Laughs] It becomes unnecessary in terms of exhibition. It
still retains its focus for money, for collectors, business and administration
for an artist. But in this aspect of having a space it becomes totally
meaningless.”
26

By using the catalog as the central focus of the exhibition, Siegelaub reduced the various
artists’ works to a series of descriptive statements—primary information.

March 1969 (1969)
In contrast to the January show, which still utilized the physical space on 52
nd

Street, Siegelaub’s next curatorial project dismissed the notion that a gallery was needed
in any way. His March 1969 group exhibition existed entirely within the catalog (fig.
1.21). The catalog-as-exhibition was not only easily transportable, but also economical,
with no need for expensive physical space, insurance, or technical or logistical problems.
Further, unlike a temporary gallery show, a catalog enables the exhibition to be relatively
permanent, able to be seen by the public for years to follow.
For March 1969 Siegelaub asked thirty-one artists to make a work on an assigned
day in the month of March 1969. He mailed a standard letter of request to the artists he
hoped would submit material for the show (fig. 1.22).
27
He reproduced this letter in the

26
Siegelaub, quoted in Recording Conceptual Art, 38.
27
He sent this letter to artists Terry Atkinson, Michael Baldwin, Robert Barry, Rick
Barthelme, N.E. Thing Co., James Lee Byars, John Chamberlain, Ron Cooper, Barry
Flanagan, Alex Hay, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Stephen Kaltenbach, Joseph Kosuth,
Christine Kozlov, Richard Long, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim,
Alan Ruppersberg, Robert Smithson, De Wain Valentine, Lawrence Weiner, and Ian
Wilson.
26
catalog. The second page of the resulting catalog states “The following 31 pages is the
record of replies (or non-replies) for each of the 31 invited artists” (fig. 1.23 ).
28

Using the replies of the thirty-one artists he had invited, Siegelaub produced a
month-long exhibition of similar “works”—replies printed in chronological order
according to the calendar days represented on the front cover of the catalog (with blank
pages for nonrespondents). He sent out a reproduction of the March 1969
calendar/catalog cover as a regular gallery announcement to the people on his mailing
list.
The artists who chose to participate described the “work” they would contribute to
the exhibition, which took place at a time and location of their choice. Among the
scheduled events, Barry's contribution was the following: "Inert gas series, 1969; Helium
(2 cubic feet). Description: Sometime during the morning of March 5, 1969, 2 cubic feet
of Helium will be released into the atmosphere." Robert Huot promised that
"At Dawn, 15 March, 1969, I will go to Oakwood Beach [on Staten Island]. I will select
approximately an acre which will be cleared of driftwood (fig. 1.24). This wood will be
piled in the center of the area in an essentially conic form. At 5 P.M. the driftwood will
be set afire. It will burn thru dusk until darkness."
29
Allen Ruppersberg responded:
“Art, as life, is a solitary act. We work alone, we primarily live alone, the
work that we do is for our own benefit, and that there is a tangible result
means something only to someone else.
There is, of course, the theory that the work need only be thought, but that
lacks a vital ingredient, the experience.
I propose, on the 26
th
of March, to walk from daybreak to dark, through
the Mojave Desert in a predetermined straight line. The course will be

28
Seth Siegelaub Papers, Museum of Modern Art, New York [I.A.48].
29
Robert Huot, in a letter to Seth Siegelaub (undated), Museum of Modern Art Archives,
Seth Siegelaub Papers, I.A. 49.
27
plotted on geological maps which you may have if you like, although I
prefer just to have my name listed, with no other information.”
30

Alex Hay specified: “I will place a piece of chemical filter paper 60” x 60” x .052 on the
roof of the building at 17 Howard St. Manhattan for the 24 hours of Thursday, March 13
for whatever it accumulates.”
31
Ed Ruscha sent in a copy of the poster of his artists’
books, with a note: “Sure, I’d like to participate in your exhibition and would like to have
my name listed along with my “work” on March 27, [19]69. I have designed a poster for
the publishing company of my books and would like to show it—on the wall—by itself.
Let me know about it.”
32
Dennis Oppenheim wrote to Siegelaub:

Dear Seth,
In response to your letter dated January 21, 1969—
BURIED NOVEL
On March 25, 1969, the first four pages of Earthworks by Brian W. Aldiss
will be buried in soil deposits within New York City. 7,350 3/8” plaster
characters (calcium compound) representing the letters used in
constructing these pages will be shoveled under the soil, and left to
decompose.
Estimated time for calcium breakdown—150 years.
Project subcontracted to Randy Hardy.”
33

30
Letter to Siegelaub from Eugenia Butler, Eugenia Butler Gallery, on behalf of Allen
Ruppersberg (undated), Museum of Modern Art Archives, Seth Siegelaub Papers, [I.A.
49].
31
Alex Hay, in a letter to Seth Siegelaub (undated), Museum of Modern Art Archives,
Seth Siegelaub Papers, I.A. 49.
32
Edward Ruscha, in a letter to Seth Siegelaub, February 23, 1969, Museum of Modern
Art Archives, Seth Siegelaub Papers, I.A. 49.
33
Dennis Oppenheim, in a letter to Seth Siegelaub, February 12, 1969, Museum of
Modern Art Archives, Seth Siegelaub Papers, I.A. 49
28
The press release Siegelaub issued specifically stressed the importance of the
exhibition catalog over any work created: “The exhibition consists of (the ideas
communicated in) the catalog; the physical presence (of the work) is supplemental to the
catalog. The space will have an art function only for the duration of this exhibition.”
34

In his interview with Norvell Siegelaub describes the March Show and the Xerox
Book as situations he requested:

This is a pretty standard format that I do for all my exhibitions. I give every
artist the same available condition, the same money even, when that’s
possible, when that happens. Everything. And actually the difference would
be the art, or how they relate to it. So with the “Xerox Book” I just asked for
a twenty-five-consecutive-page project on standard eight-and-one-half-by-
eleven-inch paper to be reproduced xerographically. And that was all. And
let them do what they wanted to do. In some cases they were good; in some
cases they were not so good. Likewise, with the “March show” I gave each
of the artists a day, which was quite presumptuous. And a lot of people did
great things but there was also absolutely terrible shit in there. But I wasn’t
concerned about that. That’s their responsibility. Some people didn’t want
to have anything to do with it, because it wasn’t germane, like Carl [Andre]
didn’t want to, or Dan Flavin--I mean, for all different reasons. I mean, in
all there were seven people who didn’t participate with a reply. But some of
them consider themselves to have participated just by keeping the page
blank, whereas others abstained not wanting anything to do with the damn
thing. That’s their decision, I don’t really care. Some of them felt very
uptight about being sent a mimeographed letter, and they didn’t want to
participate because they wanted a more personal approach.
35

July-September, 1969 (1969)
Following the same approach, Siegelaub curated his next show and accompanying
catalog, titled July-September 1969, by inviting eleven artists to each make one work of

34
“Press Release,” Seth Siegelaub Papers, Museum of Modern Art, New York [I.A.49].
35
Siegelaub, quoted in Recording Conceptual Art, 35-36.
29
art at eleven different locations throughout the world: Andre at the Hague, Barry in
Baltimore, Daniel Buren in Paris, Jan Dibbets in Amsterdam, Huebler in Los Angeles,
Kosuth in Portales, New Mexico, Sol LeWitt in Düsseldorf, Richard Long in Bristol,
England, Iain Baxter in Vancouver, Robert Smithson in Yucatan, New Mexico, and
Weiner in Niagara Falls. All the work was displayed at the same time within the July,
August, and September period.
Siegelaub prepared the catalog for July-September, 1969 in a slightly more
conventional way. The catalog is more like a traditional museum’s exhibition catalog in
the sense that it documents the works as a standard guide to the exhibition. According to
Siegelaub, the only difference between his catalog and that of a museum’s is that,
“instead of walking into—say the Whitney Annual—where the catalog makes reference
to all the displayed work, here you have the whole world and not just a building for
housing an exhibition.”
36
He cites the ability to share the art and information with a wide,
international audience as the reason why the catalog comes in three languages.

Jan Dibbets Postcard (1969)
Later that year, in his “interview” with Harrison, Siegelaub emphasized the
importance of his network of booksellers and his international mailing list in his
objectives. For example, he mailed out an exhibition card in 1969, which invited the
receiver of the card to come to witness a gesture by Jan Dibbets in Amsterdam (fig. 1.25).
Siegelaub and Dibbets considered the mailed postcard not as a reproduction of an art
piece, but as an art object in itself. The back of the card reads: "ON MAY 9 (FRIDAY)

36
Siegelaub, in discussion with Ursula Meyer, November 1969, New York, NY. Seth
Siegelaub Papers, Museum of Modern Art [I.A38].
30
AND MAY 30 (FRIDAY) 1969 AT 3:00 GREENWICH MEAN TIME (9:00 EST) JAN
DIBBETS WILL MAKE THE GESTURE INDICATED ON THE OVERSIDE AT THE
PLACE MARKED X IN AMSTERDAM, HOLLAND." The front of the postcard
features a picture of the Dutch artist in his dark pea coat, winking and making a gesture
with clenched fist and upright thumb. Next to him was a shot of an ordinary row of
Amsterdam houses, a large black X marking the second-story window with a narrow
balcony where, supposedly, the artist would appear at the scheduled times.

Siegelaub’s concern during the late 1960s and early 70s could be described as a
global system of communication for the dissemination of art--specifically conceptual art.
Disregarding the typical gallery and museum traffic, he opened new channels of
communication particularly suited for conceptual and non-object art that did not require
an established environment for exhibition, crating, and transportation by air or other
means.
In an interview with Ursula Meyer in November 1969, Siegelaub elaborated on
what he saw as the potential for using printed media to present and share work created by
contemporary artists: “Communication relates to art three ways: 1). Artists knowing what
other artists are doing. 2) The art community knowing what artists are doing. 3) The
world knowing what artists are doing.”
37
Later in the interview Siegelaub emphasized to
Meyer the viability of books as a means to transmit art information, and the neutrality of
books as a source of communication. He argues that film is “not quite” neutral, as it is an

37
Ursula Meyer, in a preface to a transcript of a discussion between Meyer and
Siegelaub, November 1969, New York, NY. Museum of Modern Art Archives, Seth
Siegelaub Papers, I.A38.
31
art medium in its own right. However books are “containers” of information,
unresponsive to the environment, therefore a good way of getting information into the
world.
38

Siegelaub was firm in his belief that the most suitable means of communication
are books and catalogs, telling Meyer, “The art that I am most interested in can be
communicated with books and catalogs. Obviously most people become acquainted with
art via illustrations, slides, films. Rather than having the direct confrontation with art
itself, there is a secondhand experience, which does not do justice to the work—since it
depends upon its physical presence, in terms of color, scale, material and context—all of
which is bastardized and distorted. But when art does not any longer depend upon its
physical presence, when it has become an abstraction, it is not distorted and altered by its
representation in books and catalogs.
39

38
Siegelaub reiterated this point in his 1969 “interview” with Charles Harrison: “For
many years it has been well known that more people are aware of an artist’s work
through (1) the printed media or (2) conversation that by direct confrontation with the
work itself…. When 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. The catalogue can now act as primary information for the
exhibition, as opposed to secondary information about art in magazines, catalogues, etc.,
and in some cases the ‘exhibition’ can be the ‘catalogue’.” Seth Siegelaub in “On
Exhibitions and the World at Large: Seth Siegelaub in conversation with Charles
Harrison, September 1969,” Studio International 178, no. 917 (December 1969);
reprinted in Alexander and Blake Stimson, eds., Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 199). Note that this was a self-interview orchestrated by
Siegelaub. Harrison appears in name alone; Siegelaub framed all the questions and
answers (as reported to Alexander Alberro by Harrison, February 4, 1994).
39
Siegelaub continues: “It becomes PRIMARY information, while the preproduction of
conventional art in books or catalogs, is necessarily SECONDARY information…. For
example, a photograph of a painting is different from a painting, but a photograph of a
photograph is just a photograph, or the setting of a line of type is just a line of type. When
information is PRIMARY, the catalog can become the exhibition and a catalog auxiliary
32
Although Siegelaub does not specifically mention artists’ magazines, the self-
produced magazine’s emergence as a new kind of medium and distribution form for
conceptual art was deeply tied to its communicative possibilities within an increasingly
international art world. As he remarked in his 1969 “interview” with Harrison: “I think
that New York is beginning to break down as a center. Not that there will be another city
to replace it, but rather that where any artist is will be the center. International activity.”
40

July/August 1970
Siegelaub’s exhibition July/August 1970, which took place solely in the pages of
the July-August 1970 issue of Studio International (fig. 1.26), affirms the magazine’s
potential as a site of such “international activity.” Siegelaub invited six artists and
curators from five different countries—Germano Celant from Italy, Michel Claura from
France, Hans Strelow from the Netherlands, Charles Harrison from England, and David
Antin and Lucy Lippard from the United States—to curate an eight-page section of the
magazine by selecting artists to create works expressly for the mass-produced page. The
48-page exhibition was published in a special tri-lingual edition in English, French, and
German.
41
Siegelaub hoped that making the text available to a larger audience would help

to it, whereas in the January show the catalog was PRIMARY and no physical exhibition
was auxiliary to it.”
Siegelaub, in discussion with Meyer, November 1969, New York, NY. Museum of
Modern Art Archives, Seth Siegelaub Papers, I.A38.
40
Seth Siegelaub in “On Exhibitions and the World at Large: Seth Siegelaub in
conversation with Charles Harrison, September 1969,” 199.
41
“July/August Exhibition Book,” Studio International 180, no. 924, July-August 1970.
The Table of Contents lists the name of the artist(s) under the name of the critic who was
responsible for their participation. Section curated by David Antin: Dan Graham, Harold
33
to internationalize further the art world, telling Harrison in that: “I am concerned with
getting art out into the world and plan to continue publishing in multilingual editions to
further this end. This is a very important communications consideration. American
museums, with typical chauvinism, never publish in more than one language—just
English.”
42

Gwen Allen has argued that, “if ‘July/August’ epitomized Siegelaub’s faith in the
magazine as a transnational communicative space that might enable art to circulate freely
around the globe—a model that echoed André Malraux’s concept of the ‘museum
without walls’—it also revealed the contradictions inherent in this model. As sincere as
Siegelaub was in his desire to overcome the geographical hierarchies of the world,
‘July/August 1970’ did not approximate anything like a truly global space, and in some
ways reinforced the dominant geopolitical (art) world order.”
43
Of the thirty-seven artists
who participated, nearly half were from the United States, and all were working in North
America and Western Europe (though the exhibition in print did include the New York-
based Japanese artist On Kawara and the London-based South African Roelof Louw).

Cohen, John Baldessari, Richard Serra, Eleanor Antin, Fred Lonidier, George Nicolaidis,
Keith Sonnier; curated by Germano Celant: Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier
Paolo Calzolari, Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penono, Emilio Prini, Pistoletto, Gilberto Zorio;
curated by Michel Claura: Daniel Buren; curated by Charles Harrison: Keith Arnatt,
Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, Michael Baldwin, Harold Hurrell, Victor Burgin,
Barry Flanagan, Joseph Kosuth, John Latham, Reolof Louw; curated by Lucy R. Lippard:
Robert Barry, Stephen Kaltenbach, Lawrence Weiner, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Douglas
Huebler, N.E. Thing Co., Frederick Barthelme; curated by Hans Strelow: Jan Dibbets,
and Hanne Darboven.
42
Seth Siegelaub, “On Exhibitions and the World at Large: A Conversation with Seth
Siegelaub,” 199.
43
Gwen Allen, Artists Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press), 15.
34
Allen suggests that Siegelaub’s choice to publish the magazine in English,
French, and German implicitly marginalized other languages, countries, and even entire
continents. Furthermore, the exhibition might be criticized for maintaining other kinds of
inequalities—for example, it included only two women artists: Hanne Darboven and
Eleanor Antin. She argues that: “Siegelaub’s faith in the printed page as a neutral,
universal space failed to account for the ways in which publications are themselves
implicated in the same social and political places that structure actual places—in this
case, manifesting the privileged position of a New York male art dealer and British
commercial art magazine.”
44

According to Allen, “Siegelaub’s pragmatic embrace of the art magazine as a new
site of display highlights the contradictions inherent in conceptual art’s utopian attempt to
escape the market, since the magazine’s promotional publicity was central to Siegelaub’s
ability to market this art.”
45
The contradiction Allen rightly identifies in Siegelaub’s
marketing and self-promotional strategies becomes clearer in light of the actions he
championed on behalf of the rights of artists.

The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement (1971)
Siegelaub’s interest in new exhibition and communication strategies derived not
only from the type of conceptual art he championed, but also from his politics. In a
speech at a 1969 assembly of the Art Workers’ Coalition (AWC), Siegelaub reminded his
audience that their talents and abilities as artists were the tools that would allow them to

44
Ibid. Allen refers her readers to Alexander Alberro, Conceptual Art and the Politics of
Publicity for an excellent account of these contradictions in the context of Siegelaub’s
activities and publications.
45
Ibid.
35
gain power within the institutionalized art world of museums and galleries: “…it would
seem that the art is the one things that you have an the artist always has which picks you
out from anyone else. There’s a class of human beings who make art and a class who
don’t, some of whom happen to be curators of museums, directors or museum trustees.
This is the way your leverage lies. I would think that by using that leverage you could
achieve much greater goals than in other ways. It’s the one seemingly unique aspect of an
artist, that he makes art and no-one else does.”
46
Siegelaub’s speech followed an attempt
of the AWC to enforce a series of demands to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in
January of that year (fig. 1.27) that went largely unimplemented. Siegelaub suggests that
withholding art from museums such as MoMA might be an effective means of social
protest (as opposed to other actions), since the greatest asset and leverage point artists
have is their art.
In 1971, continuing his efforts to promote artists outside of the market system,
which profited dealers more than the artists themselves, Siegelaub drafted The Artist's
Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement (fig. 1.28), also referred to as the Artist's
Contract. This was the realization of a project initiated by Siegelaub and lawyer Robert
Projanksy in 1970 entailing the organization, preparation, and publication of a sale
contract for artists that would outline and protect the artist’s moral and economic rights.
The contract includes a provision that entitles the artist to fifteen percent of any profits
made on the resale of his or her work. The preparation, publication, and distribution of
the eight-page fold-out poster, designed by Christos Gianokos, was underwritten by The

46
Transcript of Statement for Art Workers’ Coalition’s “Open Hearing,” April 10, 1969
(Published by the Art Workers’ Coalition). Museum of Modern Art Archives, Seth
Siegelaub Papers, I.A. 37.
36
School of Visual Arts, New York. By 1972, the contract had been reworked, translated,
and published in a similar format in at least four other languages (French, German,
Italian, and Dutch), and there have been many reprintings and editions since then. The
contract embodies Siegelaub’s culminating effort to help artists achieve more power in
the museum and gallery-dominated art world.
Circulated through art communities in America and Europe, it could be spread out
like a poster and nailed to the wall or cut into eight separate pages. On its face in thick
sans-serif type the title reads: THE ARTIST’S RESERVED RIGHTS TRANSFER AND
SALE AGREEMENT. Beneath the title the small typeface gives the revolutionary
document the decidedly un-revolutionary appearance of a legal document.
Siegelaub told Newsweek’s art reporter Douglas Davis: “This doesn’t imply any
radical restructuring of the art world… We’re not putting down museums and collectors,
or putting up artists.” Projansky concurred, elaborating that “All we want to do is make a
subtle change in the traditional way of selling art and give the artist a few rights he
doesn’t have now. The agreement will take a little bit from here and shift it to there.”
47

Siegelaub and Projansky designed the document as a portable contract which any
artist or dealer could ask a buyer to sign. Artists traditionally never benefit from the
resale of his or her work by a collector, who may sell it for much more than the price
originally paid to the artist. The contract would therefore give the artist fifteen percent of
the profit if the collector sold the work of art to another party. Other clauses in the
contract granted the artist a percentage of, and a say in, reproduction rights, public
exhibition of his or her work, and any “rental income” paid to the collector for the use of

47
“New Deal for Art?,” Newsweek (March 29, 1971), 65.
37
the work in exhibitions. The contract, which must be signed by successive collectors,
stays in effect for the artist’s lifetime.
By the time of Siegelaub and Projansky’s interview with Davis was published in
Newsweek, the collaborators had already mailed out 500 contracts to people in the art
world. In addition, the School of Visual Arts in New York subsidized the printing,
production and mailing of 3000 more. “Within a few months,” said Projansky, “every
important collector in the United States and Europe will know this document. The artists
and the dealers can make Xerox copies and enforce it if they have the strength.”
48

In a handwritten draft of his appeal to artists (fig. 1.29), Siegelaub opened with a
reminder that “there is no art without you.”
49
The passage reads as a manifesto, laying the
foundation for the creation of the Artist's Contract. Siegelaub then asked that artists
mailed the appeal answer a short questionnaire: “1) Would it be possible for you to sell
just an 8% interest and possession in a work of art and still retain for yourself 20%, plus
aesthetic and exhibition control?; 2) Would it be possible for you to loan a work of art to
a museum for a rental fee? Or a percentage of the gate?; 3) Would it be possible for you
to receive royalties on books on or about your art?; 4) Would it be possible for artists to
control museums?; Will it ever be possible for artists to even control the immediate
environment in which their works are known?”
50

48
“New Deal for Art?,” Newsweek (March 29, 1971), 67.
49
Handwritten draft of appeal to artists written by Siegelaub, MoMA I.A.90.

50
Ibid.
38
The author of the Newsweek article assesses the contemporary state of the art
market in alliance with the aims of Siegelaub and Projansky:

The buying and selling of art has been for centuries an intensely private,
personal affair, conditioned by both tax laws and culture. Unlike the other
arts, painting and sculpture have been based economically upon the single,
unique object, which on man can possess for himself alone.
In the process, the artist’s ‘rights’ have suffered. Siegelaub and
Projansky are shining a light on these recessed facts…. Siegelaub has
commitments from artists around the world, but he knows that the next
step is out of his hands…. Whether the artists step up and follow through,
“it’s clear that the ancient art of collecting is entering a new phase.”
51

Siegelaub ensured that the Agreement was distributed internationally. Copies and
guidelines were distributed at Documenta 5 and published in the April 1971 issue of
Studio International, vol. 151 (April 1971), 142-44. In the article accompanying the
contract’s publication, Siegelaub carefully frames it as a response to the concerns of the
AWC: “The Agreement has been designed to remedy some generally acknowledged
inequities in the art world, particularly artists’ lack of control over the use of their work
and participation in its economies after they no longer own it.”
52
Siegelaub conceived of
the contract as a practical written translation of the anti-capitalist idealism he associated
with both the artists’ rights movement and conceptual practices.
53
For Siegelaub the
function of language, print, and books (his catalogs) served as a formal means to

51
“New Deal for Art?,” Newsweek (March 29, 1971), 67.
52
Siegelaub, “The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement,” Studio
International 151 (April 1971), 142.
53
Elizabeth Ferrel, “The Lack of Interest in Maria Eichhorn’s Work,” in Art after
Conceptual Art, eds. Alexander Alberro and Sabeth Buchmann (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 2006), 202.
39
construct meaning. Among such distinct and diverse artists as Weiner, Barry, Huebler,
and Kosuth, the relationship of language to the representation of ideas within these media
was essential to their work.

This first chapter has focused on Siegelaub’s process of creating unconventional
catalogs for his shows of conceptual art. Given its emphasis upon language, conceptual
art required a means of representation by which the intentions of its practioners could be
communicated more directly through media supplementary to, or in place of, exhibitons.
These documents, or components as they were sometimes called, included printed or
handwritten texts, such as Siegelaub’s catalogs, as well as audiotapes, photographs,
videotapes, diagrams, drawings, maps, books, film, and installations.
The rest of the dissertation is not strictly about conceptual art per se, but is
indebted to it materially and ideologically. Some of the early experimental catalogs
produced for major New York museums in the second chapter were produced for
exhibitions of conceptual art (such as Information at the Museum of Modern Art), but
others were not (for example, Harlem on My Mind at the Metropolitan Museum of Art).
“An anti-catalog,” the subject of the third chapter, employs the aesthetics of conceptual
art to serve the AMCC’s strategy of active political engagement. In the fourth chapter, the
display of conceptual art made by women provides a jumping off point for the broader
theme of women curators working to increase the exposure and acceptance of women
artists in their all-women shows. Throughout the dissertation, the curators, artists, and
critics featured in the case studies experimented with the formal and conceptual
possibilities of the printed catalog.
40

Figure 1.1 Heavy Industry Publications advertising books by Ed Ruscha, ca. 1968.
Archives of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

41

Figure 1.2 Detail, Heavy Industry Publications advertising books by Ed Ruscha, ca. 1968

42

Figure 1.3 Daniel Spoerri’s “catalogue” for his 1962 exhibition at the Galerie Lawrence
in Paris. Topographie Anecdotée du Hasard (An Anecdoted Topography of Chance), New
York: Something Else Press, 1962.

Figure 1.4 Marcel Broodthaers’s Muses Oeuf Frites Pots Charbon (Mussels Eggs French
Fries Pots Coal), 1966

43

Figure 1.5 Duplicate of letter written by Siegelaub soliciting works of art for The "25"
show, 1966.

44

Figure 1.6 Seth Siegelaub, editor. “The Xerox Book.” (Carl Andre, Robert Barry,
Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Lawrence Weiner). 1968.
370 pages/plates. Paper cover. 21 x 27.5 cm., 7 original 25-page works, by the 7 artists.

45

Figure 1.7 Mock-up draft of title page for “Xerox Book”, 1968.

46

Figure 1.8 Mock-up draft of title page for “Xerox Book”, 1968.

47

Figure 1.9 One of 25 pages by Carl Andre, Xerox Book, 1968

48

Figure 1.10 Squares used by Carl Andre for “Xerox Book,” 1968. Archives of the
Museum of Modern Art, New York.

49

Figure 1.11 Title page for Sol LeWitt, Xerox Book, 1968

Figure 1.12 One of 25 pages by Sol LeWitt, Xerox Book, 1968
50

Figure 1.13 One of 25 pages by Joseph Kosuth, “Photograph of Xerox Machine Used,”
Mock up for “Xerox Book,” 1968. Archives of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

51

Figure 1.14 One of 25 pages by Robert Barry in “Xerox Book,” 1968. Archives of the
Museum of Modern Art, New York.

52

Figure 1.15 One of 25 pages by Robert Barry in “Xerox Book,” 1968. Archives of the
Museum of Modern Art, New York.

53

Figure 1.16 Photograph of the artists who participated in the January Show (Robert
Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, and Lawrence Weiner), photograph by Seth
Siegelaub, 1969.

54

Figure 1.17 Photograph of Seth Siegelaub standing on steps of 44 East Fifty-second
Street in Manhattan, location of the January 5–31, 1969 exhibition. Photograph by
Robert Barry, 1969.

55

Figure 1.18 Siegelaub's gallery floor plan for January 5–31, 1969, c. 1968-69.

56

Figure 1.19 Installation photograph of January 5-31, 1969.
The catalogs were displayed on a coffee table next to a couch in the entryway.

Figure 1.20 Installation photograph of January 5-31, 1969, artist Adrian Piper in the front
room of the exhibition that contained the catalog.
57

Figure 1.21 Seth Siegelaub, editor. “March 1969.” Cover. (Terry Atkinson, Michael
Baldwin, Robert Barry, Rick Barthelme, N.E. Thing Co., James Lee Byars, John
Chamberlain, Ron Cooper, Barry Flanagan, Alex Hay, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot,
Stephen Kaltenbach, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, Richard Long, Robert Morris,
Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Alan Ruppersberg, Robert Smithson, De Wain
Valentine, Lawrence Weiner, and Ian Wilson.). 1969. 36 leaves. Paper cover; stapled on
top. 17.8 x 21.6 cm.

58

Figure 1.22 Seth Siegelaub, letter of request to artists invited to submit work for the
March 1969 exhibition

59

Figure 1.23 Seth Siegelaub, second page of March 1969 exhibition catalog, 1969

60

Figure 1.24 Barry Flanagan’s response to Siegelaub’s letter of request to artists invited to
submit work for the March 1969 exhibition

61

Figure 1.25 Jan Dibbets. Untitled. 1969. Photolithographed postcard, 4 1/16 x 6” (10.3 x
15.2 cm). Publisher: Seth Siegelaub, New York.

62

Figure 1.26 The Art Workers’ Coalition’s 13 Demands, submitted to Bates Lowry,
director of The Museum of Modern Art, 1969.

63

Figure 1.27 Cover of “July/August Exhibition Book,” Studio International 180, no. 924,
July-August 1970.

64

Figure 1.28 Seth Siegelaub, Mock-up draft of the Artist's Contract in English, c. 1971.

65

Figure 1.29 Handwritten draft of appeal to artists written by Siegelaub, 1970.

66
Chapter Two
Early Experimental Museum Catalogs

Siegelaub’s methods of displaying conceptual art in catalogs set a precedent for
unconventional, politicized catalogs for exhibitions at major art museums. This chapter
focuses on several shows at major New York art museums for which the curators utilized
the catalog as an active space of experimentation. Traditionally catalogs recorded, and
typically reproduced, work shown in the exhibition for posterity. The catalog served as a
means of documenting what happened, for either visitors to the museum or gallery, or for
those who did not have the opportunity to view the work on display. In contrast, each
catalog examined below challenges the reader’s (and art historian’s) expectations
regarding what becomes documented and what does not.

Harlem on My Mind, 1969, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
In 1969, the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted Harlem on My Mind: Cultural
Capital of Black America, 1900–1968, an exhibition that sought to explore the cultural
history of the predominantly Black community of Harlem, New York.
54
Whereas the
Siegelaub’s catalogs constituted a formal response to the conceptual art in his exhibitions,

54
The title of the exhibition was taken from the song of the same title written by Irving
Berlin in 1933, performed in the musical As Thousands Cheer (1933). This Broadway
production was the first to feature an African-American woman—Ethel Waters was given
star billing in the production. Waters sang “Harlem on My Mind,” which told the story of
a woman who left Harlem for stardom but missed her home. Bridget R. Cooks has
argued that “Borrowing this musical reference as the title of the exhibition invokes the
importance of Harlem as a home to Black Americans and suggests the separate worlds of
Black and White America.” Cooks, “Black Artists and Activism: Harlem on My Mind
(1968), American Studies, 48, no. 1 (Spring 2007), f.n. 2.
67
the experimental nature of the Harlem on My Mind catalog existed in its content. Curator
Allon Schoener organized the catalog chronologically, with a text comprised of collected
newspaper clippings and articles (fig. 2.1). The catalog is profusely illustrated in black-
and-white with images ranging from quotidian shots of Harlem to photographs of African
American cultural icons such as James Vanderzee, Langston Hughes, and Lena Horne.
Steven C. Dubin describes the Metropolitan Museum’s Harlem on My Mind show
as “possibly the most controversial American exhibition ever mounted.”
55
The
Metropolitan Museum, America’s wealthiest museum, traditionally presented more
conservative shows. However, Thomas P.F. Hoving, appointed as Museum director in
April 1967, tested the Museum's prim and poised reputation. Hoving articulated the goal
of the exhibition in the preface in the catalog: “To me Harlem on My Mind is a
discussion. It is a confrontation. It is an education. It is a dialogue. And today we better
have these things. Today there is a growing gap between people, and particularly between
black people and white people. And despite the efforts to do otherwise. There is little
communication. Harlem on My Mind will change that.”
56

Plans for the exhibition certainly generated communication, though perhaps not as
Hoving had envisioned. After months of discussions with the Museum’s administrators,
Harlem-based artist Benny Andrews formed the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition

55
Steven C. Dubin, “Crossing 125th Street: Harlem on My Mind Revisited,” in Displays
of Power: Memory and Amnesia in the American Museum (New York and London: New
York University Press, 1999), 19.
56
Thomas Hoving, “Preface,” in Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black
America, 1900-1968, ed. Allon Schoener (New York: Random House, 1968),
unpaginated.
68
(BECC) in his studio on January 9, 1969, specifically for the purpose of protesting
Harlem on My Mind.
57

According to Cliff Joseph, co-chair of the BECC: “We had several protests about
the way the show was set up. One of the things we were in protest against was the fact
that Mr. Schoener chose not to use the talents and expertise of any of the members of the
black community - artists, art experts, leaders - to help in setting up the show. One other
omission was the fact that there were no black painters or black sculptors included in the
exhibit. This was especially hard to understand since the show was supposedly set up for
the purpose of showing to the public the cultural contributions that had been made by
members of the black community.”
58
Joseph specified that, “We let it be known to Tom
Hoving, the director of the Metropolitan Museum, and to all concerned with the show,
that we were dissatisfied with this factor: that there were no paintings, no sculptural
works by black artists in the show. We certainly did not agree with the form in which the
show was presented; it was a little more than a photographic exposition.”
59
The BECC
argued that the omission of work by black artists and the lack of contextualization of
what was on view in Harlem on My Mind treated the blacks represented as subjects to be
viewed rather than cultural producers of images of Harlem.
Curator Allon Schoener initiated the idea of presenting a show about Harlem,

57
Benny Andrews stated that the BECC was formed “for the purpose of making sure
there would be no more Harlem on My Mind exhibitions foisted on the public, both black
and white.” Benny Andrews, “The B.E.C.C. Black Emergency Cultural Coalition,” Arts
Magazine (Summer 1970), 18-19.
58
Oral history interview with Cliff Joseph, 1972, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution.
59
Oral history interview with Cliff Joseph, 1972, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution.
69
which Hoving adamantly supported. In 1966 Schoener had curated a show at New York
City’s Jewish Museum while he was the assistant director there, The Lower East Side:
Portal to American Life (1870-1924). Schoener’s exhibition surrounded visitors to the
Lower East Side show with integrated sound, image, and text to re-create the teeming
immigrant Jewish ghetto. It enveloped the visitor with slide projections, films, photo
murals, and recordings.
60
The Lower East Side exhibition was well received by critics
and proved to be a popular success. Schoener hoped to achieve something similar with
the Harlem show, though several important differences between the two exhibitions and
catalogs resulted in a more complicated, controversial outcome.
Jewish artists were well represented in the Lower East Side show. Its catalog drew
heavily from the writings of immigrant Jews themselves, and the documentary images
included not only photographs, but also paintings bearing the artists’ signatures. Jewish
artists were well represented. Dubin has highlighted the fact that, by 1966, most of the
Jewish community had moved on from the immigrant experience, geographically and
financially. The exhibition affirmed how far one ethnic group had progressed to integrate
into the local community and realize the American dream.
Harlem, unlike the Jewish community that had lived in the Lower East Side of
Manhattan, was still largely impoverished and segregated. According to Schoener, “…the
Lower East Side show was sort of a sentimental meditation on life at another time, and it
didn’t have a very clear-cut political agenda. I mean, the objective of the [Harlem on My
Mind] exhibition was to create an awareness that didn’t exist. So it questioned some very
fundamental attitudes. And it dealt with what was still a major issue in American life,

60
Though trained as art historian, Schoener also produced TV shows and showed great
interest in new communication technology.
70
racism.”
61

The catalog generated as much controversy as did the show itself. Having sought to
include “authentic” comment on the cultural content of Harlem on My Mind, Schoener
printed a term paper of high school student Candice Van Ellison in the catalog. Van
Ellison, a Harlem resident and recent graduate of Theodore Roosevelt High School in the
Bronx, had served as an intern at the New York Council on the Arts through its “Ghetto
Arts Corps” program. Van Ellison was the only Harlem resident Schoener and the
Metropolitan Museum asked to write an essay for the catalog—no historians, art
historians, or other scholars were asked to contribute.
62
The catalog, composed almost
entirely of news articles and photographs, only included two other texts: a preface by
Hoving and a forward by Schoener.
63
When Schoener decided to include the essay in the
catalog, he asked Van Ellison to omit the footnotes and quotations so that the essay
would seem to be less academic and written in her own words.
64

61
Dubin’s interview with Schoener, January 18, 1997, Displays of Power: Memory and
Amnesia in the American Museum, Ch.2 f.n. 6.
62
Cooks, “Black Artists and Activism: Harlem on My Mind (1968), American Studies,
48, no. 1 (Spring 2007), 21.
63
Two later versions of the catalog were published in 1979 and 1995. The 1979 version
extended the years explored to 1978. In this version, Hoving’s “Preface,” Van Ellison’s
“Introduction,” and Schoener’s “Editor’s Foreword” were omitted. Schoener provided a
different foreword along with a foreword by Black scholar Nathan Irvin Huggins. In the
1995 version, the original texts from the 1968 catalog appeared along with a new
“Foreword” by Black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and a new introduction by Schoener.
Cooks, “Black Artists and Activism: Harlem on My Mind (1968), American Studies, 48,
no. 1 (Spring 2007), f.n. 52.
64
Martin Arnold, “Museum Edited Essay by Girl, 17,” New York Times, February 1,
1969, 29; Thomas Hoving, Making the Mummies Dance: Inside the Metropolitan
Museum of Art (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 176; Cooks, “Black Artists and
71
In the essay, Van Ellison discussed the relationship between Black, Irish, Jewish,
and Puerto Rican communities in New York:

It is true that only a small portion of Harlem’s population is Irish, yet a
strong Irish influence is exerted on Harlem through the city’s police force.
As early as 1900, when the city’s main poverty concentration was in the
Tenderloin, a bloody three-day riot was sparked when an Afro-American
named Arthur Harris knifed and killed an Irish policeman who was
manhandling his girl. This incident was just the spark needed to set off the
already strained Irish-Afro-American relations. The numerous tales of
police brutality in the riot ranged from policemen merely looking the other
way while mobs attacked Blacks, to the arresting of Negroes and beating
them senseless inside the precinct…. Anti-Jewish feeling is a natural result
of the black Northern migration. Afro-Americans in Northeastern industrial
cities are constantly coming into contact with Jews. Pouring into lower-
income areas in the city, the Afro-American pushes out the Jew. Behind
every hurdle that the Afro-American has yet to jump stands the Jew who has
already cleared it. Jewish shopkeepers are the only remaining “survivors” in
the expanding black ghettos. This is especially true in Harlem, where almost
all of the high-priced delicatessens or other small food stores are run by
Jews…. The lack of competition in this area allows the already badly
exploited Black to be further exploited by Jews. One other factor worth
noting is that, psychologically, Blacks may find anti-Jewish sentiments
place them for once, within a majority. Thus, our contempt for the Jew
makes us feel more completely American in sharing a national prejudice.
65

It was later determined that some of Van Ellison’s inflammatory quotes were paraphrased
from a book by Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot: The
Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1963), which was not considered a racist text. Van Ellison’s original term
paper referenced the book in footnotes that Schoener asked her to remove.
66

Activism: Harlem on My Mind (1968), American Studies, 48, no. 1 (Spring 2007), 19.
65
Van Ellison, “Introduction,” in Schoener (1968), 13-14.
66
Hoving, Making the Mummies Dance, 176; Schoener, Harlem on My Mind (1995),
unpaginated.
72
In the week before the exhibition opened, word spread quickly about the content of
Van Ellison’s essay, and there was an immediate uproar. The front page headline of the
January 13, 1969 issue of New York Post Magazine declared, “Museum Withdraws
Catalog Attacked as a Slur on Jews.”
67
On January 17, 1969, Mayor Lindsay referred to
the catalog as racist and requested that it no longer be sold.
68
On January 18, Dore
Schary, the president of the Anti-Defamation League, said the catalog was “something
akin to the worst hatred ever spewed out by the Nazis.”
69
The New York Post Magazine
credited it with sparking the biggest flap since Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a
Staircase shocked visitors to the 1913 Armory show.
70
The catalog infuriated and
horrified blacks and Jews (as well as New Yorkers of Irish and Puerto Rican decent), and
propelled the Jewish Defense League, the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, and
members of the right-wing John Birch Society all onto upper Fifth Avenue to man picket
lines in front of the Met.
71

Although Schoener and Hoving defended Van Ellison and the catalog, Hoving,

67
“Museum Withdraws Catalog Attacked as a Slur on Jews,” New York Post Magazine
(January 13, 1969), 1.

68
Schoener, Harlem on My Mind (1995), unpaginated.
69
Thomas Hoving, Making the Mummies Dance: Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 172.
70
Jerry Tallmer, “The Show on Everyone’s Mind,” New York Post Magazine, January
25, 1969, 4.
71
The Jewish Defense League is a Jewish organization founded in New York City in
1968 whose self-described purpose was to protect Jews from local manifestations of anti-
Semitism. The Black Emergency Coalition (BECC) was a New York-based organization
of African American and white artists founded in the fall of 1968. The BECC focused
their activism on what they perceived as the failure of New York’s museums and
galleries to exhibit the work of black artists.
73
responding to public criticism, insisted that a disclaimer by Van Ellison be placed in the
introduction. An insert published in the January 19, 1969, issue of the New York Times,
stated that, “In regards to the controversy concerning the section in my introduction
dealing with intergroup relations, I would like to state that the facts were organized
according to the socio-economic realities of Harlem at the time, and that any racist
overtones which were inferred from the passages quoted out of context are regrettable.”
72

Though the catalog inferred that Van Ellison penned the disclaimer, Schoener revealed in
a 1993 interview that the insert was written through a series of telephone conversations
between Van Ellison and Bernard Botein, chairman of the Special Committee on Revival
and Religious Prejudice of New York.
73

Hoving’s efforts to ameliorate the controversy over Van Ellison’s essay were
unsuccessful. The New York City Council threatened to withhold city fund to the
Metropolitan Museum unless it stopped selling the catalog. On February 7, 1969, the
museum discontinued catalog sales (though retail bookstores continued to sell it).
74

Twenty-six thousand copies of the catalog were stored in the basement of the
Metropolitan. Eventually they were donated to various Black organizations.
75

The radicality of the Harlem on My Mind catalog derived from its content—the

72
Murray Schumach, “Harlem Exhibition Opens to Crowds,” New York Times, January
19, 1969, 61.
73
Interview between Birt and Schoener, Roger C. Birt, “A Life in Photography,” in
VanDerZee: Photographer, 1886–1983 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, in association
with the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1993), 62.
74
“Museum Withdraws Controversial Catalog,” New York Amsterdam News, February 8,
1969, 4.
75
Schoener, Harlem on My Mind (1995), 10.
74
exclusion of work from the exhibition and installation shots in favor of newspaper
articles, and especially the essay by Van Ellison—rather than its form. The same could be
said of the next catalog considered in this chapter that accompanied a show at the
Museum of Modern Art displayed the following year. The curator and creator of the
catalog further radicalized the content by incorporating photographs and other
documentation related to the contemporary political context of 1970.

Information, 1970, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
The Museum of Modern Art’s Information show, curated by Kynaston McShine,
then the Museum’s associate curator of painting and sculpture, was intended by the
Museum to introduce the products of some four years of relatively underground
conceptual art to a broader public. In the catalog (fig. 2.2), McShine states that in 1969
the Museum asked him to put together “an international report” of the works of younger
artists. He soon found that the show had to be narrowed down to what seemed to be the
strongest “style” or international movement of the last several years. He elected to call
his show “Information” rather than Conceptual Art or Documentation Art, hoping that
more divergent art works could be fit under his title than under a stricter, more limiting
one.
76

Each artist who was invited to participate in the Information exhibition submitted
two proposals--one for his or her representation in the exhibition and one for his or her
page or pages in the catalog. In a few cases some artists participated in the exhibition

76
John Perreault, “Information,” The Village Voice, July 16, 1970, 14.
75
only through their representation in the catalog.
77
The catalog was done by offset printing
and was ready for the opening. McShine gave each artist free reign in regards to his or
her own contribution to the catalog. Since some artists were represented solely in the
catalog, and many artists who were represented in the exhibition submitted a different
work for the catalog, the catalog became another show in itself.
The Information show was one of the most revolutionary exhibitions held at
MoMA, largely because of the political context of 1970, when the relationship between
‘the artist and politics’ was intensified. It was intensified by, on one hand, reactions to
more details emerging from the trial of Lieutenant Calley for the massacre of Vietnamese
civilians by the United States military at My Lai and to the killing of student protestors. It
was also intensified by artists’ and writers’ collective action under organizations such as
the Art Workers’ Coalition (AWC), Women Artists and Revolution (WAR), Guerrilla Art
Action Group (GAAG), and the Ad Hoc Women Artists’ Committee.
In 1969, GAAG had entered MoMA and replaced Kasmir Malevich’s White on
White with a manifesto on the social responsibilities of museums (fig. 2.3 and fig. 2.4). In
another action members of GAAG and AWC held copies of their And Babies? poster in
front of Picasso’s Guernica (fig. 2.5) in order to recontextualize the painting on display at

77
From a draft of ‘DESCRIPTION OF THE CATALOGUE INFORMATION’: “Each
artist who was invited to participate in the exhibition entitled INFORMATION was asked
to make two proposals; one for his or her representation in the exhibition pace itself and
one for the page(s) in the catalogue. In a few cases, an artist was invited to participate in
the exhibition only through his representation in the catalogue. Therefore, the catalog is
an essential adjunct of the exhibition as well as a visual record of every artist in the
show., including a film listing from which will be drawn the final selection of films to be
shown in the Olivetti juke box. As well as having this record of every person included in
the exhibition, which is the only place that at any given moment the show will exist in its
entirety, the catalogue will contain a short essay by Lucy L. Lippard, and a booklist of
relevant material written in recent months.” Museum of Modern Art Archives, New
York, “Information” Curatorial Exhibition Files #934.
76
the Museum of Modern Art.
78
The AWC reached out to art magazines to request that they
use this image on their covers; Studio International was the only one that did. The
following year, the Ad Hoc Women’s Art Committee, a subgroup of the AWC, which
included artists Poppy Johnson, Brenda Miller, and Faith Ringgold as well as critic Lucy
Lippard, led a protest against the predominantly male Whitney Annual (fig. 2.6). The
protesters sent a letter to the Museum demanding that fifty percent of the artists in the
exhibition should be women with the additional stipulation that half of those women be
black. They also staged demonstrations and sit-ins during the two and a half months
leading up to the exhibition opening.

The spirit of this activist practice is evident in the Information exhibition; for
example, artist Hans Haacke created a visitors’ poll and ballot box on the question,
“Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon’s
Indochina policy be a reason for you not to vote for him in November?” (fig. 27 and fig.
2.8) And though MoMA intended for Information to introduce conceptual art to a broader
public,
79
when the show opened, many of the artists had revised their contributions to
express their outrage at the Vietnam War.
McShine has stated that artists participating in the Information exhibition revised
their contributions due to their dissatisfaction with the War and other human rights
injustices. Unfortunately, however, archival records of any changes made by artists do

78
The And babies? poster uses a photograph of the My Lai Massacre taken in 1968 by
U.S. combat photographer Ronald L. Heberle. The AWC overlaid Herberle’s picture of
dead South Vietnamese women and children with a quote from a Mike Wallace CBS
News television interview with one of the soldiers who witnessed the killings. Red
lettering at the top reads “Q: And babies,” and at the bottom, “A: And babies.”
79
See (fig. 2.9 through fig. 2.26) for installation shots.
77
not exist. Almost all of the exhibition records and files pertaining to the show burned in a
fire in McShine’s apartment. Not even a copy of the exhibition checklist remains. Given
that the catalog also does not directly reference the realized art objects on view at the
show, no record of the items on display exists.
The exhibition catalog looks like a conceptual artist’s book, with informal
typewritten text, news photography and other non-art imagery, and a diverse
interdisciplinary reading list. In a letter to Richard Oldenburg, dated April 29, 1970,
McShine writes:

Dear Richard:
I thought that it might be helpful to send you a quick review of
what we discussed for the catalog INFORMATION.
Cover: A green stock with a black screening of communications
systems. Overprint of the words INFORMATION, Summer 1970. The
Museum of Modern Art, New York in red. Both front and back being
similar. Cover to be slightly larger than page size.
Edges of pages to be green.
Endpapers: Two photographs of crowd shots.
Comments: Title page and copyright
List of artists
Text by K. McS.
Short article by Lucy Lippard
Photographic “footnotes”
Filmography
Booklist
Acknowledgements; photo credits; Trustees’ List
(All illustrations in black and white).
The cover design can be adapted for use as posters both large and small
for publicity purposes. It will also be suitable for use as signs during the
installation and for the vitrine on 53
rd
St.
The basic design for the contributing members and general
membership will also stem from the cover design.
I hope the number of copies printed will take into account the large
number of artists and filmmakers in the exhibition; the many people to
whom I am and shall be indebted for making the exhibition possible (e.g.
78
almost the whole MoMA staff, the International Council, and some
corporations, etc.); the international art press, “galleries,” lenders, etc.
80

The catalog cover, a green stock with a black screening of communications
systems, includes photographs of a typewriter, a Braun radio-record player (MoMA
collection), a “Dataspeed” unit for transmitting info to another machine at 1050
words/minute, a Diebold Inc. microform information retrieval system, a Diebold viewing
monitor for microform information system, a Kodak instamatic camera, a Kodak
instamatic movie projector, a U.S. mailman, a NASA Syncom C--communications
satellite, an Olivetti visual juke box, a “picturephone,” a push button contour phone, a
push button telephone (desk model), the Queen Elizabeth II ship at sea, a Sony canister
radio, a Sony trinitron color TV, a Sony video tape recorder, a Trans Europe express
train, a TWA 747 jet, a Volkswagen car, a Xerox machine, a movie camera with a zoom
lens, an Olivetti desk computer-programmer, an Olivetti typewriter, and a homing
pigeon.
81

Within the interior pages, the AWC’s And Babies poster is reproduced (fig. 2.27),
and the catalog includes images of the Great Wall of China (fig. 2.28), a man on the
moon, (fig. 2.29) Che Guevara (fig. 2.30), Marcel Duchamp (fig. 2.31), student protestors
putting flowers in guns (fig. 2.32) the Black Panthers (fig. 2.33), and members of rock
and roll groups (fig. 2.34). The endpapers are serial photographs of a vast unidentified
demonstration in Washington (fig. 2.35 and fig. 2.36).
In an essay about “Information” in the Summer 1970 issue of Arts Magazine, critic

80
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Archives, CUR, 934.
81
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Archives, CUR, 934.
79
and advocate of contemporary artists, Gregory Battcock asked his readers to:

Imagine: 1. An art exhibition that started out by inviting artists’
contributions without anybody having seen the works first; 2. an exhibition
with a catalog that will illustrate over 100 works—many of which will not
be included in the show; 3. a catalog that lists artists that aren’t represented
in the show at all; 4. an exhibition that includes works that are not included;
5. an exhibition that is all about a new trend in art but that doesn’t try to
invent a label for the newly discovered trend.
82

The “Information” show presented an opportunity for conceptual artists to use the
museum, as well as the accompanying catalog, as a medium with which to work. John
Perreault wrote in The Village Voice:

…the catalogue is an essential adjunct of the exhibition--it is a visual index
of the artists in the exhibition, it includes a listing of all the films related to
this style, a booklist of the relevant material recently written, an “essay” by
Lucy Lippard and a short text by the director of the exhibition, Kynaston
McShine. It will also illustrate many of the attitudes that have given rise to
this international style or movement.….
The catalogue is not only an important reference but also an
independent publication which contributes to the understanding of the art
for those who are not able to see the exhibition. It is essential that because
it exists on these two levels that it be available to the public at minimum
cost. Any subsidy would be a vital contribution to the success and purpose
of the exhibition.”
83

In a memo to McShine located in the MoMA archives, a staff member wrote to
request the curator’s approval of his or her draft description of the purpose of the
Information catalog:

82
Gregory Battcock, “Informative Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art,” Arts
Magazine 44, no. 8 (Summer 1970), 24.
83
John Perreault, “Information,” The Village Voice, July 16, 1970, 14.
80
The catalogue exists on two very important levels. It is an object in itself
containing a large collection of timely photographs related to and expressing
the attitudes of the art and artists of today. As a reference/document it is
important since it contains records of projects already done, proposals for
projects impossible to realize, as well as the booklist. Because of the
obvious importance of the catalogue to the understanding of the entire
exhibition and its importance as an adjunct, it is essential that it be available
to the entire public. This demands that the price be kept at an absolute
minimum therefore any financial assistance which can be obtained will be a
vital contribution to the success and purpose of the exhibit.
84

This memo from McShine confirms that he intended the Information catalog to be
important for two reasons, but neither of those related to the role of the traditional
catalog. Rather than serving as a more detailed description or record of the exhibition, he
aimed for it to stand alone as an object itself, with its “timely photographs… expressing
the attitudes of the art and artists of today,” as well as a record of not what was in the
exhibition itself, but of “projects already done, proposals for projects impossible to
realize, as well as the booklist.” The expression of contemporary attitudes and relevant
reading material to the time period were more important for the catalog than anything to
do with the actual art objects in the show.
New York Times critic Hilton Kramer disagreed entirely about the success of the
catalog, calling it a “souvenir album… put together in lieu of a catalogue of the
exhibition.”
85
Kramer admits to being particularly struck by the list of “Recommended
Reading,” asking: “Had Mr. McShine himself read the ‘Recommended Reading?’ Did it

84
Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York, “Information” Curatorial Exhibition
Files #934. The heading reads, “Kynaston - will you look this over and see if it is O.K. as
a sales pitch or should there be a paragraph describing the actual layout of the catalog. I
must get it to W.G. and R.P. by the end of the week. Do get April to do hers.”
85
Hilton Kramer, “Miracles, ‘Information,’ ‘Recommended Reading’,” New York Times
(July 12, 1970), 87.
81
have any relation to the exhibition? I was too embarrassed to ask. After all, Mr. McShine
has been very busy assembling this exhibition, which brings together more than 150
‘artists’… from 15 countries. When could he have found the time to read Jurgen Ruesch
and Gregory Bateson’s ‘Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry’ or Mao Tse-
tung’s ‘Problems of Art and Literature or Manuel Villegas Lopez’s ‘El Cine en la
Sociedad de Massas: Arte y Communication?”
86

In contrast to Kramer’s frustration with the international scope of the catalog,
McShine emphasizes the global dimensions of political crisis supported by the images in
the volume. His text attributed the contributions to: “the general social, political and
economic crises that are almost universal phenomena in 1970.”
87
McShine further
explains: “If you are an artist in Brazil, you know of at least one friend who is being
tortured; if you are one in Argentina, you probably have a neighbor who has been in jail
for having long hair, or for not being “dressed” properly; and if you are living in the
United States, you may fear you will be shot at, either in the universities, in your bed, or
more formally in Indochina. It may seem inappropriate, if not absurd, to get up in the
morning, walk into a room, and apply daubs of paint from a little tube to a square of
canvas. What can you as a young artist do that seems relevant and meaningful?”
88

86
Ibid.
87
Kynaston McShine in Information, ed. Kynaston McShine (New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1970), unpaginated.
88
Kynaston McShine in Information, ed. Kynaston McShine (New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1970), unpaginated. Hilton Kramer scathingly reacted to the final question
in McShine’s essay in his review in the New York Times, commenting that “The
Information exhibition is Mr. McShine’s answer to this question. The ‘relevant and
meaningful’ thing to do in the face of grave political crisis is, apparently, to look at inane
films through an Olivetti ‘visual jukebox,’ ask spectators questions on closed-circuit
delayed-tape television, scrawl circles and other graffiti on the walls, go to town with the
82
McShine references both injustices abroad (actions by repressive regimes in South
America) as well as at home (the killing of students at Kent State and Jackson State and
an inequitable draft process for the Vietnam War).
89
However, the reception of the show indicates that the politics of the exhibition—
whether intended or not—were not self-evident. Irving Sandler later wrote that “Only
four works in the exhibition--those by John Giorno (better known as a poet), Hans
Haacke, Lucy Lippard (better known as a critic), and the New York Graphic Workshop--
made direct political references. Perhaps the most political component of the Information
show was McShine’s statement.”
90
In contrast to Sandler’s observation, McShine’s
research for the exhibition, however, demonstrates his interest in the social aspects of the
overall project:

Dear Artist:
I am conducting research on the Art World covering the social,
political and economical aspects. Please help me by answering the
questions below. Similar forms will be sent to: curators, trustees, art
students, collectors, general public, critics and dealers. Answers should be
in as soon as possible.
1) How many hours per day do you spend working on your art?
2) How many hours per day do you spend on public relations and
secretarial work?

Xerox machine, collect a lot of pointless photographic junk, listen to a poem on the
telephone, or simply go to sleep.” Hilton Kramer, “Miracles, ‘Information,’
‘Recommended Reading’,” New York Times (July 12, 1970), 87.
89
The Jackson State killings occurred on May 14–15, 1970, at Jackson State College
(now Jackson State University) in Jackson, Mississippi. A group of student protesters
were confronted by city and state police. The police opened fire, killing two students and
injuring twelve. This happened 10 days after National Guardsmen killed four students in
similar protests at Kent State University in Ohio.
90
Irving Sandler, “The Artist as Political Activist,” in American Art of the 1960s (New
York: Harper & Row, 1988), 294.
83

3) In art what is more important? Check one.
OBJECT______ IDEA______

4) Who would you give more power to in the Art Museum structure? Next
to the occupation write numbers from 1 to 8 . Being 8 the maximum
of power and 1 the minimum.

ART STUDENTS _________
ARTSISTS _____________
COLLECTORS ________________
CRITICS __________________
CURATORS __________________
DEALERS _________________
GENERAL PUBLIC ______________
TRUSTEES ________________

5) Which of the following reasons. Do you feel, more often, move
collectors to buy your work?

Aesthetic ____________
Moral ____________
Tax deduction ____________
Social climbing ____________
Idleness ____________
Showing off ____________
Other ____________
6) How many years did you go to art school?
7) What is your yearly income?
8) How much of this yearly income comes from:
a) Sales of your art $________
b) Teaching $________
List other sources c) $________
d) $________
e) $________

9) Not including the time you spend on your works of art, how many
hours per day do you spend making money?
91

The questions McShine poses refer to the economic, political, and social views of
the artists, as opposed to their artistic or otherwise aesthetic preferences. Discussing

91
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Archives, Info, II.3
84
McShine in a 2007 interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Lucy Lippard characterized the
Information exhibition “as radical as MoMA has ever gotten.”
92
However, prior to the
Information show, some spaces within the walls of MoMA had already become
politicized with the exhibition of posters and graffiti produced by rebellious students in
Paris in May of 1968.

Paris: May 1968. Posters of the Student Revolt, 1969, Museum of Modern Art
(MoMA), New York

Emilio Ambasz, Associate Curator of Design, brought the posters to MoMA in
1969 after having participated in the Paris uprising himself the year before.
93
The works
were on view in Gallery 20 on the Museum's second floor, where informal and
impromptu shows were frequently mounted by the Museum's Department of Architecture
and Design. John Garrigan, Assistant Curator of Graphic Design, installed the small show
of posters (fig. 2.37 and fig. 2.38). The first sentence of Ambasz’s wall text read:
“Columbia in April, Paris in May, Prague in August, Mexico in September- the
crumbling walls speak. Mass media's controlled silencers have forced the poster to be
heard again.”
94

The posters helped feed the propaganda of the French student revolt. The day-by-
day events—the disruption of classes at Nanterre University led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit,

92
Lucy Lippard, in an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, in A Brief History of Curating
(Zurich: JRP/Ringer, 2008), 202.
93
The posters were later shown at the Jewish Museum in the exhibition Up Against the
Wall: Protest Posters.

94
Emilio Ambasz, Wall label text, Paris: May 1968, Posters of the Student Revolt,”
Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York, “Paris: May 1968” Curatorial Exhibition
Files #876.
85
the supporting student demonstrations in Paris, the police invasion of the Sorbonne and
its occupation by the students, the barricades, and the government's reaction and
referendum—produced the worldwide news stories illustrated with these spontaneous,
passionate, and graphically powerful posters.
95

The titles of the posters reveal the protesters’ spirit of sarcasm, anger, and
frequently, humor: “Hitler/De Gaulle,” “L'Etat C'est Moi, L'Ordre Regne (order
prevails)”, “Le Vote Ne Change Rien (the vote changes nothing),” and the untranslatable,
famous parody of De Gaulle's statement, “Le Chienlit C'est Encore Lui.” MoMA selected
twenty-five posters from roughly I50 options. According to Ambasz:

Graffiti sustained a relentless match of squash against the communiqués of
the official radio and TV. Slogans were picked off the walls and brought
to the limited printing facilities of L'Ecole des Arts Decoratifs and L'Ecole
de Beaux-Arts…. Students and sympathetic workers enraptured by the
spirit of community experimented with participatory design, discussing
and choosing together the poster subjects and images. Anonymity was not
only a consequence of this method of working but also an understandable
necessity.

The first posters were printed by whatever means were at hand. As the
movement became more organized and the number of those involved
increased, silk screen workshops were established. When need overcame
production, the ateliers were joined by the workshops of the Faculties of
Science and of Psychology, as well as by the Committees of
Revolutionary Action operating in each neighborhood, which resorted to
every available printing medium — blue print and office duplicating

95
The process of making the posters was rapid and direct: "Graffiti sustained a relentless
match of squash against the communiques of the official radio and TV. Slogans were
picked off the walls and brought to the limited printing facilities of 1'Ecole des Arts
Decoratifs and I'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, rebaptised Atelier Populaire by the students
entrenched there. Students and sympathetic workers - enraptured by the spirit of
community - experimented with participatory design, discussing and choosing together
the poster subjects and images.” Anonymity was not only a consequence of this method
of working but also an understandable necessity, according to Ambasz. Museum of
Modern Art Archives, New York, “Paris: May 1968” Curatorial Exhibition Files #876.
86
machines included. In solidarity, Paris' international artistic community
contributed posters which, although more accomplished graphically,
lacked the punch of the students' simplicity.
96

96
Ambasz, Wall label text, Paris: May 1968, Posters of the Student Revolt,” Museum of
Modern Art Archives, New York, “Paris: May 1968” Curatorial Exhibition Files #876.
The entire wall label, prepared by Ambasz, read:
“Columbia in April, Paris in May, Prague in August, Mexico in September — the
crumbling walls speak. Mass media's controlled silencers have forced the poster to be
heard again.
Distrustful of the Marxist models and the 19th Century concept of change;
repelled by the impermeability of Europe's political and educational institutions yet
simultaneously resisting the sponginess of America's cultural and social establishment;
Youth — self assured of purity by their refusal to define plans and buoyed by the tension
of their own contradictions — envisions, nevertheless, an undeterministic type of social
system, tolerant of emotions and designed to operate in a permanent state of reform.
The disruption of classes in Nanterre's New Faculty of Letters led by Daniel
Cohn-Bendit, the supporting student demonstrations in Paris, the police invasion of the
Sorbonne, the occupation of the Sorbonne and the Odeon by the students, the first and
second barricades, and the government's reaction and referendum are by now well known
items for a yet unconcluded chronology of youth's rebellion. But, in contrast to the
manifestos of revolution, which have always been rooted in the future, the propaganda of
the French revolt nourished itself in immediacy.
Graffiti sustained a relentless match of squash against the communiques of the
official radio and TV. Slogans were picked off the walls and brought to the limited
printing facilities of L'Ecole des Arts Decoratifs and L'Ecole de Beaux-Arts, rebaptized
Atelier Populaire by the students entrenched there. Students and sympathetic workers
enraptured by the spirit of community experimented with participatory design, discussing
and choosing together the poster subjects and images. Anonymity was not only a
consequence of this method of working but also an understandable necessity.
The first posters were printed by whatever means were at hand. As the movement
became more organized and the number of those involved increased, silk screen
workshops were established. When need overcame production, the ateliers were joined
by the workshops of the Faculties of Science and of Psychology, as well as by the
Committees of Revolutionary Action operating in each neighborhood, which resorted to
every available printing medium — blue print and office duplicating machines included.
In solidarity, Paris' international artistic community contributed posters which, although
more accomplished graphically, lacked the punch of the students' simplicity.
Resorting to the folklore of popular idioms and visual images was the students'
way of achieving more directly the desired union of university and factory. Nevertheless,
87

Following the MoMA show, which took place November 23, 1968 through
February 1969, the posters began to be issued in editions, and were eagerly bought and
sold by resourceful dealers and collectors. The co-optation of the posters by the
mainstream art world seems hardly surprising today. In 1968 a journalist for the New
York publication Home Furnishings Daily commented on the connection between the
protest poster and the aesthetic and ideological tastes of the hip elite of Manhattan:

Revolution is IN, and graphics carry the message with sock-it-to-’em
speed... from high-spirited graffiti to political poster to chic wall decoration.
These posters, made in the heat of battle during the French student
revolution in May, are on view now at the Museum of Modern Art in New
York.

Slogans were picked off the walls and brought to L’Ecole des Arts
Decoratifs and L’Ecole des Beaux Arts (rebaptized Atlier Populaire by
students entrenched there) and rapidly printed and distributed in answer to
the mass media accounts of the action. As the Revolution continued, other
groups added their talents to the communal experiment in “participatory
design.”

The posters tell their story in clear, hard lines with the force of a club on the
head. They make those hairy, funky decorative posters of Allen Ginsberg
and Bob Dylan look like obsolete hippie-era relics. Clean-cut revolutionary
graphics attacking the mass media make perfect backdrops for the clean-cut
modern furnishings preferred by advanced Madison Avenue types who like
to regard themselves as rebels boring from within the system.
97

it gradually became clear that Tomorrow had many forms of commitment to reality.
While the students had been proposing humanistic anarchism as natural man's Garden,
the majority of the workers had been demanding the Arcadia of the Levittowns. But,
then, today understood will be the myth of history and these posters, its documents. For
its actors, the reality of May dwells in the paper barricades and in the fervid hours of their
collective creation.”
97
“Up Against the Wall,” Home Furnishings Daily 40, no 241 (December 11, 1968), 2.
88
The observations of the journalist for Home Furnishings Daily were echoed by Harold
Rosenberg, writing for The New Yorker, who in the December 28, 1968 issue remarked:
“Reverberations of the student-worker uprising in Paris last spring have now reached the
New York art world in the form of two exhibitions--one at the Museum of Modern Art,
the other at the Jewish Museum. Both exhibitions consist largely of graphics executed by
students [of the L’Ecole des Arts Decoratifs and L’Ecole des Beaux Arts]. Posters were
made, too, by well-known Paris artists--Matta, Hélion, Le Parc, to name only a few--but
these are not included.”
98

Rosenberg also foregrounded the irony of the dissenting students’ appropriation
of Dada-Surrealist tactics and slogans. Mantras such as, “‘No, to the coat-and-tie
revolution,’ ‘Poetry is in the streets’--were directed against institutional art, to which, of
course, Dada and Surrealist masterworks now belong.”
99
“Sabotage the culture industry,”
urged a tract distributed at the Odéon the night the students moved in. “Occupy and
destroy the institution. Reinvent life.” The mass media were the general target, for
political reasons (that is, for favoring the government), but each segment of the cultural
machine--universities, art schools, film schools, national theatres, orchestras--was equally
the enemy. Rosenberg argued that at the very moment when “our own” Museum of
Modern Art was presenting “Dada, Surrealism, and their Heritage” as consisting of what
was aesthetically valid [at the time] in the paintings and constructions of Picabia,
Duchamp, Magritte, Ernst, Arp, Miró, and Man Ray, Surrealism as a radical movement

98
Harold Rosenberg, “The Art World-Surrealism in the Streets,” The New Yorker
(December 28, 1968), 52.
99
Ibid, 54.
89
had come to life in the streets of Paris.
100
In its exhibition of twenty-five of the Atlier
Populaire posters, MoMA appeared content to show the artifacts alone, without reference
to the event or the ideas that inspired them.
In contrast to the somewhat de-politicized context of Paris: May 1968. Posters of
the Student Revolt, the Information exhibition proved both unconventional and
controversial via works by some artists (such as Haacke) and the exhibition catalog.
Although art-world publications often discuss the Information show as an exhibition of
conceptual art, McShine’s catalog radicalized the previously more neutral site of the
Museum and its publications.

Spaces, 1969, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
The groundbreaking Information show had been preceded at MoMA by Spaces, on
view from December 30, 1969, through March 1, 9170. The Spaces exhibition consisted
of six separate rooms, or environments, created by six artists, each in quest of the
spectator’s involvement with space and other imposed media (fig 2.39 And fig. 2.40).
Jennifer Licht, Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture, selected five artists—
Michael Asher, Larry Bell, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, and Franz Erhard Walther—and
the collaborative group Pulsa
101
to create individual "spaces" on the first floor and
outdoor Sculpture Garden of the Museum. The exhibition catalog was novel in that it
includes no reproductions of finished works in the show. Instead, it contains photographs

100
Ibid, 54.
101
Present members of the Pulsa group at the time were Michael Cain, Patrick Clancy,
William Crosby, William Duesing, Paul Fuge, Peter Kindlmann and David Rumsey.
Their contribution to “Spaces” was their first outdoor exhibition in New York City.
90
taken by Claude Picasso during the three weeks preceding the exhibition opening while
the workmen and the artists were creating the spaces. Statements by each artist and an
introduction by Licht constitute the entirety of the text. The blue acetate cover was
contributed by the Celanese Corporation (fig. 2.41).
In addition to documenting the show in the catalog, Picasso's photographs of the
installation of Spaces were also mounted in a special orientation and preparation room for
visitors about to enter the exhibition (fig. 2.42). Licht explains in the catalog introduction,
"An exhibition in which the Installation becomes the actual realization of the work of art
and rooms must be planned and built according to the artists' needs, challenges the usual
role of the museum and makes unaccustomed demands of its staff and resources. A
museum traditionally houses and conserves objects of art but now it becomes responsible
for the execution of the artist's idea. This calls for collaboration of people and flexible
adjustment of roles and areas of responsibility."
102
Licht wanted space to be an active
ingredient, not simply represented, but shaped and characterized by the artist.
103

Part of the museum’s acquiescence to the artists’ wishes was the requirement that
viewers remove their shoes before entering the rooms. Some of the artists in the show
treated the floors of their environments with as much sensory perception in mind as in the
rest of their rooms. For example, Michael Asher’s dimly lit area offered a cushioned floor
(and walls and ceiling) made of acoustically dulling fiberglass (fig. 2.43). Asher intended
his quiet white room to be a space of tranquility not to be disrupted or marked with the
shoes of its inhabitants. Franz Erhard Walther placed canvas-covered objects which

102
Jennifer Licht, “Introduction,” in Spaces (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1969),
3.
103
David L. Shirey, “Art in Space,” Newsweek (January 12, 1970), 63.
91
visitors are invited to put on, move and hold in his canvas-floored room, also not to be
tread upon by dirty soles stepping of the New York City streets (fig 2.44).
Larry Bell created a completely black room, without any illumination, in which he
placed huge panels of vacuum-coated glass (fig. 2.45). The only source of light came
from outside the room so that visitors are dimly reflected in the glass panels, and the
visual experience changed depending on their movements. Dan Flavin built two free-
standing barriers of green and yellow fluorescent tubes converging at one end of his room
(fig 2.46). He arranged 32 eight-foot fixtures and 64 four-foot fixtures into two separate
structures that form interior "barriers" so that the light itself transforms the architecture of
the gallery. In Robert Morris' room, small spruce trees planted on steel-faced pedestals
separated by narrow trenches create distant vistas for the eyes, confinement for the body
(fig. 2.47). The Pulsa Group (whose researches were sponsored by Yale University's
Department of Art and Architecture and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in
the Fine Arts) created a light, sound and heat environment in the Museum Sculpture
Garden by use of a variety of electronic devices that pick up sounds and movement in the
Garden which are programmed through a computer and relayed back to the Garden (fig.
2.48).

The anxiety that some museum staff might have felt while mounting such an
exhibition is evident in an internal memo sent to Licht on October 17, 1969:

It has occurred to me that this extra special ‘can’t wait’ excitement we feel
about this show is special because no one can know what the works
themselves will look like (not like a regular painting show). All this is
redundant, but what I mean to suggest is that maybe we should send out a
92
special press release when construction actually begins so that the outside
world can share this excitement and can look forward to the show as we
do. Otherwise the opening will of necessity have the air of being a show of
finished products ‘works of art’ which is not at all it actually is.
104

Although this type of ephemeral exhibition was not unusual at galleries or smaller
museums, it was unprecedented at MoMA. Writing for the New York Times, Grace
Glueck remarked, “In effect, the show, whose installations are temporary, adds to the
museum’s traditional pursuits of collecting, curating, and exhibiting, the somewhat
radical function as esthetic laboratory. And Mrs. Licht, aware that museums and their
interest in the “dead” past are increasingly called into question by younger artists,
affirms, that one of the show’s primary purposes is to find out if a museum can be used as
a situation for “live” experiments.”
105

In an interview with Glueck, Licht explained: “I also tried to think about what we
could offer artists that was different from the usual exhibiting situation…. I decided to
ask for proposals that would make unaccustomed demands on our staff and resources. So,
in effect, we became responsible not only for exhibiting artists’ works, but for executing
them.”
106
Since the Museum’s exhibition budget could mot meet the show’s technical
demands, Licht, the staff, and trustees turned to corporate sources for assistance. More
than twenty industrial companies contributed goods, services and equipment amounting

104
Memo to “Jenny” (Licht) from “April,” October 17, 1969, Museum of Modern Art
Archives, New York, “Spaces” Curatorial Exhibition Files #917b. Underlining from the
original memo.
105
Grace Glueck, “Museum Beckoning Space Explorers,” New York Times (January 2,
1970), 34.
106
Licht, quoted in Grace Glueck, “Museum Beckoning Space Explorers,” New York
Times (January 2, 1970), 34.
93
to $60,000.
107
As a result, the catalog boasts “more credits than the playbill of a top
Broadway production.”
108
While, by 1969, corporations already supported the arts in a
variety of ways, in this instance MoMA sought the material and services necessary for
the realization of the work on the basis of specific requests made by the artists.
109

Licht clarifies her statement to Glueck in a press release issued shortly before the
opening of the show: “an exhibition in which the installation becomes the actual
realization of the work of art and rooms must be planned and built according to the
artist's needs, challenges the usual role of the museum and makes unaccustomed demands
of its staff and resources….A museum traditionally houses and conserves objects of art",
she observes, "but now it becomes responsible for the execution of the artist's idea. This
calls for collaboration of people and flexible adjustment of roles and areas of

107
A complex assortment of sophisticated electronic equipment, 2000 square feet of
acoustical paneling, 512 feet of fluorescent lights, large sheets of vacuum-coated glass
and 144 white spruce trees are among the materials used instead of paint and canvas.
From “Press Release: Corporations Contribute Materials and Services to Museum of
Modern Art Exhibition,” Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York, “Spaces”
Curatorial Exhibition Files #917b.
108
Glueck, 34.
109
“Press Release: Spaces Exhibition Opens at Museum of Modern Art,” Museum of
Modern Art Archives, New York, “Spaces” Curatorial Exhibition Files #917b. For
example, the Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation donated the sound absorbent material
in Asher’s work. KLH Research and Development Corporation lent the speakers hidden
in the ceiling. In Flavin’s installation, General Electric Large Lamp Division donated the
lights; the fixtures partially donated by Curtis-Electro Lighting, Inc. The trees in Morris’s
room were maintained during the duration of the exhibition by horticultural consultation
services donated by Manhattan Gardner Ltd., and the Duro-Test Light Bulb Center
donated the Full Spectrum Vita-lites. Joseph T. Ryerson 6 donated the Cor-ten steel on
the floor and sides of the pedestals. Son, Inc., while the refrigeration was installed with
the help of Tomlinson Refrigeration and Supply Co. For further details about the
corporations who donated materials to each artist’s installation, see Jennifer Licht, Spaces
[exhibition catalog], New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1969.
94
responsibility."
110

Like Licht’s novel approach to putting together the Spaces show, its exhibition
catalog, with no reproductions of finished works in the show, challenges traditional
expectations about what becomes documented and what does not. The curators of the
exhibitions discussed in this chapter (Harlem on My Mind, Information, Paris: May
1968, and Spaces) explored and expanded upon the museum’s traditional rationale for
producing a catalog to accompany an exhibition. Moreover, they radically altered the
museum’s conventional pursuits of collecting, curating, and exhibiting.
The case studies show, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, curators, artists, and
critics increasingly called into question the purpose of the museum as a silent exhibitor of
(mostly) past and recent art. The next chapter demonstrated how the loose collective, the
Artists Meeting for Cultural Change, took this questioning a step forward by, without
collaboration or permission from the museum, producing “an anti-catalog” in direct
opposition to a Bicentennial exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

110
Licht, quoted in “Press Release: Special to Architectural Magazines and Editors:
Spaces Exhibition at Museum of Modern Art,” Museum of Modern Art Archives, New
York, “Spaces” Curatorial Exhibition Files #917b.
95

Figure 2.1. Original exhibition catalog cover, “Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of
Black American, 1900-1968,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1969.

96

Figure 2.2 “Information.” Cover of exhibition catalogue. New York: Museum of Modern
Art, 1970.

97

Figure 2.3 Guerilla Art Action Group (GAAG) members John Hendricks and Jean Toche
removing a painting by Kasimir Malevich, White on White (1918) from the wall at the
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1969.

98

Figure 2.4 Guerrilla Art Action Group (GAAG) manifesto, posted on the wall of the
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1969.

99

Figure 2.5 Studio International cover, 1970; photograph by Jan van Raay of (left to right)
Jon Hendricks, Tom Lloyd, and Jean Toche.

100

Figure 2.6 Ad Hoc Women Artists’ Committee at the Whitney Annual, 1970

101

Figure 2.7 Installation photograph of Hans Haacke, MOMA-Poll, 1970. Interactive
installation with clear plastic voting boxes, text panel, chart of results, at Information
exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

102

Figure 2.8 Installation photograph of Hans Haacke, MOMA-Poll, 1970. Interactive
installation with clear plastic voting boxes, text panel, chart of results, at Information
exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

103

Figure 2.9 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

104

Figure 2.10 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

105

Figure 2.11 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

Figure 2.12 Unidentified visitor at the exhibition, "Information." The Museum of Modern
Art, New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James
Mathews.
106

Figure 2.13 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

Figure 2.14 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.
107

Figure 2.15 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

Figure 2.16 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

108

Figure 2.17 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

Figure 2.18 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

109

Figure 2.19 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

110

Figure 2.20 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

111

Figure 2.21 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

112

Figure 2.22 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

113

Figure 2.23 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

114

Figure 2.24 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

Figure 2.25 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

115

Figure 2.26 Installation view of the exhibition, Information. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. July 2, 1970 through September 20, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

116

Figure 2.27 Interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1970.

117

Figure 2.28. Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

118

Figure 2.29. Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

119

Figure 2.30. Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

120

Figure 2.31. Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

Figure 2.32. Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

121

Figure 2.33. Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

122

Figure 2.34. Nonconsecutive interior page in Information exhibition catalog. New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

123

Figure 2.35 Endpapers of Information exhibition catalog. New York: Museum of Modern
Art, 1970.

124

Figure 2.36 Endpapers of Information exhibition catalog. New York: Museum of Modern
Art, 1970

125

Figure 2.37 Installation view of the exhibition, Paris: May 1968. Posters of the Student
Revolt. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. November 23, 1968 through February
24, 1969. Photograph by James Mathews.

126

Figure 2.38 Installation view of the exhibition, Paris: May 1968. Posters of the Student
Revolt. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. November 23, 1968 through February
24, 1969. Photograph by James Mathews.

127

Figure 2.39 Installation view of the exhibition, Spaces. The Museum of Modern Art, New
York. December 30, 1969 through March 1, 1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

128

Figure 2.40 Floor plan of Spaces exhibition. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
December 30, 1969 through March 1, 1970.

Figure 2.41 Cover of the Spaces exhibition catalog. New York: Museum of Modern Art,
1969.
129

Figure 2.42 Installation view of the orientation room of the exhibition, Spaces. The
Museum of Modern Art, New York. December 30, 1969 through March 1, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

Figure 2.43 Installation view of Michael Asher’s installation in the exhibition, "Spaces."
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. December 30, 1969 through March 1, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.
130

Figure 2.44 Installation view of Franz Erhard Walther’s installation in the exhibition,
Spaces. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. December 30, 1969 through March 1,
1970. Photograph by James Mathews.

131

Figure 2.45 Installation view of Larry Bell’s installation in the exhibition, Spaces. The
Museum of Modern Art, New York. December 30, 1969 through March 1, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

132

Figure 2.46 Installation view of Dan Flavin’s installation in the exhibition, Spaces. The
Museum of Modern Art, New York. December 30, 1969 through March 1, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

133

Figure 2.47 Installation view of Robert Morris’s installation in the exhibition, Spaces.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. December 30, 1969 through March 1, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

134

Figure 2.48 Installation view of the Pulsa Group’s installation in the exhibition, Spaces.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. December 30, 1969 through March 1, 1970.
Photograph by James Mathews.

135
Chapter Three
“an anti-catalog”: Publishing as Protest in 1976

In December 1975, a newly and loosely formed collective first calling themselves
Art Meeting for Cultural Change—shortly afterward to rename themselves the Artists
Meeting for Cultural Change (AMCC), circulated the following petition to friends,
colleagues, and supporters in the American art community:

PETITION FROM THE AMERICAN ART COMMUNITY AND OTHERS TO THE
WHITNEY AND DE YOUNG MUSEUMS

Next September, as one of its four Bicentennial exhibitions, the Whitney Museum
of American Art in New York City will present a show entitled “Three Centuries of
American Art,” an exhibition originating at the M.H. De Young Museum in San
Francisco. This show is culled entirely from the private collection of John D. Rockefeller
III. It will include no black artists and only one woman artist. Presumably, other
minorities in United States culture will also be under-represented or excluded.
Demonstrably, therefore, the exhibition is a blatant example of large cultural
institutions determining the history of art in the United States.
We, the undersigned, strongly object to the collusion of the De Young and Whitney
Museums and John D. Rockefeller III in using a private collection of art, with its
discriminatory omissions, to promote ruling-class values and a socially reactionary view
of art.
WE DEMAND THAT HIS SHOW BE CANCELLED.

Signed:

Send signed petitions to: Art Meeting for Cultural Change
P.O. Box 551, Canal St. Sta., N.Y., N.Y. 10013

The target of the AMCC’s petition was an exhibition of American art shown first at
the M. H. de Young Museum in San Francisco, then at the Whitney Museum of
136
American Art in New York.
111
Organizers originally titled the exhibition “Three
Centuries of American Art,” but just prior to its opening changed it to “American Art: An
Exhibition from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd.”

A television commercial that aired in New York during the weeks of September 20
and October 4, 1976 encouraged potential visitors to: “Mix with an extraordinary crowd
of Americans. Attend the Whitney Museum’s exhibition of American Art from the
collection of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd. From now until November 7 you can
see 104 paintings of American scenery, American seascapes, American farms and
factories by 65 artists: Copley, Peale, Stuart, Audubon, Hicks, Bingham, Homer,
Johnson, Sargent, Wyeth -- Americans all -- at the Whitney Museum of American
Art.”
112

Director of the de Young Museum, Ian McKibben White emphasized the
educational potential of the show. In his introduction to the American Art catalog he
emphasized that California had fewer museums than the east coast cities, providing its
citizens with fewer opportunities to see American art produced earlier than the twentieth
century. White explained, “Inevitably the nation’s celebration will focus on historic cities
of the East, but Bicentennial visitors will also come to San Francisco, many from the
Orient. With their strong interest in Asia, Mr. and Mrs. Rockefeller felt it a fitting
location for the collection to be seen before it moves on to be shown at the Whitney

111
The AMCC created a bound document, an artists’ book of sorts, which they named
“an anti-catalog an anti-catalog an anti-catalog,” in response and in opposition to this
1976 Whitney Bicentennial show.
112
“American Art” exhibition records, William Altman Advertising, Incorporated,
Television Commercial, Whitney Museum of American Art Archives, New York.
137
Museum in New York, where they live.”
113
The de Young Museum announced the exhibition in advance to local colleges and
universities. White describes the enthusiastic response of schools planning to teach
American art courses while the exhibition was on view: “... in an improvement on the
usual classroom lecture illustrated with slides and textbook reproductions, nearly three
hundred undergraduates from Mills College and the University of California, Berkeley,
will come to the Museum to study actual paintings. Special round-trip bus transportation
and seminar rooms, with comparative European and American paintings from the
Museum’s collections, are part of the convenient plan.”
114
The de Young Museum trained
students to give talks in secondary schools and community centers to prepare future
visitors for what they would see in the exhibition. Other education events included an
eight-week series of humanities presentations, intended to draw on the Rockefeller
collection for inspiration, that incorporated film, slides, live and recorded music, drama,
dance and the spoken word.
In an effort to recall the “cultural, social, political and economic milieu” of the
time, the museum also hosted an exhibition of documents from the Smithsonian’s
Archives of American Art, which had recently decided to locate its West Coast office at
the de Young Museum. The de Young displayed original letters by nearly a third of the
artists represented in the Rockefeller collection, as well as photographs of twenty-two of
the artists, in a gallery adjacent to the exhibition.

113
Ian McGibbin White, “Introduction,” in E.P. Richardson, American Art: An Exhibition
from the Collection of John D. Rockefeller, 3rd., (San Francisco: M. H. De Young
Museum, 1977), unpaginated.
114
Ibid.
138

In contrast, the installation at the Whitney encompassed an elite surrounding of
museum quality furniture and ornate flowers, providing an atmosphere that one might
experience when viewing the work in the home of the Rockefellers. The Whitney
borrowed furniture from the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum to exhibit for
the duration of the show. Items borrowed included a New York card table and a New
York Chippendale card table along with New York chairs, a country pier table with
marble top, and a mid-19th-century pedestal table.

In a letter to Jay Cort, who provided
the flowers and vases for the exhibition, Whitney Museum Director Thomas Armstrong
remarked that “Mr. and Mrs. Rockefeller were particularly pleased at the way the
exhibition looked and Mrs. Rockefeller commented to someone in my presence that the
installation looked “just like home,” which is the effect we were hoping to achieve.”
115

The de Young Museum produced the exhibition catalog, published by the Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco in 1976. Exhibition curator and catalog author E.P.
Richardson divided the works reproduced in the catalog chronologically, beginning with
Colonial American art and ending with the twentieth century. Chapter headings included:
1) The Migration of Painting to North America; 2) The First Native-born Painters; 3)
Major Talents Begin to Appear in America; 4) The Transition to the New Republic; 5)
The Generation of 1800: The First Romantics; 6) The Generation of 1825: Landscape,
Portrait and Genre; 7) The Flowering of the Nineteenth Century: Before the Civil War; 8)

115
Letter from Thomas Armstrong to Jay Cort (of Cort Flowers on 821 Park Avenue
10021) , “Correspondence General” folder, American Art exhibition records, Whitney
Museum of American Art Archives, New York.
139
The Flowering of the Nineteenth Century: After the Civil War; and 9) The Twentieth
Century.
116

The cover features John Singleton Copley’s Mrs. Daniel Sargent, 1793, a portrait
of the bride of a prominent Gloucester, Massachusetts ship owner’s son (fig. 3.1). The
portrait is reproduced again as one of the color plates in the catalog (fig. 3.2). Richardson
may have selected this work for the cover, as (he states in the opening sentence of the
catalog entry) “Copley won his first success as a painter of elegance.”
117

Aside from identifying the sitter, Richardson’s text concerns only the appearance of
the sitter and formal aspects of the painting. He argues that “One feels not only the
young woman’s pride of beauty but the pride of the young artist, who now at twenty-five
found himself the master of his art. Copley never painted better than in this portrait with
the imperceptible modeling that creates her face and expression, the luminosity of her
skin, the lustre of dark eyes and hair, the shimmer of satin and silver and organdy. The
artifice of placing her beside a wall fountain, holding out a shell to catch the sparkling
water, and contrasting her freshness against the massive, ancient stones behind, is highly
imaginative. Copley for the first time had hit his stride.”
118
Copley’s portraits and other works in Rockefeller’s collection evoked in
Richardson feelings of nostalgia for the presumed gentility of American Colonial society.
According to Richardson, “The people of [Copley’s] time lived by a formal code of
manner; their dress was stately and beautiful; their idea of portraiture, shared by artist and

116
E.P. Richardson, American Art: An Exhibition from the Collection of John D.
Rockefeller, 3rd., (San Francisco: M. H. De Young Museum, 1977), unpaginated.
117
Ibid, 38.
118
Ibid.
140
sitters alike, was formed by the works of English painters like [Thomas] Hudson and
[Joseph] Highmore. But in the 1760s a new tone emerged in the English portraits shown
in the print shops of Boston. In this New Wave men were posed with greater ease and
naturalness while women’s portraits became lighter, gayer, and showed touches of
charming artifice. Copley responded in such a portrait as that of Mrs. Daniel Sargent.”
119

Although the full title of the American Art catalog was American Art: A Narrative
and Critical Catlogue by E.P. Richardson, Museum Director White described the catalog
as “unusual,” calling it “a significant departure from a traditional exhibition catalogue in
that it combines impeccable scholarship and warmly human narrative.”
120
Richardson
himself admitted that the exhibition, far from being comprehensive, represents a
“thoughtful, personal view of our art by an observer of unusual experience and
perspective.”
121
Richardson had spent the previous decade advising the Rockefellers on
the formation of their collection, in spite of the fact that the Rockefellers themselves had
never seen all of the works in their collection together. Their collection of American art
had been divided between a New York office, an apartment, and a country home.

Although both Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III collected art, Mr. Rockefeller
alone acquired the American artworks that formed the basis of the exhibition. Growing
up in a home filled with medieval and early modern art objects, Rockefeller developed an

119
Ibid.
120
Ian McGibbin White, “Introduction,” in E.P. Richardson, American Art: An Exhibition
from the Collection of John D. Rockefeller, 3rd., (San Francisco: M. H. De Young
Museum, 1977), unpaginated.
121
Richardson, unpaginated.
141
interest in art at an early age. In the preface to the exhibition catalog, Richardson
explains how Rockefeller witnessed the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia
and saw his mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (active in the founding of the Museum of
Modern Art, New York), collect American folk art that eventually formed the basis of the
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection in Williamsburg.
122
As a member of
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s mission to Japan,
123
Rockefeller was introduced
to and subsequently formed an important collection of Asian art. Rockefeller’s interest in
American art “came about”: “He found himself acting as host in New York City to
visitors from all over the world: some acquaintances from his own travels, others whom
he was asked to entertain by the State Department or by our delegates to the United
Nations. He became discontented with receiving these guests in a home containing only
oriental art and French impressionists.”
124

Rockefeller’s collecting concerns present a stark contrast to those of contemporary
artists working in New York. By the later 1970s, as alternative spaces in the city—
especially SoHo—became increasingly available to artists, many of the political concerns
expressed through the Art Workers Coalition (AWC) were taken up again by the AMCC.
The AMCC was strongly influenced by the English group Art & Language. Art &
Language at the time was a group of primarily conceptual artists whose work consisted of

122
Richardson, unpaginated.
123
Dulles served as Secretary of State in the administration of President Dwight D.
Eisenhower, where he was instrumental in forming the Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization (SEATO).
124
Richardson, unpaginated.
142
producing texts, which have been extensively historicized by group member Charles
Harrison. During the mid-1970s, members of Art & Language and other artists gathered
in New York at conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth’s loft. The organization sprang from the
desire of a few artists, most previously active in the antiwar movement, to revive some
form of political activity. In addition to Baranik, the group at first included, amongst
others, Andre, Andrews, Lippard, Haacke, Vivian Browne, Ian Burn, Sarah
Charlesworth, Irving Petlin and May Stevens. An early idea was that the organization
should be akin to a Quaker meeting, and Andre thus proposed that it be called “Artists
Meeting.” Members of Art and Language, however, urged a more theoretical purpose on
the group, and the compromise name decided on was the Artists Meeting for Cultural
Change.
The New York-based Art & Language group published their theoretical texts in the
short-lived journal The Fox, published from 1975 to 1976 (fig. 3.3).
125
Printed on
newsprint with uncoated cardboard covers, the magazine had what Allen has described as
a “self-consciously crude, unfinished look” in line with their Marxist ideology.
126
The

125
The Fox was started by several members of the New York faction of Art & Language,
who announced in the first issue: “It is the purpose of our journal to try to establish some
kind of community practice. Those who are interested, curious, or have something to add
(be it pro or con) to the editorial thrust… the revelation of ideology… of this first issue
are encouraged, even urged, to contribute to following issues.” The Magazine’s title was
an allusion to a line by the Greek poet Archilochus (“the fox knows many things, but the
hedgehog knows one big thing”), which, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin argued in a
1953 essay, suggests two forms of knowledge: one systematic and narrow and the other
more broad and varied. Funded by NEA and NYSCA grants and distributed by the New
York bookseller Jaap Reitman, The Fox arose out of “frustration… with the extremely
oppressive nature of a very elitist and rather irrelevant (in terms of effective practice)
theoretical debating society which was Art & Language.” Sarah Charlesworth, “Memo
for The Fox,” The Fox 2 (1975).
126
Allen, 262.
143
Fox published papers developed by members of the AMCC as well as militantly political
articles by its editors. Allen references contributions by Adrian Piper, who philosophized
about the act of making art,
127
Lizzie Borden, who wrote a critique of the magazine for
overlooking practical problems in favor of theory,
128
and Martha Rosler, who submitted a
critical examination of art and craft.
129

Many of the British Art & Language artists worked as teachers in art colleges in
London. They were part of an academic art world that included the pre-eminent critic
John Berger, who in 1972 produced Ways of Seeing as a BBC television program, and
later as a book.
130
The British Academy, already aligned with the members of the radical
caucus (later the Marxist caucus) of the College Art Association, had a heightened impact
in New York through the AMCC.
131
According to critic Nancy Marmer, “papers were
read or study groups were held on such topics as new methodologies for art, collaborative
work, imperialism, the role of museums, art and feminism, the culture industry, and the
artist as intellectual. By spring 1976, the meetings had grown more specifically political
and much attention was being given to the subject of socialism. At first, a broad spectrum

127
Adrian Piper, “To Art (Reg. Intrans. v.),” The Fox 1 (1975).
128
Lizzie Borden, “Dear Fox,” The Fox 2 (1975).
129
Martha Rosler, “Review under the Rug,” The Fox 3 (1976).
130
John Berger, Ways of Seeing (New York: Viking Press, 1973). Other preeminent
members of the British art history academic community at the time included rising stars
T.J. Clark and Griselda Pollock.
131
Alan W. Moore, Collectives: Protest, Counter-Culture and Political Postmodernism
in New York City Artists Organizations 1969-1985 (Ph.D. diss., New York: The City
University of New York, 2000), 66.
144
of opinion was tolerated, from ‘orthodox Marxism to all shades of leftish liberalism.’”
132

However, as dissention began within the Art & Language, the heated arguments spilled
over to the AMCC. “In winter of 1977,” writes Marmer, “what happened at The Fox was
in effect repeated at AMCC with a larger cast.”
133
The Provisional Art & Language,
which had split off from the original foundation, insisted that the AMCC vote on its
hardline Marxists’ “principles of unity.” The group split following a walkout, and it soon
faded out.
134

132
Nancy Marmer, “Art & Politics ’77,” Art in America 63, July-August 1977, 66.
133
Ibid.
134
Moore recounts these events in his dissertation: “To condense this complicated history
of struggle within The Fox and AMCC—complicated because their search for collectivity
was so deeply undertaken.” He recaps this account from Marmer, op. cit., with some
glosses from Harrison and Orton, op. cit.. The third and last issue of The Fox appeared in
late spring of 1976. In February, the Art & Language Foundation had been rocked by
dissension. Transcripts of some of these “struggle sessions” were printed in Fox 3 (as
“The Lumpenheadache”). A majority of Foundation members voted to adopt orthodox
Marxist-Leninist positions and “collectivize their group,” making it “unacceptable for
any member to continue to exhibit under his or her own name.” Since most A&L people
already did exhibit together, this move singled out Kosuth, forcing him and Charlesworth
to withdraw. The remaining members renamed their group “Provisional Art &
Language,” and seven of them—Karl Beveridge, Jill Breakstone, Ian Burn, Carol Condé,
Michael Corris, Preston Heller and Andrew Menard—began to work on a journal called
Red Herring.
This effort still did not win favor with London A&L. According to Harrison and
Orton, “Among their publications and enterprises associated with attempts by former
American A&L members to cobble-up or join ‘alternative’ communal activities and
spend the remaining grants, were the abortive (lumpen-Maoist) journal Red-Herring, the
AMCC’s “an anti-catalog” and ‘International Local’ (this group included Kosuth,
Charlesworth, and Anthony McCall).” For additional information, see Annina Nosei
Weber, ed., Discussion (London: Out of London Press, 1980).
Marmer, as noted in the text above, blamed the Provisional Art & Language for
splitting the AMCC by calling on the same “principles of unity” that Kosuth and
Charlesworth had rejected. Red Herring, she writes, is “a journal that can only appeal to
already doctrinaire Marxist-Leninists with a strong stomach for ‘scientific socialist’
145
By the time AMCC moved to Artists Space in 1976, its Sunday meetings attracted
up to one hundred people coming each week to participate in (often contentious) group
discussions.

Lippard recalls:

The Artists’ Coalition Group stopped in 1971 and there was a gap, there
wasn’t anything in ’72 or whenever it was, there wasn’t anything going as a
mixed political art group and all of us women who had been in the Coalition
and many more besides had been totally involved in feminism. The Artist
and Writers’ protest continued as a mixed group, but that just sort of comes
to the fore when something ghastly happens in the world and we leap up and
do a benefit or something, but there’s a constantly meeting group; there
were also smaller Marxist study groups. Finally anyway it started again,
partly over the Rockefeller bullshit at the Whitney Museum in 1975, as a
brace-up for the bi-centennial, which was a great sign for all the worst
elements of American patriotism to rise to the fore again. Anyway the
organization started again, a group of the same people, called ‘Artists
Meeting for Cultural Change’ and this was the first time that I had been
involved in a mixed political group for four or five years. For a year there
was a great interest in the art world, all of a sudden it was coming on again
and the younger artists were far more politically savvy than they had been
when we started the coalition; just in theory, in Marxist theory and so on; it
used to be that Carl Andre was the only person who could quote Marx, now
everybody could. From a feminist point of view, it was really ‘here we go
again’ we all looked forward to it.
135

As mentioned previously, the group was largely galvanized around criticisms of
Whitney Museum director Thomas Armstrong’s decision to celebrate the Bicentennial of
the American Revolution with a major exhibition drawn from the collection of Mr. and
Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III. A letter to Armstrong cosigned by artist Andrews for the
Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, Lippard for the Women’s Slide Registry, and

argot.” Concerned with “organizing culture for the socialist revolution,” Red Herring
criticized the NEA, and in doing so lost their grant.” Moore, 66.
135
Lippard, Get the Message?: A Decade of Social Change (New York: E.P. Dutton,
1984), 25. Lippard refers here to the letters of protest to the Whitney Museum in 1975.
146
Baranik for Artists and Writers Protest against the War in Vietnam stated: “We are
appalled that a private collection will constitute the core of an exhibition mounted by the
leading museum of American art to celebrate our revolution. An exhibition of this nature
could not possibly include the various facets of American art a Bicentennial celebration
should encompass: art of dissent; art by minorities; an adequate representation of art by
women, reflecting a fresher and truer art historical view.”
136

The “American Art” show of the Rockefeller collection was one of four
Bicentennial exhibitions held at the Whitney. An open letter from the AMCC addressed
to the American Art Community asked other artists to “try and imagine Rockefeller and
his staff of experts quaintly constructing a history of American art from the complacent
viewpoint of the power elite,” calling the show “a blatant example of a large cultural
institution writing the history of American art as though the last decade of cultural and
social reassessment had never taken place.”
137
The letter also offered its recipients an
invitation to join members of the AMCC in picketing at the Whitney Museum and other
institutions. A flyer produced by the AMCC advertises upcoming picket gatherings at the
Whitney, the Rockefeller Center, and at MoMA (fig. 3.4).
The Whitney's bicentennial exhibitions became the focus of an extended series of

136
Letter to Thomas N. Armstrong from Benny Andrews, Lucy Lippard, and Rudolf
Baranik, November 3, 1975, reproduced in “an anti-catalog” (New York: The Catalog
Committee, Inc., 1977), 68. The authors of the letter continue, “We hardly need to point
out to you that a serious professional attitude would demand that you range wide in
curating such an exhibition, instead of accepting a ready-made show. We would like to
discuss the matter with you and the curators of the planned exhibition in a spirit of
collaboration and clarification, and we will call for an appointment in the near future.”
137
Letter to Thomas N. Armstrong from Benny Andrews, Lucy Lippard, and Rudolf
Baranik, November 3, 1975, reproduced in “an anti-catalog” (New York: The Catalog
Committee, Inc., 1977), 68.
147
protests intended to draw attention to the under-representation of women and minority
artists. Through One Blood Dollar (fig. 3.5) the Art Workers Coalition (AWC) charged
that museum trustees exercised undue economic and editorial power; the dollar specifies
that it is "only valid for established works of art" and "not valid for black, Puerto Rican or
female artists."
138
Groups like the AWC and AMCC staged actions outside mainstream
cultural institutions to call attention to the complicity of these institutions with what they
perceived as broader forms of social and political domination. Even the image on a
promotional sign on the Whitney's facade became an unintended vehicle for criticism:
Robert Venturi's over-scaled reproduction of Hiram Powers’s 1843 sculpture The Greek
Slave was perceived and targeted as a symbol of oppression (fig. 3.6).
In addition to coordinating information and protests, the AMCC published “an anti-
catalog” (fig. 3.7), composed of critical essays and documents intended to counter the
viewpoints of “official culture” promoted by proponents of the Rockefeller exhibition.
139

The AMCC criticized what its members saw as the misuse of art and art institutions to
serve the interests of a wealthy minority of the population. Among those on the catalog
committee were art historians Carol Duncan and Allan Wallach, “socialist formalist”
painter Baranik, and conceptual artists Charlesworth, Kosuth, and Janet Koenig.

“An anti-catalog” is laid out like a typical publication, beginning with a title page,

138
The text quoted here is from One Blood Dollar.
139
The producers of “an anti-catalog” may likely have been influenced by the “Draft for
an Anti-Textbook” published in the 1974 issue of Art-Language (fig. 3.8), featuring
collaborative contributions by Ian Burn, Mel Ramsden, Terry Smith, Terry Atkinson,
David Bainbridge, Michael Baldwin, Michael Corris, Charles Harrison, Preston Heller,
Graham Howard, Harold Hurrell, Joseph Kosuth, Andrew Menard, Philip Pilkington, and
David Rushton.
148
publication information, and a table of contents (fig. 3.9). The language of the
publication’s cover text points to the collective’s strategy of active political engagement
and its aesthetics of conceptual art: “Because it calls the neutrality of art into question,
this anti-catalog will be seen as a political statement... It is, in reality, no more political
than the viewpoint of official culture. The singularity of that viewpoint--the way it
advances the interests of a class--is difficult to see because in our society that viewpoint
is so pervasive... The critical examination of culture is thus a necessary step in gaining
control over the meaning we give our lives.”
140
The back cover (fig. 3.10) clarifies that,
“Unlike most catalogs, this anti-catalog is not a listing of valuable objects or a definitive
statement of what is or is not significant art. Rather, it consists of written and pictorial
essays that address questions about the historical and ideological function of American
art.”
141

The first “chapter,” entitled “The Project” lays out the motivation for producing “an
anti-catalog” in response to the Whitney exhibition:

The decision by the Whitney Museum to show the private collection of Mr.
and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III as one of its four Bicentennial shows came
at a crucial moment for the community of artists in New York. For some
time, many artists and others working in art-related fields had become
increasingly aware that the meaning and real worth of their activities were
directed and controlled by the market and its legitimizing institutions, of
which museums are a major part. The announced intention of the Whitney
and the de Young Museum in San Francisco to sponsor the showing of the
Rockefeller collection as an exhibition of “American Art” seemed to many of
us a particularly outrageous and blatant abuse of community trust by publicly
funded museums. Meetings were called in the art community to discuss this

140
Artists Meeting for Cultural Change, an anti-catalog (New York: The Catalog
Committee, Inc., 1977), front cover.
141
Ibid., back cover.
149
specific outrage, as well as the more general issue of the use (of more aptly
the misuse) of art and art institutions to serve the interests of a wealthy
minority sector of the population at the expense of the majority. Some of us,
who had felt that good art couldn’t be “political,” were faced with the
realization that our institutions were politicizing our work for us, and more
importantly: those “politics” were against our interests.
142

The next section, entitled “A Statement” reads as the AMCC’s manifesto, a
declaration of the collective’s principles and intentions. The AMCC challenges the
assumed neutrality of art, as exhibitions carry a specific point of view, or an argument.
They claim that the exhibition of the Rockefeller collection is a public argument for the
“Rockefeller view of history of the Rockefeller view of art.”
143
They also state their
intention that “an anti-catalog” be more than a critical exercise directed solely towards
the “American Art” exhibition at the Whitney. The AMCC argues that institutions of
“official” culture (specifically mentioning the Whitney, the Metropolitan Museum, and
the Museum of Modern Art), reflect the bias of the “corporate-government elite” class
that controls them. Further, “an anti-catalog” raises issues of representation in the display
of the Rockefeller collection (which included only one woman artist, one African
American, and no other minorities) and issues regarding the sources of Rockefeller
money, recalling other less-than-proud Rockefeller-produced moments in American
history.

For example, Cherokee artist-writer Jimmy Durham created his first critique of
museology on Indians for “an anti-catalog.” In his essay “Mr. Catlin and Mr. Rockefeller

142
AMCC, “The Project,” in an anti-catalog (New York: The Catalog Committee, Inc.,
1977), 6.
143
AMCC, “Statement,” in an anti-catalog (New York: The Catalog Committee, Inc.,
1977), 7.
150
Tame the Wilderness,” Durham remarks on the Rockefeller’s economic base in oil fields
stolen from Native people. Richardson’s catalog entry for Catlin’s Fire in a Missouri
Meadow, and a Party of Sioux Indians Escaping It; Upper Missouri (fig.11) glorifies the
work, deeming it “Catlin at his best,” remarking grandiosely that “Caitlin found in the
Indians of the great plains a vision of dignity and wild heroism that his European
contemporaries saw in ancient Rome or legends of the middle ages.”
144

“An anti-catalog” reproduces Catlin’s painting in the American Art show alongside
Kiowa artist Blackbear Bosin’s Prairie Fire, 1953 (fig. 3.12), which was featured in a
1955 issue of National Geographic. Bosin repainted Catlin’s prairie fire scene from a
Native American perspective. Although Bosin emphasizes the importance of the fire, he
does not portray the Indians desperately fleeing from an uncontrollable force. To quote
Durham: “George Catlin is well-known as a portrayer of Indians. One of his paintings in
Mr. Rockefeller’s bicentennial advertisement for the American myth shows a group of
plains Indians fleeing a prairie fire. The clear message is that those poor Indians were
enslaved to the whims of nature, unlike civilized folk.”
145
He goes on: “But it is fitting
that the Rockefellers have collected Catlin’s work. The history of that family is also a
history of the suppression of the Indians, and the Rockefellers need to keep up their own
silly version of U.S. history by every means possible. The first source of Rockefeller
money is oil. The oil industry began in Oklahoma, the territory where many Indian
nations were crowded into barren tracts of land.”
146

144
Richardson, 72.
145
Jimmie Durham, “Mr. Catlin and Mr. Rockefeller Tame the Wilderness,” in an anti-
catalog (New York: The Catalog Committee, Inc., 1977), 8.
146
Ibid, 9.
151

Durham’s essay for “an anti-catalog” inspired him to create his own sarcastic
miniature museum displays of fake Indian artifacts, body parts, and expeditionary
souvenirs.
147
For example, Durham’s 1985 installation entitled “On Loan from the
Museum of the American Indian” is a parody of museological display. For example,
Durham appropriates a series of maps of the continental United States, titling them
“Current Trends of Indian Land Ownership,” which clinically and dispassionately shows
the dwindling of Native American land on the continent (fig. 3.13 and fig. 3.14).
In “On Loan from the Museum of the American Indian” Durham also presents a
collection of part-found, part-fabricated “sociofacts” and “scientifacts”--terms coined by
the artist in opposition to “artifacts” (fig. 3.15). Durham arranged the objects with printed
labels both on the wall and in a vitrine, parodying the omnivorousness of the
ethnographic collector; anything “Indian” is worth being shown, dissected, and labeled--
even “Pocahontas’ Underwear,” panties adorned with feathers and beads. (fig. 3.16).
However items such as “An Indian Leg Bone” and Real Indian Blood” presented a
portrait of a body dismembered and reassigned to the dead space of the museum.
Durham’s installations undermine the way museological displays customarily
neutralize the emotional impact of statistical data and other forms of evidence pertaining
to bodies. Framing his “sociofacts” and “scientifacts” with captions about the ordinary
lives of present-day Native Americans, Durham satirizes American consumption of

147
Born in Oklahoma in 1940, Durham is a Native American sculptor, performance artist,
writer, and political activist. Utilizing the languages of archaeology, ethnography, and
history, disciplines which the Cherokee artist says “institutionalize the Indian,” Durham’s
sculptures and performances comment upon the consumption of Native American
culture.
152
native cultures made possible by the institutional codes of ethnography, archaeology, and
art history. Using found and fabricated objects such as animal skulls, feathers, and arrows
(fig. 3.17), Durham challenges his audience’s ideas about authenticity, culture and
"Indian-ness."
148
Despite what one might consider the conspicuousness of exhibitions
like Durham’s “On Loan from the Museum of the American Indian,” the artist has
remarked that many viewers thought the objects were actually on loan from the Museum
of the American Indian.

The next essay in “an anti-catalog,” “Demystifying American Art” argues that in
American society art is subject to a characteristic mystification--a mystification that
severs the connection between art’s historical origins and its contemporary existence (fig.
3.20). Mythic treatment transforms the past into a roll call of famous leaders and events,
and thus the myth becomes a way of ignoring large areas of lived experience. Instead it
pictures an American past free of real tensions--a past overflowing with triumphs and

148
In the 1980s Durham made several intentionally primitivistic sculptures that employed
animal skulls, feathers, and other scavenged materials to give physical form to his
conviction that “there is a mistaken idea that our traditional art is religious, that art
objects were made for ‘magical’ purposes.” Think Datsi, from 1984 (fig. 3.18 and 3.19),
combines a feathered panther skull with a wooden police barricade which has been
painted with a floral design. Art historian W. Jackson Rushing has pointed out that in
many ways this raw, fetishistic object resembles “traditional” Native American art in that
“it employs animal remains and other materials common to the immediate environment,
including items borrowed from Euro-American society, and it suggests the primal,
amoral violence of nature. And yet the work is neither totemic nor shamanistic, but
overtly political, since the appropriated text--”Police Dept”--announces the secularity and
impurity of the object, as well as a form of violence associated, not with nature, but with
institutional power.” See W. Jackson Rushing, “Jimmie Durham: Trickster as
Intervention,” Artspace 16, January-April 1992, 64.

153
material progress.
The publication asks its readers to consider what value a gallery of paintings, many
created long ago, can have for us now. By “now,” the AMCC meant, of course, the
occasion of the nation’s bicentennial, but the question could still apply to today.
According to the history of art that is habitually taught, past art should be seen in its
historical context: to understand baroque art we must study the baroque period; to
understand ancient Greek art we must study the ancient Greeks. Yet to the producers of
“an anti-catalog,” the art of the past embodies a contradiction that makes such an
approach one-sided; past art belongs to history but it also belongs to the present. The
present includes our present-day needs and aspirations, characteristic beliefs about art,
the institutions that govern the way art is sold, owned, exhibited, and publicized.
A particularly effective example the authors of “an anti-catalog” used to emphasize
the ahistorical way in which the art in the Rockefeller collection was exhibited in the
American Art show was Richardson’s treatment of by Thomas P. Anshutz’s Ironworks--
Noontime, 1880-1881 (fig. 3.21). Anshutz, a pupil of Thomas Eakins, was adept at
portraying the anatomical features of human figures. In the American Art catalog entry,
Richardson calls Ironworks--Noontime a “scene of muscular figures relaxing in the noon
day sun,”
149
completely eschewing the real content of Anshutz’s painting. Focusing on
the “pictorial possibilities of an iron foundry and in the men on whose strong muscles the
production of iron was dependent in those days,”
150
Richardson employs formal analysis
to introduce the catalog reader to the painting with descriptions such as “frieze-like

149
Richardson, 138.

150
Ibid.
154
design” and “rich but sober color.”
151
The authors of “an anti-catalog” astutely point out
that Anshutz painted this scene of Wheeling West Virginia iron mill workers for different
reasons—specifically to support the workers at a time of tremendous industrial expansion
and working class struggle.
152

In addition to ignoring the history of working class struggles, Richardson’s text in
the American Art catalog also glosses over the history of slavery in the text that
accompanies a reproduction of Thomas Hovenden’s etching of The Last Moments of John
Brown, ca. 1884 (fig. 3.22). A journalist for the New York Daily Tribune reported that as
Brown was escorted from the courthouse, he stopped to kiss a baby held out to him by his
Negro mother. According to Richardson, the incident inspired a poem by Quaker poet
and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier that led a New York manufacturer, Robbins
Battell, to commission the painting. Hovenden spent over two years of research on the
reconstruction of the scene. Hovenden’s original painting, exhibited at the 1889
Exposition universalle at Paris, was given by Battell’s daughter in 1897 to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The entry for the Harper’s Ferry Raid of October 16-18, 1859, from the Scribners
Dictionary of American History--reprinted in “an anti-catalog”—states that the raid “was
the most positive blow struck by the anti-slavery forces in the half-century of agitation
for the abolition of slavery in the United States…; it such public commentary and
political turmoil that for the first time, national thought was thoroughly aroused on the

151
Ibid.
152
AMCC, “Demystifying American Art,” in an anti-catalog (New York: The Catalog
Committee, Inc., 1977), 14.
155
issue. In its influence on the stream of history… the quixotical foray of captain John
Brown and his small army of men looms up as a milestone.”
153

The Dictionary of American History’s emphasis on the great historical significance
of the Harper’s Ferry Raid make Richardson’s description of Brown and the events at
Harper’s Ferry all the more surprising. According to Richardson, “John Brown’s stormy
life illustrates the passions aroused by the question of slavery which brought the country
to civil war. No one will ever be able to understand exactly what led him with only
eighteen men to seize the United States arsenal at Harper’s Ferry on the night of October
16, 1859 and to remain there inflexibly in the face of certain death.”
154

The authors of “an anti-catalog” reprint Richardson’s statement next to an excerpt
from W.E.B. DuBois’s John Brown, which proposes a different view of the history of
John Brown and the Harper’s Ferry expedition. In opposition to Richardson’s portrayal of
Brown’s plan as inexplicable, DuBois’s careful research of the plan and its execution
concluded that it was militarily feasible and very nearly succeeded. In his book DuBois
emphasizes Brown’s straightforward conviction: “He was simple, exasperatingly simple;
unlettered, plain and homely. No causitry of culture or of learning, of well-being or
tradition moved him in the slightest degree; ‘slavery is wrong,’ he said--‘kill it.’... It is
wrong by whatever name it is called, or in whatever guise it lurks, and whenever it
appears. But it is especially heinous, black and cruel when it masquerades in the robes of
law and justice and patriotism. So was American slavery clothed in 1859, and it had to

153
Reproduced in “John Brown,” in an anti-catalog, (New York: The Catalog
Committee, Inc., 1977), 22. The AMCC did not specify publication details of the volume
of Scribners Dictionary of American History that they consulted.
154
Richardson, 180.
156
die by revolution, not by milder means.”
155

“An anti-catalog” also reprints John Brown’s last speech, given in court November
2, 1859, one month prior to his execution. Brown’s impassioned and righteous speech
highlights the insensitivity of the way Brown’s history is treated within the American Art
catalog. The authors of “an anti-catalog” end the section by citing Joel Andreas’s graphic
novel The Incredible Rocky, Andreas’s unauthorized biography of the Rockefeller family:
“When John Brown was executed J.D. [Rockefeller, 1st] was the only one in Cleveland
who did not close his shop in respect for him.”
156

The following section, “The Love of Art and the Art of Public Relations,”
addresses the reasons why people might first collect art and then show the public what
they have collected. Here the AMCC argues that philanthropy in the form of cultural
charity is an extremely effective way of shaping the nation’s perception of itself and its
history.
157
The image of the past projected by the art in the Rockefeller collection is one
of a genteel, placid America, a United States made of great and wealthy men, picturesque
country and frontier folk, and idyllic landscapes. Women appear as wives, debutantes or
idealized versions. Blacks appear passive and lazy, and Native Americans appear as

155
Excerpt from W.E.B. DuBois, John Brown, reproduced in “John Brown,” in an anti-
catalog, (New York: The Catalog Committee, Inc., 1977), 22. The AMCC did not specify
the edition or page number.
156
Excerpt from Joel Andreas, The Incredible Rocky, reproduced in “John Brown,” in an
anti-catalog, (New York: The Catalog Committee, Inc., 1977), 23. The AMCC did not
specify the edition or page number.
157
AMCC, “The Love of Art and the Art of Public Relations,” in an anti-catalog (New
York: The Catalog Committee, Inc., 1977), 25.

157
romantic savages in unspoiled environments. These characters in Rockefeller’s art
collectopn appear to all belong to a harmonious past interrupted only occasionally by
“crazy” men such as John Brown. The exhibition obscures any view of a history made
through series on ongoing conflict and struggle, or a vision of a country built by great
numbers of laboring people. The authors of “an anti-catalog” argue that philanthropists
use charity to obscure or make invisible the real source of their wealth--the human labor
that produced it. In the words of the AMCC, charity makes the public believe that wealth
can be generated by the patron alone, or as John D. Rockefeller I accounted for it: “God
gave me my money.”
158

In the section that follows, entitled “It’s my wall.... But it’s my building,” the
AMCC considers the history of censorship of artwork commissioned for the Rockefeller
Center project in New York City.
159
John D. Rockefeller II initially planned the project--a
complex of eighteen buildings covering seventeen acres between 48th and 52nd Streets in
Midtown Manhattan. One of his sons, Nelson Rockefeller, who was also a Trustee and
Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Museum of Modern Art, directed the Center
during its construction.

In 1931 the Museum of Modern Art invited sixty-five artists to participate in a
mural exhibition. According to Hugo Gellert, writing for New Masses: “At the present
time such an exhibition would be particularly valuable... for architects in New York who

158
Ibid.
159
AMCC, “It’s my wall.... But it’s my building,” in an anti-catalog (New York: The
Catalog Committee, Inc., 1977), 28-29.

158
are in search of competent decorators for buildings proposed or in construction.”
160
The
mural exhibition was also in part a response to outrage from the American artists’
community to Nelson Rockefeller’s commissioning of three foreign artists to create a
monumental mural for the Rockefeller Center.

Although the show was invitational, MoMA rejected the cartoons of three artists--
Ben Shahn’s Sacco and Vanzetti, William Gropper’s Class Struggle in America Since the
War, and Hugo Gellert’s The Triumph of Lenin.
161
In The Museum of Modern Art: The
First Ten Years, Conger Goodyear refers to the show and describes two of the murals:
“One showed Al Capone entrenched behind money bags, operating a machine gun, with
President Hoover, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford as his companions,
and another mixed ticker tape with pigs and financiers.”
162
Facing threats of withdrawal
by the other artists, and through discussions within the museum that involved Nelson
Rockefeller and publics relations expert Ivy Lee, MoMA ultimately hung the cartoons.

Following the MoMA mural show, the Museum invited Diego Rivera to New York
in the spring of 1932 to execute a 63’ x 17’ mural that Nelson Rockefeller commissioned
for the lobby of the RCA Building. In keeping with the “New Frontiers” program of the
decoration of the RCA Building, it was to be titled Human Intelligence in Possession of
the Forces of Nature. The January 1933 issue of Art Digest described the theme of the
mural as “man at the crossroads, looking with uncertainty but with hope and high vision

160
Hugo Gellert, “We Capture the Walls!,” New Masses, June 1932, 29.
161
Ibid.
162
Conger Goodyear, The Museum of Modern Art: The First Ten Years (New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 1943).
159
to the choosing of a course leading to a new and better future.”
163
In May of 1933 Rivera
was dismissed “...after the manner of an ordinary proletarian,”
164
due to the “communistic
theme” of the murals--most specifically the inclusion of a portrait of Lenin.
165

In a section satirically titled “Paughtraits” (in the haughty dialect, one presumes, of
the Rockefellers), the producers of “an anti-catalog” use the example of the Rockefeller’s
vast collection of American portraiture to demonstrate how American art has often
contributed to the making of patriotic myths. The authors point out how the sight of a
portrait from the colonial period evokes, almost reflexively, a host of patriotic
associations. They argue that a gallery of eighteenth and nineteenth century portraits
implies that our cultural heritage consists of the historical continuity of the ruling class.
Similarly, images of a departed ruling class are frequently used to certify the
authority of today’s corporate-government elite. “an anti-catalog” reproduces the cover
of the April 1976 issue of Smithsonian magazine, which features a photograph of Mr. and
Mrs. John D. Rockefeller the 3rd posed in front of John Singleton Copley’s portrait,
William Vassal and his son Leonard, 1770-1772 (fig. 3.23). The title of the issue’s
feature article was “A great collection of American art goes on exhibit for the first time.”
“An anti-catalog” contends that colonial society--in which only a tiny percentage of

163
The Art Digest, January 1, 1933, 7.
164
Ibid.
165
The authors of an anti-catalog point out that Nelson Rockefeller must have known
Rivera’s work and political views when he commissioned the mural. Rockefeller owned
several paintings by Rivera, and Rivera had made a portrait of Nelson’s sister, Abby.
During 1927-28 Rivera included a caricature of John D. Rockefeller I in a well publicized
fresco mural in Mexico City.
160
the population could afford “charming artifice”--was rife with class antagonism.
Instead of an editorial essay, the “Paughtraits” section reproduces quotes and poses a
series of questions: “What do all these people have in common? Who are they? ... What
are the social functions of ‘paughtraits’? Whose interests do they represent? ... Who is
John D. Rockefeller III? Why is he so attracted to ‘paughtraits’? ... What kind of
messages are ‘paughtraits’ meant to convey? ... Who creates the value of these
“paughtraits’? Who profits? ... Who is made visible? Who is made invisible? ... Are
commissioned paughtraits ‘high art’ and their subjects fine people? Are illustrations of
workers and others ‘low art’ and their subjects coarse?”
166
These questions raise
important questions that readers might overlook when reading the official exhibition
catalog. They highlight the economic and social implications of Rockefeller’s interest in
building the portrait on view in the American Art show at the Whitney.

In a sharp and extensive critique the authors point out the absence of women,
African-American, and Native American artists in the exhibition and more broadly
questioned the possibility of a nonideological history of art. “An anti-catalog” was a
significant early instance of revisionist cultural history. This ambitious social theory of
American art--an early form of “institutional critique”--addressed many details about the
history of American art, and about American history, that the official exhibition catalog
deemed irrelevant. “An anti-catalog” ran against the grain of conventional wisdom about
what is relevant about works of art. If “an anti-catalog” had a limited audience, it
nonetheless raised questions not previously considered theoretically, questions about how

166
AMCC, “Paughtraits,” in an anti-catalog (New York: The Catalog Committee, Inc.,
1977), 30.
161
museum shows were constructed, questions that were to be more fully discussed by art
historians Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach (in their analyses of the Louvre in Paris and
the Museum of Modern Art in New York in “The Museum of Modern Art as Late
Capitalist Ritual,” published in 1978, and in “The Universal Survey Museum,” published
in 1980.
167

“An anti-catalog” constitutes one of the earliest critical studies of the modern
museum, attempting to determine how the public understood and experienced museums,
and especially museum catalogs. The AMCC pointed out that the primary purpose of art
museum catalogs is to affirm the commodity nature of individual works and entire
collections and that “philanthropy in the form of cultural charity is also an extremely
effective way of shaping the nation’s perception of itself and its history.”
168
They went on
to say, with illustrations of what they called “fortress museums”--the “moated” Whitney
and the “crenelated” Denver Art Museum (fig. 3.24 and 3.25): “We are often assured that
museums are central to our existence as civilized, spiritually complete human beings.
We are also told that museums bring art closer to people and help make art a part of life.
A visit to almost any modern art museum teaches the exact opposite of these claims.
Inside and out, modern museums are designed to keep art away from people... and to
keep art removed from daily life.”
169

167
See Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, “The Museum of Modern Art as Late Capitalist
Ritual: An Iconographical Analysis,” Marxist Perspectives 1, Winter 1978, 27-51; and
Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, “The Universal Survey Museum,” Art History 3, no. 4,
December 1980, 448-469.
168
AMCC, “The Love of Art and the Art of Public Relations,” 25.

169
AMCC, “To Have and Have Not,” in an anti-catalog (New York: The Catalog
Committee, Inc., 1977), 41. When French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu undertook the first
extensive visitor surveys of museums in France, Spain, Poland, Greece, and the
162

Since the American Art exhibition and catalog failed to provide a history of art by
Black Americans, “an anti-catalog” attempted to fill in the gap in the illustrated essay
“Black Art and Historical Omission.”
170
The authors reproduce work by African-
American artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Horace Pippin, Malcolm
Bailey, and Charles White alongside engravings of a loading plan for a slave ship and a
slave auction in the New Orleans Rotunda, as well as a 1941 photograph of an urban
black neighborhood in Pittsburgh. They write, “The omission of Black artists from the
Rockefeller collection is consistent with the history of Black American experience in
general. Like the experience of women and the poor, the history of Black people has
been scrupulously forgotten--unwritten into American history and art history.”
171
The
AMCC contended that omission was one of the mechanisms by which fine art reinforces
the values and beliefs of the powerful and suppresses the experiences of others.

Taught only in exclusive schools the “fine arts” such as oil painting and sculpture
proved largely inaccessible for the majority of the public. In spite of the barriers, some

Netherlands with his research team in the 1960s, he discovered that blue-collar workers
and rural dwellers felt intimidated by the solemn surroundings and esoteric demands of
the museum (Bourdieu and Darbel, L’Amour de l’art: Les Musées d’art européens et leur
public, 1969, English trans. 1990). In contrast to the generally accepted notion that
museums were democratically open to the public, Bourdieu argued that museums were
exclusionary. He concluded that museums had a very specific social function, hardly the
liberal education of a diverse populace, but rather both the production and reinforcement
of class distinctions.
170
To clarify further the concerns about the lack of work by Black artists, Benny
Andrews wrote to Richardson directly on June 30, 1976.
171
AMCC, “Black Art and Historical Omission,” in an anti-catalog (New York: The
Catalog Committee, Inc., 1977), 42.
163
Blacks did become artists, though their history remains largely outside of art historical
textbooks. For example, “an anti-catalog” reproduces Joshua Johnston’s Mrs. Abraham
White and Daughter Rose (fig. 3.26), a portrait of a white middle-class mother and
daughter. The mother holds a book, parted open with her finger as if caught at that
moment while reading. For the authors of “an anti-catalog”, Johnston’s success
illuminates the dilemma of the nineteenth-century Black artist in America: of Johnston’s
thirty-odd known works, all but two portray whites--mostly white merchants and their
families. As a professional portraitist, Johnston could not create images for and about
Black people; his situation prevented him from dealing with his own Black reality in his
art.
In the catalog Richardson prefaces many of his interpretations with phrases like
“No one will ever understand...,” “It is impossible for us to comprehend today...,” and “It
is difficult to imagine...”
172
He singles out Thomas Hart Benton (fig. 3.27) as the
originator of “the outstanding style in American painting,” quoting Thomas Craven in his
bestselling 1934 publication, Modern Art: the Men, the Movements, the Meaning.
According to Craven, Benton believed that American art must be understandable to an
American audience that only responds to facts, a public that is not swayed by ideas.
173

For Benton, American art must present “particular” reality, not abstractions,
generalizations, or ideologies. Benton opposed abstract art not only because it originated
in Europe, but also because it was based on theories and generalizations. Benton loudly

172
AMCC, “The Politics of No Ideas,” in an anti-catalog (New York: The Catalog
Committee, Inc., 1977), 48.
173
See Thomas Craven, Modern Art: the Men, the Movements, the Meaning (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1934), 339.
164
rejected “the whole idea of art and even in politics.”
174
He claimed that American artists
do not derive art from ideas and that even politics must “rely wholly on pragmatic
observation of developing facts.”
175

Benton painted scenes he claimed were free from ideas--just based on direct
observation. In a section (aptly) entitled “The Politics of No Ideas,” the producers of “an
anti-catalog” cite Stuart Davis, a painter diametrically opposed to Benton artistically and
politically, who commented on Benton’s claim to “direct observation”: “Are the gross
caricatures by Benton to be passed off as direct representations?... Had they little more
wit, they would automatically take their place in the body of propaganda which is
constantly being utilized to disenfranchise the Negro politically, socially, and
economically.”
176
Benton’s caricatures had enough “wit” to spark a racist review in an
Art Digest review of the same year: “[Benton] has caught the American Negro in all his
typical humor, swagger and lankiness. With oversized feet and huge hands these dark
subjects have allowed laziness to sink right into their bones, until life’s most difficult
problem is for them to raise their heads.”
177

The following essay, “Looking for Women in the Rockefeller Collection,”
addresses the history of the invisibility of women in American Art and the continuation
of this tradition in the 1976 Bicentennial exhibition of art from the Rockefeller collection.

174
AMCC, “The Politics of No Ideas,” 48.
175
“Benton Goes Home,” Art Digest 15, April 1935, 13.
176
Stuart Davis, Art Front, February 1935, 6.
177
Art Digest, April 15, 1935, 15.
165
The section begins one hundred years earlier, at the Centennial of 1876. There, for the
first time, an entire pavilion was allocated for the display of women’s work. Over six
hundred exhibits displayed women’s expanding contributions to such fields as
journalism, medicine, science, art, literature, inventions, teaching, business, and social
work. The Women’s Pavilion celebrated middle-class women’s growing consciousness of
their professional potential. Yet “an anti-catalog” points out that some women’s voices
were not represented in the Pavilion. The authors quote Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who
spoke on behalf of those underrepresented when she and other feminists refused to
support the pavilion: “The Pavilion was no true exhibit of women’s art... It did not
include samples of objects made by women in factories owned by men such as textiles,
shoes and Waltham watches... Upon its walls should have hung... framed copies of all the
laws bearing unjustly upon women--those which rob her of her name, her earnings, her
property, her children, her person.... Women’s most fitting contribution would have been
these protests, laws and decisions, which show her political slavery.”
178

A subsection of “Looking for Women in the Rockefeller Collection” entitled “The
Ladies of the Rockefeller Collection” referred not to the gender of the artists whose work
the Rockefellers collected, but to the specific types of women represented by the portraits
in their collection. The AMCC argued that the number of women artists shown in the
American Art exhibition was not the only or even the real issue. They identify the real
issue as the way in which women are seen and taught to see themselves in the culture in
general, and in such prestigious collections as those of the Rockefellers. Further, the

178
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1876. Quoted in AMCC, “Looking for Women in the
Rockefeller Collection,” in an anti-catalog (New York: The Catalog Committee, Inc.,
1977), 52.
166
commentary by Richardson reinforces the existence of women as objects of male vision
and not human beings in their own right.
Reproduced in “an anti-catalog,” alongside a portrait of Caroline de Bassano (fig.
3.28 and fig. 3.29) by John Singer Sargent, is text by Richardson in the American Art
catalog: “Here is a young woman in the pride of her beauty and elegance, eyes alight, lips
slightly parted, the clear skin of her throat and shoulders glowing above her low corsage
as she throws back her enveloping evening cloak.”
179
Richardson’s text, focused on the
sitter’s physical characterizations, clearly sexualizes this historical person depicted in the
portrait.

Also reproduced in “an anti-catalog” alongside Joseph Badger’s portrait of Anna
Porter Brown (fig. 3.30 and fig. 3.31) is Richardson’s description: “The portrait of Anna
Porter of Wenham, Massachusetts, who married Nathaniel Brown of Salem in 1743, tells
us a good deal about this serious, responsible New England housewife. There is no hint
of a smile in the earnest mouth; the eyes are straightforward, her face plain; yet there is
something attractive in this directness of character. One feels certain that her family was
well cared for and her home quiet and orderly.”
180
The authors of “an anti-catalog” go on
to argue that such characterizations of women are not only urged on us as ideals and
norms, but that they are also enforced by customs and institutions, and as a result have
ended up being internalized and perpetuated by women themselves.

“An anti-catalog” concludes its series of essays with a brief section entitled “Three
Kinds of Charity.” According to the AMCC, “charity” means: “sharing the consumption

179
AMCC, “The Ladies in the Rockefeller Collection,” in an anti-catalog (New York:
The Catalog Committee, Inc., 1977), 54.
180
AMCC, “The Ladies in the Rockefeller Collection,” 55.
167
of something or giving away insignificant sums of money. The recipients of charity are
paupers. Charity never means sharing control of the environment or sharing ownership of
productive land or property. Charity keeps people from imagining this other kind of
sharing.”
181
The AMCC identifies the three kinds of charity as food, money, and art. For
the example of money, “an anti-catalog” reproduces a photograph of John D. Rockefeller
giving away change to a young boy (fig. 3.32). Rockefeller looks at the camera while
dropping coins into the outstretched hand of the young man. The caption reads: “John D.
Rockefeller giving away dimes. Along with dimes, he dispensed advice about the virtue
of saving money.”

At the end of the publication, the AMCC duplicated a set of documents related to
the collective’s protest of the Whitney exhibition. The documents chart the story of the
events leading up to and following the production of “an anti-catalog.” Between flyers
made by the AMCC calling for the public to boycott the exhibition lies a page featuring
two photographs (fig. 3.33 and fig. 3.34). No captions are provided, but the figures in the
photographs look like museum trustees or otherwise important figures arriving at the
Whitney for perhaps the exhibition opening while members of the AMCC picket outside.
In a flyer urging people to boycott the Whitney, the AMCC contended that exhibitions
such as the Rockefeller American Art share in determining the “Official Culture” for the
United States, which only reflects the taste and attitudes of the Rockefellers and others of
their class.
Although Armstrong, Richardson, and others at the Whitney remained unwilling to
engage in dialogue with the AMCC in the course of planning the show, the Museum did

181
AMCC, “Three Kinds of Charity,” in an anti-catalog (New York: The Catalog
Committee, Inc., 1977), 66-67.
168
express interest in their activity and knew about “an anti-catalog.” Arno Kaster, the
librarian at the Whitney sent the AMCC a letter on November 10, 1976, which reads:
“The library would like to place an order for your counter-catalog for the Rockefeller
show at the Whitney museum. When the catalog is ready for distribution, please let me
know and I will forward a $10.00 contribution.”
182
The AMCC included a copy of this
letter on the last page of their publication.

In a review of “an anti-catalog” in the journal Leonardo, Barron M. Hirsch asserts:
“Eliminated are those aspects of the history involving exploitation, racism, slavery and
genocide. The patriotic myth of the essential goodness of the country is perpetuated to
justify the present social order.” He describes this as “a kind of emotional conditioning
selected to prevent an accurate picture of the nation’s history.”
183
The reviews of the actual American Art exhibition seem slightly more sympathetic.
In a review by San Francisco Examiner, the reviewer claimed to “disagree totally with
the violence and indecency with which that criticism was expressed,” though he admitted
to be “not totally out of sympathy with it.”
184
The author of the San Francisco Examiner
review, Alfred Frankenstein, lauded the show for its inclusiveness of artists previously
overlooked in museum exhibitions and scholarly studies of American art: “Of the 60
identifiable artists in the de Young show, 37 have never been studied except in an

182
Reproduced in an anti-catalog, (New York: The Catalog Committee, Inc., 1977), 79.
The AMCC priced an anti-catalog at $3.50.
183
Barron M. Hirsch, Review of an anti-catalog, Leonardo 12, no. 1, Winter 1979, 75
184
Alfred Frankenstein “The Rockefeller Collection of American Art,” San Francisco
Examiner, April 18, 1976, 30.
169
occasional exhibition catalogue, if that. Of the 23 who have been studied, about a third
have been treated in books now just slipping over the edge of obsolescence.”
185

Richardson seemed to know Frankenstein’s art criticism fairly well, as he
referenced three of Frankenstein’s publications in the American Art catalog.

He describes
the way in which Frankenstein discovered an artist included in the exhibition, John F.
Peto: “One of the surprising discoveries of recent times was made by Alfred Frankenstein
at the beginning of his study of [William Michael] Harnett. He found another artist in
total eclipse behind the man he was investigating. The second artist was Peto. This
discovery not only resurrected a forgotten artist but led, step by step, to the exploration of
an entire tromp l’oeil school, as related by the author in After the Hunt (Frankenstein,
1953 & 1969).”
186

Further, Richardson features a work by Pero on the back cover of the American Art
catalog. The Cup We All Race For, signed at the top center by Peto, is a simple depiction
of a well-used metal cup hanging by a hook from a green wooden door (fig. 3.35). The
words “THE CUP WE ALL RACE 4” appear scratched into the green paint on the
surface of the door beneath the cup. Contrasting Peto with Harnett, Richardson points
out the “instead of lustrous objects, Peto painted old, commonplace, worn-out things” and
quoted Frankenstein’s characterization of Peto’s subjects as “the fantasticality of the
commonplace.”
187

Journalists writing about the critique made by the AMCC at the time seemed to

185
Ibid.
186
Richardson, 204.
187
Ibid.
170
simplify, or even misunderstand, the collective’s intent. Frankenstein writes, “New
York’s criticism had to do with the fact that the exhibition contains no works by black
people and only one by a woman--a magnificent one by Susan MacDowell Eakins. One
would expect New York also to complain that it contains only one work by a Jew--Ben
Shahn--and nothing by an artist with a Spanish surname. Out here we could add
complaints about the absence of Orientals and Native Americans.”
188
Frankenstein argues
that because the exhibition is drawn from the collection of the Rockefellers, who “may
acquire and exhibit what they please,” the exhibition “does not necessarily make for an
adequate observation of the Bicentennial by a major city museum.” Frankenstein’s point
seems convincing to a certain point, until one reads the AMCC’s “Statement” in “an anti-
catalog.”
The AMCC addresses the issue of Rockefellers’ right to collect what they please.
They agree that John D. Rockefeller has the freedom to collect whatever he wishes, but
they assert that a right to collect is not the issue at stake. They specifically state: “A
private collection is, conceivably, a private matter. But when it is presented at an
institution such as the Whitney Museum, the collection enters the public realm. Here, the
owner’s apparently personal outlook and prejudices take on the force of a polemic.”
189

“An anti-catalog” contends that the exhibition of the Rockefeller collection is, in effect, a
public argument. The argument, the “an anti-catalog” asserts, achieves its power through
the museum’s assumed neutrality, so that viewers are unaware the ideological bias of the
exhibition.

188
Frankenstein, 31.
189
AMCC, “Statement,” in an anti-catalog (New York: The Catalog Committee, Inc.,
1977), 7.
171

In 1976, critics of “an anti-catalog” were likely unsure of how to respond to the
novelty of the publication. In format the catalog is neither innovative nor structurally
complex. Against the slickness of museum catalogs with their glossy finish and high-
quality color reproductions, “an anti-catalog” expressed anti-commercial, egalitarian
sentiments through its unpretentious, do-it-yourself format.
“An anti-catalog” should be viewed in the context of a time in which American
artists became increasingly resentful of the control exercised by the art market and its
institutions—galleries and art museums. Like artists’ magazines, “an anti-catalog” was
produced and distributed not according to the motives of profit but according to the
artistic, social, and political ideals the AMCC sought to convey. It represents the
AMCC’s efforts to inform the public of their position and to set up an alternate system of
art patronage. In a book review published in the Autumn 1980 issue of Winterthur
Portfolio, reviewer Baruch D. Kirschenbaum of the Rhode Island School of Design
emphasized the importance of this publication: “At first glance an Anti-catalog may
seem merely a diatribe against the entire concept of the fine art and its supporting class
structure. It is, however, much more than that. The issues it raises are important.”
190
Kirschenbaum goes on to explain that the AMCC’s main contention was that by showing
the Rockefeller collection as American art, the Whitney Museum legitimized it as an
adequate sampling of the art of this country and thereby supported the interpretation of
American history explicit in that selection. He recognized and supported the AMCC’s
position that the exhibition and catalog pretend political and cultural neutrality although

190
Baruch D. Kirschenbaum, Review [untitled], Winterthur Portfolio 15, no. 3, Winter
1980, 275.
172
just the opposite is true.

The AMCC disbanded shortly after the publication of “an anti-catalog.” Despite the
compelling nature of the AMCC’s response to the Whitney show, the mounting tensions
within the committee grew as they struggled to come to terms with how to avoid
becoming simply reactionary and establish an agreed upon, viable basis for continuing.
“A Tentative Position Paper” prepared by the Position Paper Committee of the AMCC,
read on February 22, 1976, emphasized these points: “Whilst the Rockefeller issue has
provided a new and temporary solidarity it should be realized that interest will quickly
deteriorate once this urgency has passed. This temporary focus may be useful and indeed
necessary, but it is not sufficient reason in itself for a continuing group dialogue. The
group will at best become a rather dull super-ad-hoc committee, the limits of its actions
and interests being defined only by the next external, cultural activity that rears its
obvious head…”
191

191
“A Tentative Position Paper” prepared by the Position Paper Committee of “Artists
Meeting for Cultural Change,” read February 22, 1976, Lucy Lippard Papers, Archives of
American Art, Washington, D.C. [find folder #]. The fear was that the AMCC would
exist as a reactionary organization, “only be dealing with manifestations of a cultural
imbalance rather than a manifestation of its causes. To put it bluntly: it becomes both
boring, and destructive of our continuing interest, to be exclusively concerned with
action, at the expense of understanding. The ideas within the group will have no chance
to evolve: we will be doomed to sitting there each with out own private beliefs,
condemned to throwing in tactical ideas. Nothing fundamentally, in ourselves, is enabled
to change. Important as these protest actions are, if they become the raison d’etre of the
group, they will become diversionary and counter-productive.
As yet, there is not any internally generated, theoretical basis for this groups
continuing. At present we are not one group, in the sense of individuals sharing a
particular set of beliefs, but we are a group in the sense of individuals sharing a sense of
uncertainty. ...the committee would like to recommend the group devote a regular and
considerable amount of time, to study, discussion, learning--as a group--seeing this
dialogue as already being a step towards a new form of practice. Within this context, we
can begin to test our ideas, theories, suppositions and attitudes, collaboratively, and begin
to understand the nature of a group practice and how it might alter that very system.
173
Nevertheless, “an anti-catalog” offers alternative, critical views of American art
and collecting. Though originally intended as a response to the Whitney’s centennial
exhibition, “an anti-catalog” grew into a critical look at art museums and art exhibitions
in general. It was an early critical reassessment of the idea that cultural institutions are
neutral, and do not restrict, prohibit, or exclude anything on ideological grounds. The
Rockefeller collection, “an anti-catalog” maintains, ignores women and minority artists
and offers a version of America in which the poor are sentimentalized, the land is
romanticized, and the rich and powerful are celebrated for their beauty and gentility. The
authors representing the AMCC strongly and effectively contended that the collection is
typical of “official culture” that favors the corporate-government elite by projecting an
image of the past that justifies the present social order and its unequal divisions of wealth
and social power.
“An anti-catalog” presents a different model of art and politics; it is not about
radical activism or about the political efficacy of elite art. “An anti-catalog” was a
specifically artistic response to a situation the AMCC saw as requiring political
intervention. Like the artists and art historians in the Catalog Committee of the AMCC,
other artists and curators also experimented with formal alternatives for the concept of
the exhibition catalog. The precedent of the non-traditional, experimental catalog proved

This process would not need to detract from the continuous and careful attention to
immediate, external problems, such as Whitney-type situations, but these situations
should not be considered the most important, long-term function of the group…. We feel
that it will be essential to set aside at least one hour of every group meeting, in which to
specifically study and discuss particular questions. To set the ball rolling for the first few
of these occasions, some individuals within the committee, have already prepared brief
papers on a number of topics. These are: Art & Feminism, Collaboration, Imperialism,
Artist as Individual, The Culture Industry, The role of Museums....”

174
especially productive for feminist approaches to exhibiting and documenting
contemporary works of art.

175

Figure 3.1 Catalog cover, E.P. Richardson, American Art: An Exhibition from the
Collection of John D. Rockefeller, 3rd. San Francisco: M. H. De Young Museum, 1977.

176

Figure 3.2 John Singleton Copley, Mrs. Daniel Sargent (Mary Turner Sargent), 1763, oil
on canvas, 49 1/2 x 39 1/4 (125.7 x 99.7 cm).

177

Figure 3.3 Front covers, The Fox, Issues 1-3

178

Figure 3.4 Artists Meeting for Cultural Change, flyer calling for protests at The Whitney
Museum of American Art and the Rockefeller Center, New York, 1976

179

Figure 3.5 Art Workers Coalition, One Blood Dollar, 1976

180

Figure 3.6 Photocutout of Hiram Power’s Greek Slave placed on the Whitney canopy by
Robert Venturi for the 1976 exhibition “200 Years of American Sculpture”

181

Figure 3.7 Front cover, The Catalog Committee of Artists Meeting for Cultural Change,
“an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

182

Figure 3.8 Art-Language: Draft for an Anti-Textbook 3, no. 1 (September 1974).

183

Figure 3.9 Title Page, The Catalog Committee of Artists Meeting for Cultural Change,
“an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

184

Figure 3.10 Back cover, The Catalog Committee of Artists Meeting for Cultural Change,
“an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

185

Figure 3.11 George Catlin’s painting showing a group of plains Indians fleeing a prairie
fire, as reproduced alongside Jimmy Durham’s essay “Mr. Catlin and Mr. Rockefeller
Tame the Wilderness” in “an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

Figure 3.12 Blackbear Bosin, Prairie Fire, published in the March 1955 issue of National
Geographic, as reproduced in “an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee,
1977.

186

Figure 3.13 Jimmie Durham, detail of “On Loan from the Museum of the American
Indian”, 1985.

187

Figure 3.14 Jimmie Durham, Current Trends in Indian Land Ownership, detail of “On
Loan from the Museum of the American Indian”, 1985.

188

Figure 3.15 Jimmie Durham, Current Trends in Indian Land Ownership, installation
photograph including “Pocahontas’s Underwear,” 1985.

Figure 3.16 Detail of “Pocahontas’s Underwear,” 1985.
189

Figure 3.17 Jimmie Durham, detail from “On Loan from the Museum of the American
Indian”, 1985.

190

Figure 3.18 Jimmie Durham, Thuhn Datsi, 1984
191

Figure 3.19 Jimmie Durham, Thuhn Datsi, 1984

192

Figure 3.20 Page 11 of an anti-catalog” entitled “Demystifying American Art,
“an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.
193

Figure 3.21 Thomas Pollock Anshutz, The Ironworkers’ Noontime, 1880, oil on canvas,
17 x 23.9 in.

194

Figure 3.22 Thomas Hovenden, The Last Moments of John Brown, ca. 1884

195

Figure 3.23 Cover of the April 1976 issue of Smithsonian, as reproduced in “an anti-
catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

196

Figure 3.24 Photograph of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, as
reproduced in “an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

197

Figure 3.25 Photograph of the Denver Art Museum, as reproduced in “an anti-catalog.”
New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

198

Figure 3.26 Joshua Johnson, Mrs. White and Daughter Rose, ca. 1808-09

199

Figure 3.27 Thomas Hart Benton, The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley,
1934, oil, tempura on canvas.

200

Figure 3.28 John Singer Sargent, Caroline de Bassano, Marquise d'Espeuilles, 1884,
As reproduced in an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

201

Figure 3.29 John Singer Sargent, Caroline de Bassano, Marquise d'Espeuilles, 1884
202

Figure 3.30 Joseph Badger, Anna Porter Brown (Mrs. Nathaniel Brown), circa 1970, As
reproduced in an anti-catalog.” New York: The Catalog Committee, 1977.

203

Figure 3.31 Joseph Badger, Anna Porter Brown (Mrs. Nathaniel Brown), circa 1970, oil
on canvas, 47 3/4 x 36 7/8 (121.3 x 93.7 cm).

204

Figure 3.32 Photograph reproduced on page 26 of an anti-catalog.” New York: The
Catalog Committee, 1977.
The caption reads:
John D. Rockefeller I began giving away nickels, and later dimes, as part of a self-
conscious campaign to improve his public image.

205

Figures 3.33 and 3.34 Photographs reproduced in “an anti-catalog.” New York: The
Catalog Committee, 1977.

206

Figure 3.35 John F. Peto, The Cup We All Race For, ca. 1900

207
Chapter Four
Experimental Catalogs of Women Artists by Women Curators

As the AMCC convincingly argued in “an anti-catalog,” institutional sexism and
exclusion were still social and economic realities for women artists during the 1970s. All-
women exhibitions provided a direct response to the widespread absence of women
artists’ work from museums and public culture at large. This chapter explores
experimental catalogs for all-women exhibitions, curated by women. Specifically, it
examines in depth c. 7,500, a traveling exhibition curated by Lippard in 1973, and
Contemporary Women: Consciousness and Content, curated by Joan Semmel at the
Brooklyn Museum Art School in 1977. The catalogs for these show are illustrative of the
ways in which women also challenged the definition, limits, and purposes of the
exhibition catalog. The chapter also considers, more briefly, Works on Paper/Women
Artists, curated by the Women in the Arts Foundation at the Brooklyn Museum in 1975,
since its catalog is exemplary of the urgent need to document more generally the art
produced by women artists working during this time period.

“c. 7.500,” 1973-74, Originated at the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, and
traveled to the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; Moore College of Art,
Philadelphia; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; ICA, Boston; Smith College Museum of
Art, Northampton, Massachusetts; The Garage, London; A.I.R. Gallery, New York;
And/Or Gallery, Seattle; and its final venue, Vassar College Museum of Art,
Poughkeepsie, New York
208
In 1973 Lucy Lippard curated c. 7,500, a traveling show of conceptual art made by
women artists (fig. 4.1, fig. 4.2, and fig. 4.3). The artists for the most part were young and
not widely known, although most had been exhibited at galleries and museums, and some
had been featured in one-woman shows in New York.
192
The exhibition began at the
California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, and traveled to nine additional
venues.
193
The title of the show, c. 7,500, was, in 1973, the population of Valencia,
California, where the show originated. The accompanying catalog explored an unbound
format that challenged the very definition of an exhibition catalog.
Included in the exhibition were contributions by Renate Altenath, Laurie Anderson,
Eleanor Antin, Jacki Apple, Alice Aycock, Jennifer Bartlett, Hanne Darboven, Agnes
Denes, Doree Dunlap, Nancy Holt, Poppy Johnson, Nancy Kitchel, Christine Kozlov,
Suzanne Kuffler, Pat Lasch, Bernadette Mayer, Christiane Möbus, Rita Myers, Renee
Nahum, N.E. Thing Co., Ulrike Nolden, Adrian Piper, Judith Stein, Athena Tacha, Mierle
Laderman Ukeles, and Martha Wilson. C. 7,500 provided Lippard with a way to respond
to the charge that women were not participating in conceptual art. Lippard listed out all of
the participating artists’ names on a catalog card at the time (fig. 4.4), as her “exasperated
reply on my own part to those who say ‘there are no women making conceptual art’. For

192
Hanne Darboven had a one-woman show at Leo Castelli in April 1973, and Eleanor
Antin had one at the Museum of Modern Art.
193
“C. 7,500” originated at the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, May 14-18,
1973, and traveled to the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; Moore College
of Art, Philadelphia; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; ICA, Boston; Smith College
Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts; The Garage, London; A.I.R. Gallery, New
York; And/Or Gallery, Seattle; and its final venue, Vassar College Museum of Art,
Poughkeepsie, New York, October 16-November 14, 1974.
209
the record, there are a great many more than could be included here.”
194

Lippard believed the inexpensive, ephemeral, and unintimidating character of
various conceptual media (such as video, performance, photography, narrative, text, and
actions) encouraged women to participate (see fig. 4.5, 4.6, and 4.7 for images of the
exhibition). The exhibition featured exclusively female conceptual artists like Antin,
Darboven and Wilson. C. 7500 marked the moment in which Lippard’s interests in
conceptual art and feminism dovetailed; going forward, Lippard’s work would take a
more explicit political turn in support of feminist causes.

Lippard dedicated much of her curatorial work in the 1970s to promoting women
artists. During the first five years of the decade, she mounted or contributed essays to a
significant number of exhibitions devoted exclusively to the work of women artists, many
of who had never had a one-person exhibition. She explicitly stated that c. 7,500 was the
manifestation of her desire to disprove a specific claim about women--that there are no
women making conceptual art.
195
The exhibition was both a response and a corrective to
a series of exhibitions of conceptual art that she herself had organized. C. 7,500 provided
a way to change the public perception that no women making conceptual art, which she
felt that she had helped create.
From 1966 to 1972, a time of social unrest and consciousness-raising about class,
racial, and gender inequalities, Lucy Lippard participated in the nascent conceptual art
scene as a critic, curator, and most importantly, artistic collaborator. Alongside artists

194
Lucy Lippard, “Escape Attempts,” in Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965-1975,
eds. Ann Goldstein and Anne Rorimer (Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art;
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), 23.
195
Press release, “C. 7,500” (Northhampton, Mass: Smith College Museum of Art, 1974),
3.
210
who abandoned traditional materials for an experimental, process-based approach,
Lippard pursued a singular practice of art writing, exhibition-making, and political
activism. In 1973, Lippard documented various strands of “dematerialized” practice of
this period in her book Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object, 1966 to
1972.
196
The edited anthology framed a network of Conceptual Art (variously referred to
as Land art, Minimalism, Anti-form, and Systems Art) through Lippard’s unique
perspective, deeply informed by her growing involvement in the feminist movement.
Lippard’s ambivalent awareness of what she saw as the problems inherent in art
criticism characterized her position in the art world. Her objections about the art world in
which she participated read almost like a description of it: “Artworks sincerely made by
committed artists are turned into commodities, used as decoration and conversation
pieces for an elite audience, forced into competition with other art, and thereby made
impotent to really provoke insight—all too often with the artist’s consent. The
uncommunicative aspect of much art now is really sad.”
197

Beginning in 1971 she became particularly involved with women artists’ groups,
helping found the Ad Hoc Committee, the Women’s Art Registry, and (WEB West-East
Bag). Lippard has admitted: “A lot of the work I did with women artists at the beginning
was to assuage the guilt about the way I had treated them myself… Now I simply see

196
Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972
(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973).
197
Lippard quoted in “Lucy Lippard: Freelancing the Dragon,” Art-Rite no. 5, Spring
1974, 18. She had hoped that conceptual art would reach a large audience and transcend
the closed art market for expensive objects, but “conceptual art…got co-opted too and I
[Lippard] certainly don’t blame any of the artists because artists should be able to make a
loving off what they do like everyone else. I blame the society that puts property values
over everything else.”
211
more work I like that’s by women then men.”
198
She revealed in an interview for Art-Rite
magazine that prior to the 1970s she was not attuned to the plight of women artists. She
bought into the cliché “if you got anyplace as a woman you must be better than most
women because everybody knew women were inferior. You couldn’t identify with other
women; the art world bore it out. There were virtually no women artists visible.”
199

Lippard set out to change this during the 1970s in her art criticism and curatorial practice.
In a revised amalgam of Lippard’s short essays reprinted in “Prefaces to Catalogs
of Three Women’s Exhibitions,” in The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Feminist Essays on
Art, Lippard clarified:

Totally aside from the political necessities fulfilled by women’s shows, they
also provide a fascinating field of speculation for the question asked so
often over the last two or three years: Is there a women’s art? And if so,
what is it like? One of the difficulties in drawing any conclusions so early in
the game is the fact that art is inevitably influenced by other art publicly
made visible, which now means primarily art by men. However, the
overwhelming fact remains that a women’s experience in this society--
social and biological--is simply not like that of a man. If art comes from
inside, as it must, then the art of men and women must be different, too.
And if this factor doesn’t show up in women’s work, only repression can be
to blame.”
200

Key points in this rich text include that Lippard was interested in exploring the possibility

198
Lippard, “Freelancing the Dragon: An interview with the Editors of Art-Rite,” in From
the Center: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1976), 26.
Reprinted from Art-Rite no. 5, Spring 1974.
199
Ibid.
200
Lippard, a revised amalgam of prefaces to the catalogs for “Ten Artists (Who Also
Happen to be Women)," reprinted in ”Prefaces to Catalogs of Three Women’s
Exhibitions,” in The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Feminist Essays on Art (New York: The
New Press, 1995), 57.
212
of a “women’s art,” and that she believed that there could be. However she suspected that
the efforts of women to create artwork similar to that produced by men (the only kind
previously publicly visibly), may have historical repressed this possibility.
C. 7,500 was the final show in a series of her four groundbreaking “Numbers”
exhibitions of conceptual art, and the only show in the series devoted specifically to
women artists.
201
The others included 557,087 at the Seattle Art Museum Pavilion in
1969, 955,000 at the Vancouver Art Gallery in early 1970, and 2,972,453 at the Centro
des Arte Y Communicacion in Buenos Aires in late 1970.
202
As with c. 7,500, Lippard

201
Lippard had curated a show at Paula Cooper’s called Number 7, a benefit for the
AWC. In an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, she said that she did not recall why it was
Number 7, probably because it was her seventh show in that space. According to Lippard,
“Numbers were big; conceptualists were working with numbers so I followed along. Now
I regret it because I can’t remember those awkward large numbers. And of course the
populations have changed; it dates the shows.” Lippard, in an interview with Hans Ulrich
Obrist, in A Brief History of Curating (Zurich: JRP/Ringer, 2008), 209.
Lippard curated the Number 7 exhibition along with Bob Huot in conjunction with
Student Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam. Though an apolitical minimal show
(with LeWitt, Ryman, Judd, Morris, Andre, Flavin, and Mangold), Ron Wolin from the
Socialist Workers Party, helped organize it.

202
The 557,087 show was on view at the Seattle Art Museum Pavilion from September 5
through October 5, 1969. The catalog consists of 137 printed 4 x 6 inch index cards
containing artists' proposals and conceptual works. Artists included Vito Acconci, Morrie
Alhadeff, Carl Andre, Keith Arnatt, Art & Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael
Asher, John Baldessar, Robert Barry, Robert Barthelme, Gene Beery, Mel Bochner,
William Bollinger, Jonathan Borofsky, Daniel Buren, Donald Burgy, R. Castro, Greg
Curnoe, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Christos Dikeakos, Robert
Dootson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Anne Gerber, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Alex
Hay, Michael Heizer, Eva Hesse, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Stephen Kaltenbach,
On Kawara, Edward Kienholz, Bob Kinmont, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John
Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Lucy R. Lippard, Roelof Louw, Duane Lunden,
Thomas Maythem, Bruce McLean, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim,
John Perreault, Adrian Piper, Liliana Porter, Polly Rawn, Robert Rohm, Allen
Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, George Sawchuk, Richard
Serra, Randolph Sims, Robert Smithson, Keith Sonnier, N.E. Thing, Jeffrey Wall,
213
titled each show numerically by the population of the city in which each one originated.
The catalog in each case were randomly read index cards, one designed by each artist and
some containing text written by either the artist or curator (fig. 4.8, fig. 4.9, fig. 4.10, fig.
4.11, and fig. 4.12). The index cards could be mixed together and reassembled in endless
different ways; some could be discarded, while others could be kept. Lippard did not
initially intend for these exhibitions to be conceptual art shows. She noted in Six Years:
The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, “When [the first exhibition]
originated, in the fall of 1968, ‘concept art’ had not yet crystallized, and by the time the
list was completed, in the early spring of 1969, I was particularly concerned not to be
providing a new category in which disparate artists could be lumped.”
203

Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson, and Jinny Wright.
The 955,000 exhibition was on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery January 13
through February 8, 1970. The catalog consists of 137 printed 4 x 6 inch index cards
containing artists' proposals and conceptual works plus one additional unprinted, blank,
blank. Artists include Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Keith Arnatt, Richard Artschwager,
Terry Atkinson, John Baldessari, Michael Baldwin, Robert Barry, Rick Barthelme, Gene
Beery, Mel Bochner, Bill Bollinger, Jon Borofsky, Daniel Buren, Donald Burgy,
Rosemarie Castoro, Greg Curnoe, Hanne Darboven, Walter de Maria, Jan Dibbets,
Christos Dikeakos, Rafael Ferrer, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Alex Hay, Michael Heizer,
Eva Hesse, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Stephen Kaltenbach, On Kawara, Edward
Kienholz, and Robert Kinmont,
The 2,972,453 exhibition, which Lippard organized with Jorge Glusberg at the
Centro de Arte y Comunicación (CAYC) in Buenos Aires opened December 4, 1970. The
catalog included 27 cards with artists' names printed upon them, bearing biographical
information and statements or documentation of sorts, in addition to 16 other cards which
bear information about the exhibition and statements by Lippard and Glusberg. Artists
include Eleanor Antin, Siah Armajani, David Askevold, Stanley Brouwn, Victor Burgin,
Pierpaolo Calzolari, Don Celender, James Collins, Christopher Cook, Gilbert & George,
Ira Joel Haber, and Richards Jarden.
203
Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (New
York: Praeger Publishers, 1973), 111. Nevertheless, when critics reviewed the 557,087
exhibition, they evaluated it in categorical terms. Peter Plagens, for example, noted that
it “will be recalled generically as the first sizable (i.e. public institution) exhibition of
214
Artists shown in the small-scale c.7,500 exhibition employed many different types
of media: photographs pinned directly to the wall, typed or printed Xerox sheets, forms to
fill out, spiral-bound books scattered loosely on tables, video, cassette tapes, and
newspaper clippings. Books printed by small-scale publishers included Bartlett’s
“Cleopatra I-IV,” Tach’s “Hereditary Study I,” Mayer’s “Remembering,” Piper’s
“Talking to Myself: The Ongoing Autobiography of an Art Object,” Apple’s “Jackie
Apple,” Anderson’s “October 1972,” Antin’s “Domestic Peace,” Ukeles’s “Maintenance
Art Tasks,” and Stein’s “Any One to Tease a Saint Seriously” and “Name Change
Notebook.”

After the invited artists submitted their work for the c. 7,500 show, Lippard
requested that they each provide two 5 x 7” index cards that she could photograph for the
catalog.
204
She asked that each artist put her name on both, which could be separate cards
or the front and back of a single card. The cards must include somewhere the artist’s
name, birthdate, and place of residence, as well as any information she would like to
provide about the piece or pieces shown. One card can have a picture on it (“to be done
Velox so make it good and clear”), and the margins should be wide enough to avoid
printing errors.
205

‘concept art’. See Peter Plagens, “557,087: Seattle,” Artforum 8, no. 3 (November 1969),
64; reprinted in Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to
1972, 111.
204
Letter to Martha Rosler from Lucy Lippard, January 19, 1973. Archives of American
Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Lucy R. Lippard Papers, Box 36, Folder
‘Exhibitions c.7,500, Correspondence’.
205
Ibid.
215
The index cards that composed the catalog were not much smaller than the artwork
on view. The contributions of the 26 artists represented in the c.7,500 exhibition fit into a
single packing case. Lippard asked participants to submit work that would fit into a
foolscap envelope, so there was a uniformity of scale. Lippard said that it cost about $30
to ship the entire show to its next venue.
206
Also, in an interview with the Hartford
Courant, to publicize the show at the recently remodeled Wadsworth Atheneum, Lippard
emphasized that this format is “great for the young artist because it’s not terribly
expensive—and easy to send around.”
207

Despite its unbound, randomly ordered and aesthetically uniform characteristics
(hand and typewritten text printed in black on index cards), the c.7,500 catalog is unique
in that Lippard asked each artist in not only to contribute their artwork to the show, but
also to make/design her own index card(s) for the catalog. And while it was not a rarity
for an artist to make and submit his or her own text, image or artwork for a catalog, it was
(and still is) uncommon that these sorts of contributions would not be collected and then
placed into the context of a book page in a traditional catalog format. Although the c.
7,500 catalog is far from revolutionary, it completely surpasses the need for a designer
and the accompanying administrative processes typically required when designing art-
related catalogs.

Only a few of the participating artists’ submissions appear to derive consciously

206
Lee Sheridan, “Conceptual Art Discussed,” Springfield Massachusetts Daily News
(February 6, 1974), 19.
207
Lippard, quote in Jolene Golenthal, “Idea Is All in ‘c.7500’ Show,” Hartford Courant
(June 24, 1973).
216
from the fact of gender, and only some read as feminist commentary. In her introductory
essay to the exhibition catalog, Lippard notes that the work “… is divided into quite
distinct parts: 1) the work dealing with the perception of exterior natural phenomena
(Aycock, Dunlap, Holt) 2) the work reframing or re-locating relatively factual material
into personal patterns (Darbroven, Kozlov, Denes, Andersin) 3) the work dealing with
biography, usually autobiography (Altenrath, Bartlett, Lasch, Ukeles, Antin, N.E. Things
Co., Mayer) and 4) the work dealing with transformation, primarily of the self (Wilson,
Nahum, Myers, Mobus, Nolden, Apple, Stein, Piper, Tacha, Kitchel, Kuffler) with some
overlaps in the latter two groups.”
208

Local Seattle critic Michael Wister told Anna Foke, Director of the AND/OR
Gallery, during its exhibition of c. 7,500: “I’m interested in this show for other women in
the community—because it’s the kind of art I like. It brings together both of my primary
interests: women and art, from a contemporary point of view…. And it is obvious from
this commentator, even though I am a male, that the show will be exciting to women
artists here: it will provide stimulus, give moral support and demonstrate that others do
indeed have similar concerns…. this exhibition is not for women’s eyes only. Men have
here a special challenge to be open and accepting toward this part of what I take to be an
entire collective vision struggling to come into being.”
209

208
Lippard, Introductory essay for the c. 7,500 catalog.
209
Anna Foke, Director of AND/OR Gallery in Seattle, in discussion with Michael
Wister, Fall 1974, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.,
Lucy R. Lippard Papers, Box 36, Folder ‘Exhibitions c.7,500, Miscellaneous Printed
Matter. Wister also told Foke: “Concept art has become popular, meaning quite distinct
things wherever it appears. The Seattle community has accepted it as a meaningful
activity, with artists of may different inclinations having their independent, declassified
work generally labeled “Conceptual.” One woman told me that she thought of the term
like this: imagine a person with long hair on the street, you don’t know whether the
217
In c. 7,500 Lippard attempts to answer the question, “Why select by sex?” She
writes, “Inevitably there will be complaints about the sexual limitation of this show, to
which I can only say that all curatorial limitations, or whims (“German Art Since 1945,”
“Color Painting,” “The Cat and Art,” “American Artists Under 35,” etc.) are equally
ridiculous…” and that she would hope that the audience “is interested enough in art to
pay attention to the art rather than to the superficial framework within which the art is
presented.” She adds, “the artists in this show are of no single ideological persuasion.
Some are feminists, some are not. Their ages, backgrounds and even nationalities range
too broadly to succumb to generalization.”
210

The work presented in the exhibition and accompanying catalog represents the
diversity of interests of American artists in the early 1970s. Stein’s contribution concerns
the external pressures on identity (fig. 4.13). Her artists’ book in the exhibition includes
an account of the life of St. Bernadette seen through the eyes of a religious biographer;
press clippings about the film of the saint, starring Jennifer Jones, in which the publicity
men canonize her… It also includes her own correspondence with a handwriting analyst,
to whom she sent samples of St. Bernadette’s handwriting without identifying who had
written them. The analyst questions the ‘holiness’ of the writer. Agnes Dennis sent
questionnaires to approximately a dozen artists, and gave the results to two psychiatrists.
The questionnaires and the answers, together with the psychiatrists’ points, were

person is a he or she, but you find him/her attractive and like the experience, Concept art
is an art-experience like that life-experience and perhaps it is true that the two are
merging in the process. As the N.E. Thing Co. button says: ART IS ALL OVER.”
210
Lucy Lippard, Introductory essay for the c. 7,500 catalog. The American artists came
from New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Oberlin; the Germans from Dusseldorf, Essen,
and Hamburg; the Canadians from Halifax and Toronto.
218
exhibited in the show.
For her “Institutional Dream Series” Laurie Anderson went to various public places
(beach, courthouse, immigration office, etc.) with the sole purpose of falling asleep. She
measured the duration of her sleep then recorded her dream-imagery in reference to
where she had slept and how she had awakened. A friend who accompanied Anderson
photographed her sleeping at each location. Another contribution of Anderson’s involved
the process of her taking a walk on New York’s Lower East Side. She photographed nine
men who made unsolicited comments directed at her.
Ukeles presents a sequence of several black-and-white photographs (of children
getting dressed) in a two-dimensional grid pattern. She stated “Everything I say is Art is
Art,” and called her photographic record of changing diapers, visiting the Laundromat,
and so forth “Maintenance Art Work.” For her submission to the catalog, Ukeles
submitted a photograph of her cleaning chicken feet (fig. 4.14).
Dunlap uses two pairs of photographs to describe intervals of time and space. The
first pair, entitled “The Time Between Actions,” relates to the shift of cloud formation at
Pacific Palisades, California. The second pair, “The Space in Between,” shows a color
photo of the surf taken from the Maui coastline while facing California. Next to it is a
photo of the surf taken at Malibu beach while facing Hawaii to emphasize the direction
and the distance of the two geographical points. Her contribution to the catalog, however,
had nothing to do with the work she had exhibited in the show (fig. 4.15).
Dusseldorf-based Nolden presented a series of photographs in which the artist is
seen posed in an ultramodern kitchen wearing a medieval haube (a women’s headdress).
Concerning the haube, Nolden states: “Originally designed to denote possession by the
219
husband the haube developed through usage by courtly ladies in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance to become a symbol of her self-confidence and equality at her husband’s
side” (fig 4.16 and fig 4.17)
211

Lippard hoped that the variety of themes presented in the show would make
difficult to generalize about women’s art. Though some of the participating artists
replicated the content of their work in the physical exhibition on the randomly-arranged
index cards composing the catalog, the catalog could not have served as a stand-in for the
exhibition itself. The format of the catalog reinforces Lippard’s position that the show
“could be at 50 places at once… like the aesthetic of the print. The things themselves
have no value: the idea is the point of the work.”
212

In an interview with Lippard in 2007, Hans Ulrich Obrist raised the issue of the
importance of the catalog to Lippard’s curatorial work: “Many of the shows you have
curated produced extraordinary publications. It is something Seth Siegelaub also did--
very often the catalogue is also the exhibition.”
213
Lippard commented:

211
Ulrike Nolden, index card in the c. 7,500 catalog.
212
Lucy Lippard, quote in Jolene Golenthal, “Idea Is All in ‘c.7500’ Show,” Hartford
Courant (June 24, 1973).
213
Lippard, in an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, in A Brief History of Curating, 206.
Lippard’s first exhibition Eccentric Abstraction, shown at New York’s Fischbach Gallery
in 1966, had no catalog as such. Artists represented in the show included Eva Hesse,
Louise Bourgeois and Bruce Nauman. Lippard told Obrist, “Containing work with highly
personal and sensuous qualities, it drew on traditions of Surrealism, Dada and
Expressionism. The pieces often combined unusual, soft and pliable materials. Some
borrowed the modular, repetitive compositions typical of Minimalism, but many also
exploited more relaxed and open structures. I wrote a long article in Art International
around that time, which a lot of people, even good scholars, have confused with the
exhibition. It had a lot more people in it. It was probably a mistake to give the article and
the exhibition the same title. For the catalogue, I went to Canal Street to Pan American
220

Among the approximately dozen exhibitions I have organized since 1966
[the start date for the “six years”] is one series of which I am particularly
fond. Titled numerically by the population of the city in which each one
originated, they include 557,087 (Seattle), 955,000 (Vancouver, more or
less the same works as the first), 2,972,453 (Buenos Aires, an entirely new
group of artists), and c. 7,500 (Valencia, California). The catalogues in each
case were randomly read index cards, one designed by each artist and some
containing my “text”; these cards could be mixed together and reassembled
in endless different ways; some could be discarded, others kept, etc. The
most recent of these shows (c. 7,500) included only women artists: Renate
Altenrath, Laurie Anderson, Eleanor Antin, Jacki Apple, Alice Aycock,
Jennifer Bartlett, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Doree Dunlap, Nancy
Holt, Poppy Johnson, Nancy Kitchel, Christine Kozlov, Suzanne Kuffler,
Pat Lasch, Bernadette Mayer, Christiane Möbus, Rita Myers, Renee Nahum,
N. E. Thing Co., Ulrike (Rosenbach) Nolden, Adrian Piper, Judith Stein,
Athena Tacha, Mierle Ukeles, Martha Wilson. It was originated at the
California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California, and independently
circulated to the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; Moore
College of Art, Philadelphia; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Institute of
Contemporary Art, Boston; The Smith College Museum of Art,
Northampton, Massachusetts; The Garage, London, England; A.I.R.
Gallery, New York; And/Or, Seattle; and the Vassar College Museum of
Art, Poughkeepsie, New York.
214

In a taped discussion with figurative painter Susan Hall, art historian Linda
Nochlin, abstract painter Joan Snyder, and architect Susanna Torre, Lippard remarked: “I
have such doubts about writing on women artists in the art magazines and doing shows
that get women into more shows within the current rotten structure. I’ve been dragging

Plastics and bought sheets of a very sensuous plastic, soft, like cloth. I got two kinds,
both sort of tan or flesh colored, and one had a nubbly texture and the other was very
smooth. We printed the announcement on them and the short text on paper the same size,
around six inches square (fig. 4.18). I bought the plastic, cut it up, designed it, and took it
to the printer. I don’t know how I ended up doing all that and not the gallery, but
probably I wanted to have control over it all.”

214
Lippard, in an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, in A Brief History of Curating, 206.
221
them into something most of them know very little about, because most women artists
have been so isolated from the workings of the art world. There’s this conflict about
getting a piece of the pie, even if it’s poisonous, and knowing that it’s really their choice
and not mine.”
215

In her essay in Materializing Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of
Conceptual Art, Catherine Morris presents a clear history of Lippard’s curatorial efforts,
highlighting her historical debt to Dadaist tactics and her connections to collaborators
such as dealer-turned-curator Siegelaub. Morris underscores Lippard’s ongoing
identification as a critic, as opposed to artist or “exhibition maker,” the title adopted by
fellow independent curator Harald Szeemann in the late 1960s. Lippard’s collaborations,
Morris suggests, avoid the big-ego ambitions of Szeemann’s projects, in which artworks
could be reduced to the role of illustrating a larger curatorial theme. During the 1970’s
Lippard’s role in the art world became increasingly hybridized, as she became well
known as a curator, critic, and activist. Her political consciousness and commitment to
feminism became indissoluble from her professional work during this period.
216

215
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Lucy R.
Lippard Papers, Box 36, Folder ‘Exhibitions c.7,500, Miscellaneous Printed Matter.
216
Lippard had remarked in an audiotaped discussion with Margaret Harrison that
“women’s political art has a doubly passionate base from which to operate. The female
experience is, of course, different socially, sexually, politically, from the male
experience, so the art, too, is different. This does not, as some would have it, exclude
concern with all people. On the contrary, the female experience is profoundly radicalizing
for those who survive its brutalization….Political art has a terrible reputation. It may be
the only taboo left in the art world. Perhaps it is a taboo because it threatens the status
quo that the avant-garde supports. At the same time it thinks it’s making breakthroughs.”
Audio Arts 4, no.1, Tate Britain, 1978.
222
Lippard clarified her concerns during the mid-1970s in a forum with Susan Hall,
Lucy Lippard, Linda Nochlin, Joan Snyder, and Susana Torre, entitled “Female
imagery/sensibility discussion”:

…the cliché of women’s art is getting as bad as the cliché of men’s art.
Before the movement, women were denying their identity, trying to be
neutral, and intentionally making art that couldn’t be called ‘feminine.’
When somebody said, ‘you paint like a man,’ you were supposed to be
happy, and you WERE happy, because you knew you were at least making
neutral art instead of feminine art—God forbid. So now we’re bending over
backwards into the other direction, insisting that there are clichés that define
women’s art. Women now make ‘women’s art’ instead of ‘men’s art’ or
neutral art.’ It may be easier to find out what women’s art is, or what female
imagery is, this second, because the work of women who’ve been isolated
and closeted, which has come out in the last 3 years, is personal, still has the
blush of innocence on it. That level we may never see again. I want to catch
those ephemeral moments before we all move into a difference, hopefully
more powerful and clearer level.”
217

217
Lucy Lippard, in “Female imagery/sensibility discussion,” transcript of forum with
Susan Hall, Lucy Lippard, Linda Nochlin, Joan Snyder, and Susana Torre, undated
except for February, in New York. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C., Lucy R. Lippard Papers, Box 36, Folder ‘Exhibitions c.7,500,
Miscellaneous Printed Matter.
Lippard expands on this realization in a conversation with Ann Stephen, published in “At
the Edge of a Feminist Criticism: An Interview with Lucy Lippard,” Meanjin Quarterly
(Melbourne, Australia), in October 1975: The women’s movement has changed many
things in my life. I’m tackling some of the ramifications of that change in a book I’m
writing now on Eva Hesse. For years I tried to write about art-as-art under the influence
of Reinhardt (whose moral emphasis also had a huge effect on me), leaving out personal
knowledge and experience. But in this book I’m trying to tread the same precarious edge
that Eva did in her own work—which was pure abstract art but was utterly informed and
expanded by her life. I knew her well and it would be absurd to ‘forget’ what I knew of
her as a person and write a hard-assed Minimal critical book. The women’s movement
has allowed me to be much more exposed about my own feelings, less afraid of what
people think, more out front with emotional reaction to art, which has been hidden away
in the last decade or so of criticism. I am having to deal with the same things writing an
article on Judy Chicago, who is integrating a very personal, often embarrassing content
into her abstract language. It is the sort of writing I could only allow myself in fiction
until now… it won’t change the world either, but it’s a breakthrough for me.”
223
Lippard’s desire to investigate the nature of female imagery during this specific moment
in time seemed to be shared by other women organizing all-women shows in the mid-
1970s in New York. The next two exhibitions discussed includes work by both well-
known artists and those who had been “isolated and closeted.” Both case studies feature
the exhibition catalogs, which differ greatly in form and motivation for their production.

Works on Paper/Women Artists, 1975, Brooklyn Museum, New York
Brooklyn, as well as Manhattan, was a hot bed of feminist activity from the start of
the 1970s. In the Brooklyn Museum during the Fall of 1971, the organization Women in
the Arts (WIA), along with other women’s groups like The Women’s Ad Hoc
Committee, the Women and Student Black Artists for Black Art Liberation (WSBABL),
“Where We At,” and others confronted the then museum director Duncan Cameron in his
office, demanding more exposure for women artists. Cameron agreed to allow them to
have several panels in the museum’s auditorium and a free-for-all discussion. However, it
was not until 1975 that the Brooklyn Museum (grudgingly, according to some sources)
mounted the small, all women’s exhibition Works on Paper: Women Artists.
WIA, a national organization of women artists, organized and curated the
exhibition. WIA devised a system of more than 280 jurors to select the work to be
included in the show. According to participating curator June Blum, who proposed the
system and served as Museum Liaison of WIA, each exhibiting artist was required to
submit a number of her works to two other women in the art world, who would select one
object from those submitted to go in the exhibition. In her words Blum explained her
reasoning behind the system: “Although many women artists have been painting and
224
drawing for some time, their work has usually had little documentation in art history. We
are especially grateful that this exhibition has been catalogued.”
218

The paperback catalog (fig 4.19) appears somewhat traditional in the sense that it
reproduces the artworks with captions. Blum’s explanation provides insight into the
format of the catalog—to document both the work shown and the exhibition, but also
information about the women artists represented. This point is driven home by the
unusual inclusion of a list of not only the names of the artists represented, but also their
home addresses (fig. 4.20).
The catalog also included “Statements” (as opposed to essays) by Blum, Lippard,
Cindy Nemser, and Linda Nochlin. Lippard’s enthusiasm for the show was clearly
fraught with ambivalence, which she expressed within her Statement. She writes:

This exhibition marks another triumph for persistence, hard work, and a
good cause. But its worst result would be a false sense of victory. Much has
been accomplished since 1969, when Women Artists in Revolution
pioneered the women’s visual arts movement in New York. But much has
yet to be done. Established institutions seem to have set a 20 percent quota
for female representation in group shows. While commercial galleries have
done more for women (for obvious reasons), other organizations have
resisted all but the most minute changes. The major question is whether or
not women are falling into the same traps, the same commercialism, the
same success-oriented egotism sustained by the male art world

.
219

Lippard’s text in the Works on Paper/Women Artists catalog echoes her earlier concerns

218
Judy Blum, in Works on Paper: Women Artists (Brooklyn, New York: The Brooklyn
Museum and Women in the Arts Foundation, October 1975).
219
Lucy Lippard, “Prefaces to Catalogs,” in The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Feminist
Essays on Art (New York: The New Press, 1995), 60-61. Reproduced from catalog Works
on Paper: Women Artists (Brooklyn, New York: The Brooklyn Museum and Women in
the Arts Foundation, October 1975).
225
about what the goals of women’s art should be. The sole purpose, according to Lippard’s
writing, should not be “making it” into a “good” show, with the popular and commercial
success that comes with that accomplishment. She asks her reader: “How can women’s
art and imagery most strongly translate the goals of feminism into effective and
communicable visual metaphors?”
220
Lippard’s interests lay in the implications of a
“women’s art” for feminism and the inclusion of women artists in institutions of public
display.

“Contemporary Women: Consciousness and Content,” 1977, Brooklyn Museum Art
School, New York
During this time period, artist Joan Semmel hoped that greater acceptance and
opportunities for the display of women’s art would result in the lack of institutional
censorship that was typically afforded to art by men. In 1977 she curated the exhibition
Contemporary Women: Consciousness and Content at the Brooklyn Museum Art School
with this goal in mind. The show of contemporary art included paintings, sculpture,
drawings, and video by twenty-nine living women artists.
Artists that contributed work to the show included: May Stevens, Harmony
Hammond, Cynthia Carlson, Louise Nevelson, Joan Semmel, Michelle Stuart, Louise
Bourgeois, Anne Healy, Joan Snyder, Eva Hesse, Mary Beth Edelson, Pat Steir, Judith
Bernstein, Anita Steckel, Audrey Flack, Pat Lasch, Hannah Wilke, Joyce Kozloff, Buffie
Johnson, Judy Chicago, Sylvia Sleigh, Miriam Schapiro, Lynda Benglis, Marisol, Ellen
Lanyon, Nancy Grossman, Mary Frank, Eleanor Antin, and Ree Morton.

220
Ibid.
226
Semmel began working in New York in the early 1970s, where in addition to
teaching, her practice increasingly focused on figurative paintings, many with erotic
themes. The eroticism in her work constituted Semmel’s own response to pornography,
popular culture, and concerns around representation (for examples of Semmel’s own
work during the 1970s, see fig. 4.21 and fig. 4.22).
Semmel designed a poster to serve as the sole exhibition catalog (fig. 4.23). The
exhibition and accompanying poster/catalog presented recent work by women artists with
content that Semmel found related in her role as curator... and what she perceived as a
feminist formation still young in terms of art. Semmel wanted to pose the question: What
was feminist art?--as she felt that at the time no one could come up with what is was or
what it should be.
221
Semmel produced the poster with reproductions from work on view
in Contemporary Women on the front and an essay penned by her on the back. The names
of the artists represented surround the reproduced artworks on the poster--arranged in a
square grid--in alphabetical order with no effort to match the artist with her work. The
sequence of names was alphabetical to maintain the non-hierarchical avoidance of who’s
important and who’s not. The poster, 27 inches by 20 inches, served as the entire catalog
for the show. Semmel decided upon the idea of a poster in place of a catalog, in part
because of financial and time constraints--it was the cheapest and easiest option--and also
because she wanted to be able to post it up.
Semmel described Contemporary Women: Consciousness and Content as an effort
to bring the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)’s landmark bicentennial
exhibition Women Artists, 1550-1950 up to date. That year, Women Artists, 1550-1950,

221
Joan Semmel, telephone interview with the author, October 23, 2012.
227
organized by distinguished art historians and curators Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda
Nochlin, traveled from LACMA to the University of Texas at Austin, to the Museum of
Art at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute, to its final showing at the Brooklyn Museum of
Art. Harris made the selections for the period 1550-1800; and Nochlin, for the period
1800-1950. This international exhibition of works by women artists included eighty-three
artists from twelve countries. About 150 European and American paintings, as well as
prints and drawings, were selected by Harris and Nochlin to be displayed in the show.
Semmel (a recently hired faculty member of the Brooklyn Museum Art School)
volunteered to curate a concurrent show of contemporary work by women artists. She did
not intend the show to be exclusive; in fact, felt that many women artists deserved
recognition, and she would have liked to include more people if the gallery space had
permitted.
222
Given the limited resources and time pressure to mount the show--so that it
would be up concurrently with the large Women Artists exhibition--she, out of necessity
invited artists she knew personally while wishing to be able to reach out further.
The show was mounted in the designated “school galleries” of the museum. It was
basically in a hallway--on the mezzanine level only. If one looked up from the Women
Artists show, one could see the works of Contemporary Women up on the mezzanine. As
museum visitors walked up the steps to approach the show, they would first see the May
Stevens piece at the top of the steps (fig. 4.24). Semmel also moderated a symposium,
entitled “The Personal and Public in Women’s Art,” which welcomed a number of
compelling panelists, including author and critic Lawrence Alloway, poet and critic
Carter Ratcliff , and artists Harmony Hammond, Joyce Kozloff, and May Stevens.

222
Ibid.
228
Semmel considered the work on view to be connected by content rather than form.
In contrast to “Women Artists, 1550-1950,” “Contemporary Women” asserted that
certain thematic ideas occur with uncommon frequency in women’s art after 1950. In
Harris and Nochlin’s comprehensive exhibition catalog (fig. 4.25), the authors stated that
their intention in assembling these works by European and American women artists was
to make more widely known the achievements of some fine artists whose neglect they felt
should be attributed to their sex. They also endeavored to educate the public about why
and how women artists first emerged as rare exceptions in the sixteenth century and
gradually became accepted part of the cultural scene.
Harris and Nochlin argue, “These works do not share any special visual
characteristics due to their female authorship,” noting that “if work by women artists has
more in common with that by their male contemporaries than that by other women,
nevertheless women shared some experiences that affected the kind of work they
produced.”
223
They rightly point out that most women artists before the nineteenth
century were either daughters or wives of artists and were trained by their male relatives.
Unlike their male counterparts, they were not allowed academic training or the study of
anatomy, therefore having to limit themselves to the genres of portraiture and still life.
Nochlin and Harris’s catalog argued that women have always had great potential in
the visual arts and that their contribution has grown as barriers to their training and
careers have slowly declined. They intended for the exhibition to make clear that, in
terms of style, subject matter, and technique, there are no perceptible distinctions
between the approaches of the male and female artist.

223
Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950 (Los Angeles:
Los Angeles Museum of American Art, 1976).
229
Rather than proposing a single sensibility or stylistic approach linking the work of
the twenty-nine artists selected for the show, Semmel offered four thematic ideas: sexual
imagery, both abstract and figurative; autobiography and self-image; the celebration of
devalued subject matter and media that have been traditionally relegated to women; and
anthropomorphic or nature forms.
Semmel’s introductory paragraph to the catalog essay on the back of the exhibition
poster explains, “Contemporary women’s art, like the many pieces in a patchwork quilt,
is richly varied and diverse. Unassembled, it appears to be a collection of unrelated
fragments. However, as we put the pieces together, patterns form--complex ones, to be
sure--with subtle variations and stark contrasts. The stitching has begun. The threads of
our consciousness of ourselves as women are creating motifs of a distinctive content.”
224

Semmel determined the layout and design of the poster (see fig. 4.23 and 4.24
again, and then fig. 4.25 through fig. 4.51). She wanted the work of all the women artists
in the show come together as an aesthetically pleasing and integrated design. Semmel
organized the grid by placing narrow images between wider ones, and abstract work next
to representational work (rather than grouping them by chronology, theme, or
medium).
225
Semmel’s poster layout for Contemporary Women: Consciousness and
Content cannot be structured according to visual form, subject matter, or artistic
strategy. The logic of the poster design follows that of Semmel’s argument--that these are
all women artists and the experience of being a woman artist informed the work and

224
Semmel, Contemporary Women: Consciousness and Content [exhibition
catalog/poster] (New York: Brooklyn Museum Art School, 1977).
225
Richard Meyer, “Not Me: Joan Semmel’s Body of Painting,” Solitaire: Lee Lozano,
Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Joan Semmel, ed. Helen Molesworth (Columbus, OH: Wexner
Center for the Arts, 2008), 123.
230
provides enough context for the show. Semmel writes, “Despite a wide range of range of
stylistic differences, there seem to be several basic content areas in which many women
center their imagery….There is, of course, some over-lapping.”
226

Semmel points out that much of this work has been seen in other contexts, and most
often the content and its implications have been ignored. She felt that this was especially
true the in the case of women’s art with overt sexual imagery. By way of example, she
specifically mentions in the catalog that the heavy sexual charge in Louise Bourgeois’
work was carefully disregarded for many years, and that Bourgeois herself would have
denied the implications at an earlier time. Although at the time some women artists were
unwilling to permit sexual readings of their work, many others have insisted on those
interpretations--such as Benglis, who, for example, had recently used the publicity
associated with her exhibitions to direct the viewer to sexual meanings in her work.

The Winter 1977-78 issue of the journal Womanart published an interview with
Semmel, recording her mediations on recurring themes in women’s art. Semmel
provocatively argued, “The constant recurrence of self-images and autobiographical
references in women’s art has paralleled feminist preoccupations with the connections
between the personal and the public... The depersonalization, anomie and alienation, so
much a part of men’s world, are balanced in women’s by intimacy and connectedness.”
227

Semmel maintains that women’s sexual art tends to stress either the strongly
positive or strongly negative aspect of their experience. Feelings of victimization and

226
Semmel, Contemporary Women: Consciousness and Content [exhibition
catalog/poster].
227
“Interview: Joan Semmel,” Womanart, (Winter 1977-78), 15.
231
anger often become politically directed, especially in the more recent works. When
female sexuality is celebrated as joyous, liberating and creative, the influence of feminist
ideals is strongly sensed. At times, it is elucidated, as in the concept of “central core”
imagery, developed by Schapiro and Chicago, which relates the use of a central image to
female body identification.
Despite the ingenuity of the poster as catalog and its design, the museum refused to
allow the poster to be exhibited or handed out due what it perceived as the
inappropriateness of the reproduction of Grossman’s work. The poster was not permitted
on the premises of the museum--a situation which Semmel referred to as “total
absurdity.” I asked Semmel if the posters were available for the visiting public to
purchase, or if visitors could take a copy for free. She explained that the poster was
unfortunately not available--the only people that received it were those to whom they
were mailed.
Semmel’s poster (exhibition catalog) ultimately argued that the constant recurrence
of self-images and autobiographical references in women’s art has paralleled feminist
connections between the personal and the public. At a public forum entitled “Bad-Girl
Art” held some years later, Semmel described her conflict with the Brooklyn Museum:

The poster had a tiny, postage-sized stamp image of each person’s
work. Several of them were somewhat sexual, like a Nancy Grossman piece
that had a figure with a gun, head, and penis. . .The Brooklyn Museum
would not allow me to show the poster in the museum. If one thinks of the
kinds of material in art men make, with women spread out in every which
direction, and at every newsstand there are hundreds of pictures of women
displayed in every possible position. That’s called art, and shown all over
the place. . .When women made any statement at all in those areas, and
however mild (these [images on the poster] were hardly shocking), there
232
was an uproar.
228

Only two works in the exhibition were different from those represented on the
poster/catalog--those by Marisol and Bourgeois. Bourgeois had to substitute a work
different from that on the poster in the show because the one on the poster was on display
somewhere else. Marisol’s actual work in the show was a black drawing piece that dealt
with finger penetrations, called “Fuck a Heart” - the museum allowed the work to be in
the show but not to be on the poster.
Despite the censorship of the poster, it remains unorthodox and somewhat
renegade, both in content and in form. Intended to be intentionally “scruffy”--the poster,
in its limited circulation, avoided the trappings of being a precious object, which fit with
the revolutionary idea of the show.
Semmel hoped that Contemporary Women and Consciousness would present an
opportunity for women artists to show their work without being censored. For example,
the Brooklyn Museum of Art show provided a rare opportunity for artist Bernstein to
display a huge charcoal drawing of what she refers to as one of her “cocks-as-screws”
(refer back to fig. 4.37). Like Benglis did in her infamous 1974 Artforum advertisement
(fig. 4.52), Bernstein seized phallic power in her own art production. Although
Bernstein’s depictions of penises are puns about getting screwed (frank and nasty
statements about phallic force, painful, mechanistic power and rape), the hairy strokes

228
Joan Semmel, “View from the Pendulum,” in Mutiny and the Mainstream: Talk that
Changed Art, 1975-1990 ed. Judy Siegel (New York: Midmarch Press, 1992), 255.
According to Richard Meyer, Semmel’s remarks were part of the “Bad Girl Art” panel in
New York City on April 18, 1986, as part of the “Artists Talk on Art” series. See Richard
Meyer, “Not Me: Joan Semmel’s Body of Painting,” Solitaire: Lee Lozano, Sylvia
Plimack Mangold, Joan Semmel, ed. Helen Molesworth (Columbus, OH: Wexner Center
for the Arts, 2008).
233
with which Bernstein covers the forms are sensuous and make them feel touchable.
Not all viewers, especially male administrators of art institutions, felt comfortable
with phallic imagery created by feminist artists such as Benglis and Bernstein. In 1974 a
work by Bernstein was removed from a show at the Sam Fleischer Art Memorial (a
community art center under the administration of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the
Museum of the Civic Center of Philadelphia) by John Pierron, the director of the
Museum of the Civic Center of Philadelphia, because he considered the black hairy
“screw” depicted in the drawing to be obscene.
A number of the women artists represented in Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content and c. 7,500, as well as Lippard, formed the Heresies
Collective. The Heresies Collective began in 1975 at a meeting of feminist artist and
writers. By spring of 1976, some members decided to found a magazine committed to
social change. The magazine's title was inspired by Susan Sontag's words: 'New truths
begin as heresies'. Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics (fig. 4.53) was
determined by the Heresies Collective to be “an idea-oriented journal devoted to the
examination of art and politics from a feminist perspective,” according to an editorial
statement in the first issue.
229

The c. 7,500, Works on Paper/Women Artists, and Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibitions, as well as the journal Heresies: A Feminist
Publication on Art and Politics, sought to rectify the widespread absence of women
artists’ work from museums and public culture at large. The curators of these publications

229
Editorial statement, Heresies 1 (January 1977), unpaginated. Members of the Heresies
Collective took turns editing the magazine; other contributors included Rosler, Duncan,
Bourgeois, Spero, Marisol, Eva Cockroft, Frida Kahlo, Yvonne Rainer, and Howardena
Pindell.
234
radically experimented with the content of their shows, and (in some cases) the catalogs
that accompanied them. The formal and conceptual possibilities of the notion of a catalog
that provided inexpensive, easily transportable printed documentation suited their desire
to disseminate work being made by women, which mainstream institutions consistently
ignored.

235

Figure 4.1 Poster advertising “c.7,500” at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford,
Connecticut, 1973.

236

Figure, 4.2 Lucy Lippard, First notecard in “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

237

Figure 4.3 Lucy Lippard, Second notecard in “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

238

Figure 4.4 Lucy Lippard, Third notecard in “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

239

Figure 4.5 Installation view, “c.7,500.”

Figure 4.6 Installation view, “c.7,500.”
240

Figure 4.7 Installation view, “c.7,500.”

241

Figure 4.9 Lucy Lippard, Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held
at the Seattle Art Museum Pavilion, Seattle, Washington, September 5 - October 5, 1969.
The catalogue consists of 137 printed 4 x 6 inch index cards containing artists' proposals
and conceptual works. This copy missing Alan Saret and Frank Viner - as issued -
otherwise complete. Artists include Vito Acconci, Morrie Alhadeff, Carl Andre, Keith
Arnatt, Art & Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher, John Baldessar, Robert
Barry, Robert Barthelme, Gene Beery, Mel Bochner, William Bollinger, Jonathan
Borofsky, Daniel Buren, Donald Burgy, R. Castro, Greg Curnoe, Hanne Darboven,
Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Christos Dikeakos, Robert Dootson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry
Flanagan, Anne Gerber, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Alex Hay, Michael Heizer, Eva
Hesse, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Stephen Kaltenbach, On Kawara, Edward
Kienholz, Bob Kinmont, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va,
Sol LeWitt, Lucy R. Lippard, Roelof Louw, Duane Lunden, Thomas Maythem, Bruce
McLean, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, John Perreault, Adrian
Piper, Liliana Porter, Polly Rawn, Robert Rohm, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha,
Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, George Sawchuk, Richard Serra, Randolph Sims, Robert
Smithson, Keith Sonnier, N.E. Thing, Jeffrey Wall, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson, Jinny
Wright.

242

Figure 4.9 Lucy Lippard, Exhibition catalog published in conjunction with 955,000
exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, January 13 - February 8, 1970. This is an
expanded, somewhat different version of the Seattle exhibition and catalogue "557,087"
which had been organized by Lucy R. Lippard the previous year at the Seattle Art
Museum Pavilion, Seattle, WA, September 5 - October 5, 1969. The catalogue consists of
137 printed 4 x 6 inch index cards containing artists' proposals and conceptual works plus
one additional unprinted, blank, blank. Artists include Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Keith
Arnatt, Richard Artschwager, Terry Atkinson, John Baldessari, Michael Baldwin, Robert
Barry, Rick Barthelme, Gene Beery, Mel Bochner, Bill Bollinger, Jon Borofsky, Daniel
Buren, Donald Burgy, Rosemarie Castoro, Greg Curnoe, Hanne Darboven, Walter de
Maria, Jan Dibbets, Christos Dikeakos, Rafael Ferrer, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Alex
Hay, Michael Heizer, Eva Hesse, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Stephen Kaltenbach,
On Kawara, Edward Kienholz, Robert Kinmont, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John
Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Roelof Louw, Duane Lundon, Bruce McLean, Robert
Morris, N. Y. Graphic Workshop, N.E. Thing Co., Bruce Nauman, George Nikoliadis,
Dennis Oppenheim, John Perreault, Adrian Piper, Robert Rohm, Alan Ruppersberg,
Edward Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, George Sawchuk, Richard Serra, Randy
Sims, Richard Sladden, Robert Smithson, Keith Sonnier, Jeff Wall, Lawrence Weiner,
and Ian Wilson.

243

Figure 4.10 Pages of the catalog published in conjunction with 955,000 exhibition at the
Vancouver Art Gallery, January 13 - February 8, 1970.
The catalog consists of… index cards in random order including [101] cards compiled by
the artists themselves, [21] text cards by [Lucy R. Lippard], [3] title page cards, 1
acknowledgements card, 2 lists of the council members and officers, 1 forward by the
council president, [2] list of artists, [5] selective bibliographies, 1 list of films shown,
[and] 1 addenda to [the] artists.

244

Figure 4.11 Envelope used for sending the contents of the 955,000 exhibition catalog to
the Vancouver Art Gallery, January 13 - February 8, 1970.

245

Figure 4.12 Exhibition catalog published in conjunction with the 2,972,453 exhibition
organized by Lucy R. Lippard with the collaboration of Jorge Glusberg, for the Centro de
Arte y Comunicación (CAYC), Buenos Aires, Argentina, opening December 4, 1970.
The third catalogue in an ongoing series by Lippard. Includes 27 cards with artists' names
printed upon them, bearing biographical information and statements or documentation of
sorts, in addition to 16 other cards which bear information about the exhibition and
statements by Lippard and Glusberg. Artists include Eleanor Antin, Siah Armajani, David
Askevold, Stanley Brouwn, Victor Burgin, Pierpaolo Calzolari, Don Celender, James
Collins, Christopher Cook, Gilbert & George, Ira Joel Haber, and Richards Jarden.

246

Figure 4.13 Judith Stein’s contribution to the “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

247

Figure 4.14 Mierle Laderman Ukeles ’s contribution to the “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

248

Figure 4.15 Doree Dunlap’s contribution to the “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

249

Figures 4.16 and 4.17 Ulrike Nolden’s contribution to the “c.7,500” catalog, 1973.

250

Figure 4.18 Announcement for Eccentric Abstraction exhibition, Fischbach Gallery, New
York, September 20 through October 8, 1966.

251

Figure 4.19 Catalog cover for Works on Paper/Women Artists. Brooklyn Museum, New
York, 1975.

252

Figure 4.20 “Addresses of the Artists,” in catalog for Works on Paper/Women Artists.
Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1975.

253

Figure 4.21 Joan Semmel, Erotic Yellow, 1973

Figure 4.22 Joan Semmel, Antonio and I, 1974

254

Figure 4.23 Joan Semmel, Contemporary Women: Consciousness and Content, exhibition
poster, Brooklyn Museum Art School, 1977.

255

Figure 4.24 Artwork by May Stevens, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

256

Figure 4.25 Women Artists: 1550-1950, by Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin;
368 pp.; 204 photographs, 32 in full color; catalog, artists’ bibliographies, general
bibliography, index. Published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Alfred A.
Knopf, N.Y., 1976.

257

Figure 4.26 Artwork by Harmony Hammond, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

Figure 4.27 Artwork by Cynthia Carlson, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

258

Figure 4.28 Artwork by Louise Nevelson, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

Figure 4.29 Artwork by Joan Semmel, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.
259

Figure 4.30 Michelle Stuart, reproduced on the Contemporary Women: Consciousness
and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

Figure 4.31 Artwork by Louise Bourgeois, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.
260

Figure 4.32 Artwork by Anne Healy, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

Figure 4.33 Artwork by Joan Snyder, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

261

Figure 4.34 Artwork by Eva Hesse, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

262

Figure 4.35 Artwork by Mary Beth Edelson, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

Figure 4.36 Artwork by Pat Steir, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

263

Figure 4.37 Artwork by Judith Bernstein, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

264

Figure 4.38 Artwork by Anita Steckel, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

Figure 4.39 Artwork by Audrey Flack, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.
265

Figure 4.40 Artwork by Pat Lasch, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

Figure 4.41 Artwork by Hannah Wilke, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

266

Figure 4.42 Artwork by Joyce Kozloff on the Contemporary Women: Consciousness and
Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

Figure 4.43 Artwork by Buffie Johnson reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

267

Figure 4.44 Artwork by Judy Chicago, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

Figure 4.45 Artwork by Sylvia Sleigh, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

268

Figure 4.46 Artwork by Miriam Schapiro, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

Figure 4.47 Artwork by Lynda Benglis, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

269

Figure 4.48 Artwork by Marisol, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

Figure 4.49 Artwork by Ellen Lanyon, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

270

Figure 4.50 Artwork by Nancy Grossman, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

Figure 4.51 Artwork by Mary Frank, reproduced on the Contemporary Women:
Consciousness and Content exhibition poster, Brooklyn Museum, 1977.

271

Figure 4.52 Lynda Benglis, 1974 Artforum magazine intervention advertisement.
272

Figure 4.53 Cover of Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, vol. 1, no. 1,
January 1977.

273
Conclusion

This dissertation has looked closely at influential curatorial and publication
projects from the period of 1970 to 1977, as well as their precedents from the late 1960s.
I have argued that these case studies provide examples in which artists and curators
radically experimented with the formal and conceptual possibilities of the printed catalog.
In each of them, the catalog fulfills a function beyond that of documentation.
I have sought to explore the importance of the exhibition catalog as a site of
political critique and collective action. The objects considered in this project demonstrate
that artists and curators radically experimented with the formal and conceptual
possibilities of the printed catalog. In his essay, “The Artist as Political Activist,” Irving
Sandler argued:

One would suppose that aggressive political dissent would have made
vanguard artists less fashionable by alienating their rich and presumably
conservative patrons. But by 1968, many establishment figures
themselves supported the antiwar movement--and the antiracist agitation
that grew in intensity at the time. Both causes had become fashionable;
activities on their behalf could advance status and fame in the art world.
Leading antiwar and antiracist activities became chic. A number became
expert in attracting the media--Mailer, for example, who was just as
media-savvy as Warhol.”
230

Sandler argues that both the Information show and the rapid decline of the Art Workers
Coalition after the Cambodia invasion and the massacre at Kent State in 1970 may be
considered the end of the sixties (art historically speaking). For Sandler, the Cambodian

230
Irving Sandler, “The Artist as Political Activist,” in American Art of the 1960s (New
York: Harper & Row, 1988), 295.
274
invasion, which provoked the last great protests against the war, and the establishment of
conceptual art were symbols of the end of one era and the beginning of another.
231
The
expression of contemporary attitudes and relevant reading material to the time period
were important for the producers of exploratory, expressionist catalogs examined here.
The 1970s witnessed a real slippage among functions of positions in the art world,
especially in the function of the curator. While challenging the aesthetic and institutional
framing of art practice, the case studies in this dissertation demonstrate that this shift in
curatorial practice changed the practical relationship between artist and curator—and, as
a result, the relationship between curator and institutions. Rather than emphasize the
differences among experimental exhibition catalogs in post-war American art, this project
seeks to foreground what this material has in common. The producers of these objects
revised the audience’s expectations about how catalogs function. They redefined the role
of the traditional catalog from that of documentation to one with the potential to express
critical or contradictory viewpoints and to become a distinct art object in its own right--
separate to, or in place of, the exhibition.
According to Siegelaub, the use of catalogs to communicate and disseminate art
provides the most neutral means to present new work by artists. The catalog acts as
primary information for the exhibition, as opposed to secondary information about art in
magazines or traditional “secondary” exhibition catalogs. Seigelaub’s use of the catalog
as an exhibition in and of itself and the Information show’s use of the catalog as a
separate artistic medium and method of distribution were influential in later publication
projects that used the medium of the catalog as a site of political critique and collective

231
Ibid, 299-300.
275
action.
Similarly, “an anti-catalog” presents a different model of art and politics; it is not
about radical activism or about the political efficacy of elite art. “An anti-catalog” was a
specifically artistic response to a situation the AMCC saw as requiring political
intervention. Like the artists and art historians in the Catalog Committee of the AMCC,
other artists and curators also experimented with formal alternatives for the concept of
the exhibition catalog. The precedent of the unconventional catalog proved especially
productive for feminist approaches to exhibiting and documenting contemporary works
of art. This phenomenon can be observed in the alternative, or at least more inclusive,
catalogs produced by women curators of all-women shows during the mid-1970s. In
trying to overcome boundaries of traditional exhibitions and the catalogs that
accompanied them, the producers of the objects of this study were concerned with the
economic and political implications of their catalogs, and as a result created novel
objects, worthy of further study, in their inter-media position between the traditional
categories of art, catalog, exhibition, and book.
In contextualizing these experiments--or strategies--it proves useful to compare
them with artists’ magazines from the same period. In post-war America, while artists
used the medium of the magazine to document their work, they also began to explore it as
a medium in its own right, creating works expressly for the mass-produced page. In An
Alternative Space for Art, Allen shows that during the 1960s and 1970s, magazines
became an important new site of artistic practice. She argues that the ephemerality of the
magazine was central to its radical possibilities as an alternative form of distribution that
might replace the privileged space of the museum with a more direct and democratic
276
experience. Phillpot previously to Allen discussed the difference between conceptual art
magazines beginning in the 1960s with artists’ magazines that preceded them. He argues
that in contrast to the pre-war avant-garde magazines and postwar abstract expressionist
periodicals, artists’ magazines in the 1960s manifested “a wholly different attitude of
artists towards the magazine and towards the nature of what constituted art.”
232

Allen examines magazines that were published by conceptual artists and their
supporters as alternatives to the mainstream art press and commercial gallery system:
“The everyday, throwaway form of the magazine mirrored art’s heightened sense of its
own contingency in the 1960s and 1970s: its insistence on the actual time and place in
which it was encountered. Indeed, the ephemerality of the magazine was central to its
radical possibilities as an alternative form of distribution that might replace the privileged
space of the museum with a more direct and democratic experience.”
233
These
publications were driven not by profit motives but by an earnest and impassioned belief
in the magazine’s capacity to radicalize the reception of art.

Allen’s argument is important for this project as she considers the politics of
reception that were at the heart of conceptual art’s understanding of the magazine as a
medium and exhibition space. Like artist-run, independent, and non-profit exhibition
spaces and collectives, the experimental catalogs addressed here challenged the
institutions and economies of the mainstream art world by supporting new experimental
forms of art outside the commercial gallery system, promoting artists’ moral and legal
rights, and redressing the inequities of gender, race, and class.

232
Clive Phillpot, “Art Magazines and Magazine Art,” Artforum 18, no. 6, February
1980, 52.
233
Allen, 1-2.
277
The manipulation of images, text, and attention to format, layout, and binding
play a part in the objects of this study as they do in other printed artistic media. The
curators studied in this project aimed to circumvent the traditional channels of
production, display, reception, and commodification of art questioned the relevance of
institutions, while at the same time worked to reform them. By exploring the idea of
“curating” a catalog, art historians may have to consider the catalog as a medium as
important as an artists’ book or magazine, or the exhibition itself, since the late 1960s as
a way to interpret the political, social, and economic motivations of art world figures who
sought to interrogate the very system within they worked.

278
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Wilson, Martha. “Artists’ Books as Alternative Space.” In The New Artspace. Los
Angeles: Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, 1978.

Witness to Her Art. Edited by Rhea Anastas with Michael Brenson. New York: Center for
Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annadale-on-Hudson, 2006.

Wye, Deborah. Committed to Print: Social and Political Themes in Recent American
Printed Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1988.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Kerrigan, Katherine S. (author)

Core Title Cataloguing critique: experimental forms of documentation in American art, 1970-1977

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Art History

Publication Date 10/14/2013

Defense Date 06/13/2013

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag catalog,catalogue,curator,Documentation,OAI-PMH Harvest

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Meyer, Richard Evan (committee chair), James, David E. (committee member), Troy, Nancy J. (committee member)

Creator Email katiekerrigan@me.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-339339

Unique identifier UC11295221

Identifier etd-KerriganKa-2100.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-339339 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-KerriganKa-2100.pdf

Dmrecord 339339

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Kerrigan, Katherine S.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA