ART-PRESENTATION: Beyond Conceptual Art

Seth Siegelaub was an art dealer, independent art exhibition organizer, author and researcher. He is best known for his innovative promotion of Conceptual art in New York in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but has also been a political researcher and publisher, textile history bibliographer and collector, and a researcher studying the theories of time and causality in physics.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Stedelijk Museum Archive

Often billed as the father of Conceptual Art, Seth Siegelaub was and remains a seminal influence on curators, artists, and cultural thinkers, internationally and in Amsterdam, where he settled in the ‘90s. The Stedelijk Museum presents the exhibition “Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art”, devoted to the life and work of this fascinating yet still elusive figure. After working at the Sculpture Center (New York) in the early ‘60s, he opened his own gallery,”Seth Siegelaub Contemporary Art”, from Fall 1964 to Spring 1966. Later in 1966, he evolved into a private dealer working closely on projects with the artists Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth and Lawrence Weiner, in which he tried to expand and open up the exhibition environment to the new possibilities, issues and problems posed by the new forms of art, especially what is now known as “Conceptual Art”. This gradually lead to his becoming the first what is today known as an “Independent Curator”, independently organizing 21 art exhibitions, books, catalogues and projects throughout the USA, Canada and Europe between February 1968 and July 1971 before withdrawing from the art world in 1972. Among those exhibitions were: The “Windham” exhibition (1968) with works by Carl Andre, Robert Barry and Lawrence Weiner, this exhibition is considered the first outdoor on-site installation exhibition. The “January 5-31” (1969) was the first group exhibition in which the catalogue was the exhibition, with Robert Barry, Joseph Kosuth, Douglas Huebler and Lawrence Weiner. The “Xeroxbook” (1968), in which 7 artists each did a 25-page work, including work by Sol LeWitt and Robert Morris and the “July/August Exhibition Book” (1970), a catalogue-exhibition in which 6 art critics, (David Antin, Germano Celant, Michel Claura, Charles Harrison, Lucy Lippard and Hans Strelow), were each given an 8-page section to edit as they saw fit. As part of the politicization of the art world he became active in anti-war activities, in1971, he originated, and then drafted with lawyer Robert Projansky, what is known as the “Artist’s Contract”. The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, which defined and attempted to protect the rights and interests of the artist as their work circulated within the art world system. In 1972 began publishing left books on communication and culture, including the classic study on cultural imperialism “How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic” and founded the International Mass Media Research Center. At the same time he pursued a lesser-known occupation as a collector of hand-woven textiles and bibliographer of books on the social history of textiles. Since the mid-‘80s, he has been involved with research on the production of popular culture, especially concerning the social history of handwoven textiles throughout the world. In 1986 he founded the Center for Social Research on Old Textiles. In 1997 he edited and published the “Bibliographica Textilia Historiae”, the first general bibliography on the history of textiles and at the turn of the 21st Century he founded the Stichting Egress Foundation in Amsterdam to bring together his varied range of projects: contemporary art, textile history, time & causality research, and left communications study. He died in Basel, Switzerland on 15/6/13. The exhibition unfolds as several chapters exploring the various facets of, and connections in, Siegelaub’s work, from his groundbreaking projects with conceptual artists and his research and publications on mass media and communication theories to his interest in hand-woven textiles and non-Western fabrics. Italso highlights his collecting activity, which culminates in a unique ensemble of books on the social history of textiles and a textile collection comprising over 750 items from all parts of the world. The MoMA, which holds the bulk of Siegelaub’s collection of conceptual artworks and documentation of his New York years, has loan a substantial number of items to the exhibition, also the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, the repository of Siegelaub’s library of 3,000 titles on media, is another major lender.

Info: Curators: Leontine Coelewij & Sara Martinetti, Stedelijk Museum, Museumplein 10, Amsterdam, Duration: 12/12/15-17/4/16, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, Fri 10:00-22:00, www.stedelijk.nl/en