Swiss art curator Harald Szeemann
(1933-2005) organized more than 150 exhibitions during a career that spanned almost five
decades. An advocate of contemporary movements such as conceptualism, land art, happenings,
Fluxus and performance, and of artists such as Joseph Beuys, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly and
Mario Merz, Szeemann developed a new form of exhibition-making that centered on close
collaborative relationships with artists and a sweeping global vision of contemporary visual
culture. He organized vast international surveys such as documenta
5; retrospectives of individual artists including Sigmar Polke, Bruce Nauman,
Wolfgang Laib, James Ensor, and Eugène Delacroix; and thematic exhibitions on such
provocative topics as utopia, disaster, and the "Plateau of Humankind." Szeemann's papers
thoroughly document his curatorial practice, including preliminary notes for many projects,
written descriptions and proposals for exhibitions, installation sketches, photographic
documentation, research files, and extensive correspondence with colleagues, artists and
collaborators.
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Language:
Collection material is primarily in
German with some material in
Italian, French, English and other languages.
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute Special Collections 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100 Los Angeles 90049-1688 reference@getty.edu URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref (310) 440-7390
Author:
Alexis Adkins, Heather Courtney, Judy Chou, Holly Deakyne, Maggie Hughes, B.
Karenina Karyadi, Medria Martin, Emmabeth Nanol, Alice Poulalion, Pietro Rigolo, Elena
Salza, Laura Schroffel, Lindsey Sommer, Melanie Tran, Sue Tyson, Xiaoda Wang, and Isabella
Zuralski.
