Harald Szeemann – författare

Throughout history, the excitements, surprises and discoveries of travel have inspired many. Great travelers, of course, are often great ambassadors of knowledge and ideas, but while the exchanges between disparate cultures have enchanted--and sometimes puzzled--both the visitors and the visited, they have also historically been the cause of conflict and strife. Christopher Columbus's fourth long voyage from Spain to America has been chosen as a metaphor for P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center's exhibition The Real Royal Trip. The “artist-travelers” featured in this historic exhibition reveal through their work a potent creative energy and illuminate the flow of new ideas, images, and approaches emerging from Spain's unique contemporary cultural climate. Breaking down barriers established by nations, the exhibition reaches across the Atlantic Ocean to include work by artists from Cuba and Puerto Rico, pursuing the pioneering voices of contemporary Latin America. (The inclusion of Ernesto Neto ensures that the great South American dream is also represented.) With the language of Spain--and not its national borders--as a common currency, this international panorama of art-making proposes a new kind of Spanish identity, one that is intricately linked to U.S. and Latin American culture.

Born in Bern, Switzerland in 1933, Harald Szeemann was a crucial force in identifying, exhibiting, and writing about the important new movements in postwar contemporary art. This collection of seventy-four texts from the curator's vast body of written work-which includes essays, lectures, studio notes, reviews, interviews, correspondence, and transcripts-introduces the depth of his method, insight, and inclusive artistic interests. The pieces have been translated from German and French and collected in an informed, authoritative edition, making this the first time Szeemann's work is accessible in English. The first two sections of this volume republish Szeemann's anthologies "Museum der Obsessionen" (1981) and "Individuelle Mythologien" (1985). The final part assembles important writing from 1986 until his death in 2005 to represent the later years of his career and round out a record of his contribution to and dialogue with later twentieth century art and artists. The book's publication coincides with the opening of the Getty Research Institute's exhibition Harald Szeemann: Museum of Obsessions, as well as a satellite show that recreates on Szeemann's "Grandfather exhibition" at the Institute of Contempoary Art, Los Angeles.