Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Search
  • Exhibitions
    • Current
    • Upcoming
    • Past
  • Calendar
  • Learning
    • Exhibition Programs
    • Public Programs
    • Featured Media
    • Special Projects
    • Digital Projects
    • Schools / Community
  • Visit
  • About
    • Staff
    • Governance
    • Press
    • Partnerships
    • Opportunities
  • Shop
  • Get Involved
    • Incognito Revealed
    • Join
    • 1717
    • Sustainability
    • Corporate
    • Institutional Support
    • Donate
Yellow Pages

Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

  • Exhibitions
    • Current
    • Upcoming
    • Past
  • Calendar
  • Learning
    • Exhibition Programs
    • Public Programs
    • Featured Media
    • Special Projects
    • Digital Projects
    • Schools / Community
  • Visit
  • About
    • Staff
    • Governance
    • Press
    • Partnerships
    • Opportunities
  • Shop
  • Get Involved
    • Incognito Revealed
    • Join
    • 1717
    • Sustainability
    • Corporate
    • Institutional Support
    • Donate
Yellow Pages
Search
Back To Exhibitions
February 04, 2018
➽
April 22, 2018
9
Upcoming Events
Group 3 Created with Sketch. 0
My Bag
Back To Exhibitions
February 04, 2018
➽
April 22, 2018
9
Upcoming Events

Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us (1974)

Exhibitions
Szeeman install 10
8 Images
After organizing the landmark exhibitions Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (1969) and documenta 5 (1972), renowned curator Harald Szeemann staged Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us in his apartment, a collection of various objects and inventions made or owned by his grandfather, Etienne Szeemann, a noted hairdresser. This exhibition will feature a detailed recreation of Szeemann’s exhibition with materials from the Getty Research Institute’s recently acquired Szeemann archive.
News
Credits & Sponsors
About the Curator
Media
June 13, 2018, 2018
The man who turned curating into an art form
March 08, 2018, 2018
‘Harald Szeemann’: A rare, fascinating exhibition about the curator, not the artist
March 20, 2018, 2018
Harald Szeemann at ICA LA
February 02, 2018, 2018
Pioneering curator Harald Szeemann celebrated in two Los Angeles shows
March 01, 2018, 2018
CRITICS’ PICKS: “Museum of Obsessions” and “Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us”
January 31, 2018, 2018
What Is Your All-Time Fantasy Exhibition? We Asked 14 Art-World Heavyweights

Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us is organized by the Getty Research Institute.

Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us is part of the exhibition Harald Szeemann: Museum of Obsessions, on view February 6–May 6, 2018, at the Getty Research Institute.

ICA LA’s presentation of Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us is supported by the Consulate General of Switzerland in Los Angeles. Media sponsorship is provided by 89.9 FM KCRW.

Harald Szeemann (11 June 1933 – 18 February 2005) was a Swiss curator and artist and art historian. Having curated more than 200 exhibitions, many of which have been characterized as groundbreaking, Szeemann is said to have helped redefine the role of an art curator.It is believed that Szeemann elevated curating to a legitimate art-form itself.

Szeemann began organizing exhibitions in Switzerland in 1957, and in 1961 he was appointed as director of the Kunsthalle Bern at the age of 28. Despite being a somewhat “provincial institution” at the time Szeemann managed to open a new exhibition every month, often with young and promising artists.

There he organised an exhibition of works by the “mentally ill” from the collection of the art historian and psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn in 1963, and in 1968 gave Christo and Jeanne-Claude their first opportunity to wrap an entire building: the Kunsthalle itself. The Kunsthalle Bern is also where Szeemann mounted his “radical” landmark 1969 exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Formwhich caused such a reaction that it prompted his resignation as Kunsthalle director.

For decades Szeemann worked out of a studio, which he referred to as “The Factory,” in the Swiss village Tegna, where he conceived international exhibitions and experimented with traditional museological practices. After leaving the Kunsthalle he founded the “Museum of Obsessions” and the Agentur für Geistige Gastarbeit (“Agency for Spiritual Migrant Work”). In 1972 he was the youngest artistic director at documenta 5 in Kassel.He revolutionized the concept: conceived as a hundred-day event, he invited the artists to present not only paintings and sculptures, but also performances and “happenings” as well as photography. The show had various sections named “Artist’s Museum” or “Individual Mythologies”. In an interview in June 2001, he explained: “All the former Documentas followed the old-hat, thesis/antithesis dialectic: Constructivism/Surrealism, Pop/Minimalism, Realism/Concept. That’s why I invented the term, ‘individual mythologies'—not a style, but a human right. An artist could be a geometric painter or a gestural artist; each can live his or her own mythology. Style is no longer the important issue.” Artists of individual mythology are among others Armand Schulthess, Jürgen Brodwolf, Michael Buthe, James Lee Byars, the musician La Monte Young, Etienne Martin, Panamarenko, Paul Thek, Marian Zazeela, Horst Gläsker or Heather Sheehan.

For the 1980 Venice Biennale, he and Achille Bonito Oliva co-created the “Aperto”, a new section in the Biennale for young artists. He was later selected as the Biennale director for both 1999 and 2001. This marked him as the first to curate both documenta and the Biennale. Until 2014, he was the only curator who had this distinction, which since the 2015 Venice Biennale is now shared with Okwui Enwezor.

From 1981 to 1991, Szeemann was a “permanent freelance curator” at the Kunsthaus Zürich. During this time, he also curated for other institutions including the Deichtorhallen Hamburg for its inaugural exhibition “Einleuchten: Will, Vorstel Und Simul In HH.”[16] In 1982 he commissioned a three-dimensional reconstruction of Kurt Schwitters’s Hannover Merzbau (as photographed in 1933) for the exhibition “Der Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerk” in Zürich the following year. It was built by the Swiss stage designer Peter Bissegger and is now on permanent display in the Sprengel Museum in Hanover.

—Excerpt from Wikipedia

“A Closer Look: Being Harald Szeemann” by the Getty Research Institute

Glenn Phillips and Melissa Huddleston: Reconstructing Grandfather

Making Museums

Harald and Elsa: The Kingdom of Referentials

Images
Szeeman install 10
Szeeman install 24
Szeeman install 39
Szeeman install 52
Szeeman install 73
Szeeman install 57
Szeeman install 82
Szeeman install 78
icon/arrow copy Created with Sketch.
icon/arrow copy Created with Sketch.
1/8
Installation view of Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us (1974)
Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, February 4–April 22, 2018
Photo: Brian Forrest
Grandfather 21
Grandfather 01
Grandfather 25
Grandfather 23a

Find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
Last updated at Tuesday, 16 Jul 2019 11:49 AM, by Jamillah James Log in
Database Exhibitions
1 2 Next Last
Back to top
?
STATUS ID Title Start date End date Featured image Last updated
Active Published
79 Online Screening: Stanya Kahn’s No Go Backs and Earlier Works 2020-12-09 2021-01-10 11:43am Jan 12, 2021 Page
Active Published
77 Harold Mendez:
Let us gather in a flourishing way
2020-09-26 2021-01-10
Hm16
5:37pm Jan 05, 2021 Page
Active Published
78 Stanya Kahn:
No Go Backs
2020-09-26 2021-01-10
Sk1a
6:46pm Dec 04, 2020 Page
Active Published
69 Ree Morton:
The Plant That Heals May Also Poison
2020-02-16 2020-07-19
Icala 2020 03 06 025
2:53pm Dec 03, 2020 Page
Active Published
74 Ann Greene Kelly 2020-02-16 2020-07-19
Icala 2020 03 06 001
9:53am Jun 17, 2020 Page
Active Published
75 Agency of Assets x El Clasificado 2019-12-06 2020-01-26
Meztly cover
10:30am Dec 09, 2019 Page
Active Published
73 CURRENT:LA FOOD Public Art Triennial 2019 2019-10-05 2019-11-03
CURRENT:LA FOOD
11:04am Oct 07, 2019 Page
Active Published
67 No Wrong Holes:
Thirty Years of Nayland Blake
2019-09-29 2020-01-26
Ica blake 5
3:57pm Oct 21, 2020 Page
Active Published
72 Sadie Barnette:
The New Eagle Creek Saloon
2019-09-29 2020-01-26
Ica barnette 7
5:36pm Aug 26, 2020 Page
Active Published
70 Hervé Tullet: Ideal Exhibition 2019-07-14 2019-09-08
Icala96194
4:04pm Mar 27, 2020 Page
Active Published
71 Worldwide Orphans: Element of Play® 2019-07-14 2019-09-08
2. vietnam
5:44pm Jul 31, 2019 Page
Active Published
68 Brognon-Rollin:
Maybe Some Of Us Will Change This
2019-03-17 2019-06-30
Img 8214 3
2:28pm Nov 17, 2020 Page
Active Published
63 Patty Chang:
The Wandering Lake, 2009–2017
2019-03-17 2019-08-04
Ica chang 24
3:05pm Oct 01, 2019 Page
Active Published
19 Maryam Jafri:
I Drank the Kool-Aid But I Didn’t Inhale
2019-02-10 2019-06-30
Icla2.12.19 60
4:45pm Apr 09, 2020 Page
Active Published
64 Lucas Blalock:
An Enormous Oar
2019-02-10 2019-08-04
Icla2.12.19 95
4:52pm Apr 09, 2020 Page
Active Published
62 Adrian Piper
What It’s Like, What It Is #3
2018-10-07 2019-01-06
1991 what its like 3
12:12pm Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
61 Agency of Assets:
Reality Augmented
2018-09-30 2019-01-06
Agencyofassets
1:44pm Apr 07, 2020 Page
Active Published
4 B. Wurtz:
This Has No Name
2018-09-30 2019-02-17
Wurtz install 05
4:54pm Apr 09, 2020 Page
Active Published
6 Nina Chanel Abney:
Royal Flush
2018-09-23 2019-01-20
Abney install 02
11:58am Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
2 This Brush for Hire: Norm Laich & Many Other Artists 2018-06-03 2018-09-02
Brush for hire 14
3:54pm Oct 01, 2019 Page
Active Published
20 sisters and brothers 2018-04-22 2018-06-17
Brothers & sisters 02
11:54am Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
18 Rafa Esparza: de la Calle 2018-04-22 2018-07-15
Esparza5
6:11pm Jul 09, 2018 Page
Active Published
9 Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us (1974) 2018-02-04 2018-04-22
Szeeman install 10
11:49am Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
8 Skip Arnold: Truffle Hunt 2018-01-28 2018-04-08
Arnold install 11
11:45am Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
1 Martín Ramírez: His Life in Pictures, Another Interpretation 2017-09-09 2017-12-31
Ramirez install 02
6:55pm Apr 02, 2020 Page
Search results
Loading...