Impermanence and Entropy: Collaborative Efforts Installing Contemporary Art

Contemporary art exhibitions Increasingly include artworks that vary in size and weight, are ephemeral in nature, organic in expression, sometimes deceptively frail, purposefully disorganized, or obsessively detailed. The ways in which curators, conservators, registrars, and exhibition designers are engaging in active collaboration with artists to realize complex conceptual installations are illuminated in these case studies from Tempo, an exhibition organized by The Museum of Modern Art in 2002. This article discusses how the museum's standards of exhibition preparation and installation, as well as conservation treatments and maintenance, were adapted. A simple shipment of material introduced a need to understand international trade law; ubiquitous technology provided a crash course on consumer-driven obsolescence; and the artist's intent, as well as notions of authorship, inspired inquiry into the relationship between the museum and the artist. Despite long-standing tradition in approaches to in...