Harald Szeemann, 71, Curator of Groundbreaking Shows, Dies
NY Times
Harald Szeemann, an influential Swiss museum curator whose groundbreaking exhibitions helped redefine his profession, died last Friday in the Ticino region of Switzerland. He was 71.
His death was announced by the Venice Biennale and the Kunsthaus Zürich, for which he worked.
Mr. Szeemann was often said to be the first independent, or freelance, curator. He invented the curator as art star, a globe-trotting, deal-making, usually male impresario of large-scale exhibitions that bore the imprint of a single vision and succeeded or failed on the strength of site-specific works executed specially for the show.
Mr. Szeemann was the first curator to mount large surveys of the fertile breakdown of art mediums that began in the 1960’s, and the first to have complete control over the sprawling Documenta exhibitions, which are held every five years or so in Kassel, Germany. He was known for shows that not only mixed genres and generations, but sometimes included historical documents and scientific innovations.
He favored artists that he considered outsiders and visionaries, and saw himself as one too. He once said that he wanted an exhibition of his to be “not just a group show, but a temporary world.”
Harald Szeemann, un cas singulier
Etienne-Martin
Museum der Obsessionen
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