Anne Rorimer

An examination of a major 1992 installation by a pioneer of site-specific experimentation.Michael Asher (born in 1943), one of the foremost installation artists of the Conceptual art period, is a founder of site-specific practice. Considered a progenitor of institutional critique, he spearheaded the creation of artworks imbued with a self-conscious awareness of their dependence on the conditions of their exhibition context.In the work Kunsthalle Bern 1992, Asher removed the radiators from all the museum's exhibition spaces and reassembled them in its entryway gallery. Metal pipes connected the relocated radiators to their original sockets; these tubular conduits, coursing in linear fashion along the Kunsthalle's walls, kept the steam heat flowing and endowed the installation with directional lines of force. This "displacement of givens" offers a perfect example of site-specific practice, one that took the gallery space and the institution itself as its subject. In this detailed examination of Kunsthalle Bern 1992, Anne Rorimer considers the work in the context of Asher's ongoing desire to fuse art with the material, economic, and social conditions of institutional presentation.Rorimer analyzes Kunsthalle Bern 1992 in relation to the earlier innovations of such minimalist artists as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, and Dan Flavin as well as to such conceptualist contemporaries as Daniel Buren, Dan Graham, and Maria Nordman. She also considers the installation in the context of other works by Asher that have used non-art, functional elements, including walls, or that have investigated museological issues.

"What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed?" Georg Christoph Lichtenberg This major book commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Renaissance Society. The contents of the book were culled from all the Society's current records, its historical documents in the collection of The Archives of American Art of The Smithsonian Institution, and the permanent collections of this country's most renowned public museums. Several essays offer detailed and engaging histories of the Society and its context. John Vinci presents a personal rumination on the exhibition of Mies van der Rohe, and Anne Rorimer offers a typically brilliant account of Daniel Buren's in situ work and its later repercussions. Many of the book's 104 illustrations document what were the first U.S. museum exhibitions for some of the 20th century's most renowned artists such as Calder, Leger, Moholy-Nagy, van der Rohe, Orozco, Matta, Kosuth, Bourgeois, Pashke, and Mike Kelley. With documentation of every known exhibition, artist, publication and special event at The Renaissance Society from its founding in 1915 through 1990, this publication is a vital reference for contemporary art and exhibition in the 20th century.

"The dwelling, the walls, the windows, the roof, the furniture, the pictures, the ornaments, the dress, the fence or hedge-all act constantly upon the imagination and determine its contents." -- Charles Henderson In 1990, Asher, armed with his characteristic incisive wit and critical intellect, set out to dig through the historical foundations of the Renaissance Society's Bergman Gallery at the University of Chicago. This exhibition marks Asher's shift from physically altering gallery spaces to using text and documentation as a manifestation of the ideological backgrounds for exhibitions. Revealing the underlying intellectual and social coordinates of the Society by juxtaposing writings from early University of Chicago scholars of the American Arts and Crafts Movement with the U.S. patent numbers for various gallery fixtures, Asher's exhibition was a brilliant contribution to the movement of institutional critique. With detailed and thorough reproductions of the installation alongside scholarly essays by Birgit Pelzer and Anne Rorimer, this publication offers an intensive analysis of Asher's project for the Renaissance Society. It is an essential addition to the library of anyone with an interest in museum studies or site-specific art practices.