{"id":5833,"date":"2023-01-27T07:15:26","date_gmt":"2023-01-27T12:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/?p=5833"},"modified":"2023-04-21T11:08:40","modified_gmt":"2023-04-21T15:08:40","slug":"following-institutional-critique-inside-the-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/2023\/01\/27\/following-institutional-critique-inside-the-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Following Institutional Critique Inside the Library"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Levi Sherman<\/h4>\n
\"\"
Figure 1. John Latham (1921\u20132006). Skoob Tower Ceremony, June 1966, South Bank, London<\/em> (1966). Amongst those present were Gustav Metzger, Ivor Davies, Nicholas Tresilian, Ken Coutts-Smith and Barry Flanagan. Pictured: Artist Gustav Metzger. Photograph courtesy The John Latham Foundation and Lisson Gallery.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When artists in the 1960s began challenging systemic authority, it seemed any cultural heritage institution\u2014library, archive, or museum\u2014could be a target of what would become known as Institutional Critique.1<\/sup> The same period heard the first rumblings of today\u2019s \u201cdigital convergence,\u201d2<\/sup> or the collapse of libraries, archives, and museums into repositories of information, accessed by users with little interest in the distinctions between these types of institutions.3<\/sup>\u00a0Yet even as librarians, archivists, and museum registrars blurred into \u201cinformation professionals\u201d in the 1960s, artists would develop a very different relationship with libraries than with archives and museums. My current research triangulates this unique artist-library relationship through the art historical framework of Institutional Critique, the cultural history of libraries, and the discourse of information science.<\/span><\/p>\n

I hope to complicate the art historiography of Institutional Critique and glimpse what has been lost when the distinct purposes and practices of libraries, archives, and museums blur into information or institutionality writ large. These blurred boundaries haunt Institutional Critique from its inception in the journal October<\/em>, which drew heavily from Foucault\u2019s rather abstract understanding of the archive.4<\/sup> It seems no coincidence that Henry Pisciotta writes from the perspective of a working librarian when he posits an alternative timeline of Institutional Critique, which peaks with the archival turn of the 1990s.5<\/sup> Where art historians like Blake Stimson distinguish between a generation who tries to hold public institutions accountable and one who tries to redirect private institutions, Pisciotta shows that artists never stop trying to hold libraries to their mission.6<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

John Latham naturally figures into Pisciotta\u2019s study of the Institutional Critique of libraries. Latham staged his spectacular book-burnings, Skoob Tower Ceremonies<\/em> (1964\u20131968), at several institutional sites, like the British Library.7<\/sup>\u00a0Figure 1 illustrates another Skoob Tower Ceremony<\/em> staged in London\u2019s South Bank, with a similar civic architectural backdrop. But few later artists adopt Latham\u2019s approach. Where Latham treats the library\u2014like the museum and the courthouse\u2014as a shallow signifier of culture and authority, later artists perform their critique from inside the institution, often with its permission and support.8<\/sup>\u00a0These artists understand the library as an exercise of authority but also democracy. They engage in a nuanced immanent critique that addresses how libraries operate rather than what they represent symbolically.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beneath its stereotypically neoclassical fa\u00e7ade, the modern public library has never been a centralized authority like the archive or museum, which share its spectacular architecture of power. Indeed, library history reveals continued frustration with this decentralized governance within national organizations like the American Library Association.9<\/sup> Public libraries are accountable to taxpayers, serve amateur researchers, and prioritize information dissemination over preservation or connoisseurship. In other words, the anti-institutional pressure that Stimson associates with \u201cnew technologically enabled forms of peer-to-peer social organization\u201d shaped the public library long before digital convergence began.10<\/sup><\/sup>\u00a0<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Figure 2. India Johnson (b. 1992). Negative Theology<\/em> (2019\u20132020). Fabric casts of books installed in the University of Iowa Main Library theology stacks. Photograph courtesy of India Johnson.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Artists need not intervene in the library\u2019s spectacular trappings\u2014its outward signifiers of culture and authority\u2014because members of the community remain agonistically engaged with the institution\u2019s inner workings. Indeed, the everyday interactions between the library and its patrons are generative points of departure for many artists. One example is India Johnson\u2019s Negative Theology<\/em> (2019\u20132020), which converses with a specific library as a site and set of practices (fig. 2).11<\/sup> Johnson checked out a university library\u2019s complete selection of books on the subject of negative theology and filled their spots on the shelves with fabric casts during the check-out period.12<\/sup>\u00a0Thus, the location, scale, and duration of Johnson\u2019s installation are determined by the library\u2019s classification scheme, acquisition plan, and checkout policy. Whereas Institutional Critique artists tended to approach art museums from the position of artists rather than patrons, Johnson’s visit mirrors that of a typical user; anyone can remove books from a library shelf and keep them, thus altering the space within the constraints of the site.<\/span><\/p>\n

Art history has been better at theorizing generalized modes of site specificity than addressing the operations of a specific site like a public library. My research seeks to understand how artists engage with libraries and their communities of readers by using the tools of library historians like Wayne Wiegand, a people’s historian of libraries: the public and mundane evidence of policies, annual reports, meeting minutes, and letters to the editor.13<\/sup>\u00a0Reading Johnson\u2019s immanent critique in the context of library history reveals the decentralized yet highly institutionalized terrain where people continue to encounter actual democracy, not just architectural and artistic spectacle of democracy found outside of the library.<\/span><\/p>\n

____________________<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Levi Sherman <\/strong>is a PhD student in Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. With a background in design and interdisciplinary art, he maintains a studio practice and co-operates a small press. Levi\u2019s research interests include walking art, artists\u2019 books, and the broader intersection of contemporary art, books, and libraries.<\/span><\/p>\n

____________________<\/span><\/p>\n

Footnotes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0According to art historian Blake Stimson, \u201cinstitutions were understood to be the means by which authority exercised itself\u201d and so represented the system of \u201cillegitimate authority\u201d and control, which artists previously located in authoritarian figures like heads of state. Blake Stimson, \u201cWhat Was Institutional Critique?\u201d in Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings<\/em>\u00a0(Cambridge, MA:\u00a0MIT Press,\u00a02011), 22.<\/span><\/p>\n

2.\u00a0Wayne A. Wiegand,\u00a0Part of Our Lives: A People\u2019s History of the American Public Library<\/em> (United Kingdom:\u00a0Oxford University Press,\u00a02015), 193\u2013194.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Cecilia Salvatore, \u201cLibraries, Archives, and Museums in the Twenty-First Century,\u201d in Libraries, Archives, and Museums: An Introduction to Cultural Heritage Institutions Through the Ages<\/em>\u00a0(Maryland:\u00a0Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,\u00a02021), 251\u2013260.<\/span><\/p>\n

4.\u00a0In framing Institutional Critique, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and Hal Foster tend to address the idea of the institution rather than its operation. Foster\u2019s 1996 essay \u201cThe Archive without Museums\u201d exemplifies this approach, which invokes the library as a Borgesian, Alexandrian thought experiment. Foster does so by blurring Foucault\u2019s respective treatments of the library and the archive, which themselves tend toward the abstract. See Hal Foster, \u201cThe Archive without Museums,\u201d October<\/em> 77 (1996): 97\u2013119.<\/span><\/p>\n

5.\u00a0Henry Pisciotta, \u201cThe Library in Art\u2019s Crosshairs,\u201d Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America<\/em> 35, no. 1 (2016): 2\u201326.<\/span><\/p>\n

6.\u00a0Stimson,\u201cWhat Was Institutional Critique?,\u201d 37.<\/span><\/p>\n

7.\u00a0Elisa Kay, \u201cJohn Latham,\u201d Flash Art International<\/em> 44, no. 280 (October 2011): 64\u201367.<\/span><\/p>\n

8.\u00a0Pisciotta discusses examples by Mel Chin, George LeGrady, Clegg & Guttman, and others which reveal different strategies for maintaining a critical edge while collaborating with the institution.<\/span><\/p>\n

9.\u00a0One telling example was the ALA \u201cLibrary Bill of Rights,\u201d which emerged during the Second World War to combat censorship and promote free inquiry. Library historian Wayne Wiegand notes that actually implementing the LBR was \u201calmost always messy, often impossible, and professional consensus\u2026 was hard to discern.\u201d Wayne A. Wiegand,\u00a0Part of Our Lives: A People\u2019s History of the American Public Library<\/em>\u00a0(Oxford:\u00a0Oxford University Press,\u00a02015), 166.<\/span><\/p>\n

10.\u00a0Stimson, \u201cWhat Was Institutional Critique?,\u201d 32.<\/span><\/p>\n

11.\u00a0India Johnson, \u201cNegative Theology,\u201d India Johnson<\/em>, accessed October 18, 2022, https:\/\/indiajohnson.hotglue.me\/?sitespecific\/<\/span><\/p>\n

12.\u00a0Negative theology, or the study of the divine through what it is not, is no doubt a pun, but the subject also relates to Johnson\u2019s research into the intersection of religion, language, and book art.<\/span><\/p>\n

13.\u00a0As municipally funded institutions with public boards, library records are generally more available than those at museums and other private institutions.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Levi Sherman When artists in the 1960s began challenging systemic authority, it seemed any cultural heritage institution\u2014library, archive, or museum\u2014could be a target of what would become known as Institutional Critique.1 The same period heard the first rumblings of today\u2019s \u201cdigital convergence,\u201d2 or the collapse of libraries, archives, and museums into repositories of information, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21123,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5833"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5833"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5970,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5833\/revisions\/5970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}