Reevaluating the Object of Collecting and Display

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The work of art as a physical object singularly rooted in time and place and bearing the weight of its commercial status was redefined in the latter half of the 1960s. Two decades have come and gone and yet museums with collections of contemporary art have not met the challenge presented by the ground-breaking practice of many of the leading artists of our time. Because it has built ideas involving the problematics of collecting and display into its very content, the art of Dan Graham, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, and Michael Asher deserves particular consideration here.

These artists have anticipated the recent revision of attitudes toward the place of the art object within …