A Mock-up draft of title page for Xerox Book.

Like Conceptual artists, Siegelaub explored subversive communication methods and mediums in his work and raised important questions about the making, display, ownership, distribution, and sale of art. This exhibition highlights items in The Seth Siegelaub Papers, now in The Museum of Modern Art Archives, that illustrate Siegelaub’s role in empowering artists within the hierarchy of the art world.

“This is the way your leverage lies”: The Seth Siegelaub Papers as Institutional Critique opens today at MOMA.

Douglas Huebler’s piece in Seth Siegelaub’s Xerox Book.

Each artist was asked to make a piece for 25 pages of letter-sized paper for the book. The book was the exhibition.

In Hans Ulrich Oberist’s A Brief History of Curating, Siegelaub discusses the project:

What I was trying to do was standardize the conditions of exhibition with the idea that the resulting differences in each artist’s project or work, would be precisely what the artist’s work was about.
It was an attempt to consciously standardize, in terms of an exhibition, book, or project, the conditions of production underlying the exhibition process. It was the first exhibition in fact where I asked the artists to do something, and it was probably somewhat less collaborative than I am now making it sound. But I do have the impression that the close working relationship with the artist was an important factor of all the projects, even when I was not particularly close to an artist, as for example, Bob Morris.

Scott does it again. Available here.

Xerox Star 8010 Interfaces