Harald Szeemann: Museum of Obsessions
After making his debut at the GRI in Los Angeles, that in 2011 acquired the boundless archive of Szeemann, and made a stop at the Kunsthalle in Bern and at the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf, the exhibition is presented at Castello di Rivoli with a set-up that dwells on the intense relationships between the curator and the Turinese artists, integrating the exhibition path with artworks from the Castello di Rivoli and other important collections.The exhibition, organized by the Getty Research Institute (GRI) in Los Angeles in collaboration with the Castello di Rivoli Research Institute (CRRI), is the first exhibition dedicated to the life and career of Harald Szeemann (Bern, 1933 – Tegna, Switzerland, 2005), to which we owe the birth of the figure of the curator in the late 60s and the conception of the exhibition as a creative expression and autonomous form of language. The exhibition path develops through a series of themes that give visitors a glimpse into the thought, the visions and the obsessions, the controversies and the polemics that have accompanied the human and professional affairs of the Swiss curator, presenting a precious selection of archival materials, photographic documentation and videos, and a selection of artworks that have marked out his most important exhibitions, including Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (1969) and documenta 5 (1972), flanked by Grandfather: A Pioneer like us which reconstructs the first exhibition project of Szeemann after documenta 5 for which, in 1974, in his house in Bern, he retraced the life of his grandfather, the hairdresser Étienne “Stephan” Szeemann.
