Abstract
Leaver examines the legacy of Swiss curator Harald Szeemann, highlighting two exhibits that celebrate his life and career. The first, Harald Szeemann: Museum of Obsessions, was a survey at the Getty Research Institute; the other, Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA, recreated an exhibition from 1974. Szeemann himself was very adept at conjuring meaning from the residue of destruction, as exemplified by the show that announced his career to the world at large, Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form, which featured extensively in the Getty's exhibition. When Attitudes Become Form, staged in the spring of 1969, was incendiary in a theoretical sense, featuring an international group of provocative post-minimalist and conceptual artists; it was also more literally so, involving the actual destruction of parts of the museum that hosted it, the Kunsthalle in Bern, Switzerland