This study analyzes the exhibition methodology of the independent curator Harald Szeemann as it is embodied in his exhibition Grandfather—A Pioneer Like Us. In 1974, Szeemann mounted in his own apartment in Bern, Switzerland, an exhibition organized...
This study analyzes the exhibition methodology of the independent curator Harald Szeemann as it is embodied in his exhibition Grandfather—A Pioneer Like Us. In 1974, Szeemann mounted in his own apartment in Bern, Switzerland, an exhibition organized around the life and collection of his grandfather, Étienne Szeemann, who spent his career as a hairdresser. The project functioned both as a centenary homage and as a site of reflection and learning in which, following the conflicts he faced while organizing documenta 5, Szeemann reconsidered the relationship between exhibitionary institutions and the practice of exhibition‑making. Through this experiment, he articulated with clarity what would become a principal compass for his later work—the “Museum of Obsessions”—and advanced a distinctive methodology for thinking, through the medium of exhibition, the relations between the personal and the institutional, between objects and life, and between non‑artists and artists.