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Seth Siegelaub (1941-2013)

Seth Siegelaub

Siegelaub ran his own gallery, Seth Siegelaub Contemporary Art in Manhattan from 1964 to 1966. As an independent curator, he played a vital role in the emergence of Conceptual art between 1966 and 1972, working with artists such as Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, and Lawrence Weiner. Among his groundbreaking projects were The Xerox Book (1968) and July/August Exhibition (1970), which explored the phenomenon of the “group exhibition” in its most radical form: a book or a journal. In 1972, he turned away from the New York art scene and moved to Paris, where he worked as a publisher. Siegelaub began collecting and researching textiles and books about textiles in the early 1980s. He moved to Amsterdam and founded the Center for Social Research on Old Textiles, which conducts research into the social history of textiles. At the turn of the 21st century he started the Stichting Egress Foundation in Amsterdam to bring together his varied range of projects: contemporary art, textile history, and time and causality research.

Siegelaub was certainly one of the leading forces in Conceptual Art and the Stedelijk Museum exhibition from 2016 proves the importance of Siegelaub. The catalogue with the exhibition was designed by Irma Boom and is now available at www.ftn-books.com

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