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Article: "The Label Show": Contemporary Art and the Museum. (various artists, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts)
- Article from:
- Art in America
- Article date:
- October 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Brant Publications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In a show that reversed the customary relation between label and art work, Boston's MFA laid bare the underlying structure of the museum experience.
Few institutional designations seem as oxymoronic a department of contemporary art within an art museum. Insofar as contemporary art is by definition a product of the present, it remains apart from and outside of the principal criteria governing the process of museological inclusion. In other words, if the mandate of the art museum is taken to be the acquisition, care, housing, exhibition and preservation of what are consensually deemed to be significant works of art (as well as some more or less vaguely defined ...