Collecting, Archiving, Canonizing: The Role of Exhibitions in the Transnational Reception History of Moscow Conceptualism

This chapter takes Vadim Zakharov’s installation The History of Russian Art (Istoriia russkogo iskusstva, 2003) as a starting point for an inquiry into the role that exhibitions have played in the transnational reception history of Moscow conceptualism. With their threefold function to archive, interpret, and circulate artworks and ideas, exhibitions and catalogues fulfill a crucial role in the formation of knowledge and memory discourses. Building on this framework, I explore three major turns in the history of archiving and canonizing Moscow conceptualism from the 1970s until today. Part one of the analysis reconstructs the transnational network of exhibitions referring to conceptual art from Moscow in the 1970s and early 1980s. I argue that this process laid the material and discursive foundation for the perception of Moscow conceptualism as an art movement after perestroika. The second section discusses Il’ia Kabakov’s exhibition project NOMA or The Moscow Conceptual Circle (NOMA, ili Moskovskii kontseptual’nyi krug, 1993) as an attempt to regain influence on the historiography of Moscow conceptualism which was written predominantly from an international perspective during the 1990s. I conclude by showing that questions of (un)equal discursive power in the memory discourse on Moscow conceptualism similarly pervade the Russian reception of traveling exhibitions such as Berlin–Moscow/Moscow–Berlin. 1950–2000 (2003–2004), necessitating a critical examination of the representation of Soviet art history today.