Institutional critique

From the late 1960s, some artists turned to look at the institutions that collected and showed their work. Hans Haacke, a leading figure, often looked at where museums' funding and donations came from. In 1971 the Guggenheim Museum in New York cancelled his solo show six weeks before it opened; it was to include Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, and the curator was fired for supporting the work. In 1974 the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne rejected his proposal tracing the past owners of a Manet in its collection, Bunch of Asparagus. From the 1990s, curators and directors began holding such critical discussions inside museums, so that the institution became both the problem and the answer. In Taipei, MOCA Taipei, before closing for three years of renovation, uses The Museum After to take stock of the labour, spaces, and systems behind its exhibitions, while Chen Chao-hua's solo show at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum looks at what an artist still faces after an award has recognised him.

Notice the parts of a museum you usually look past: guards, walls, labels, staff at work. Which one does the work bring before you?

Whose work do you usually not notice when you visit a museum?