Harald Szeemann

[4] He studied art history, archaeology and journalism in Bern and at the Sorbonne in Paris from 1953–60,[4] and in 1956 to 1958 he began working as an actor, stage designer and painter,[5] and produced many one-man shows.

[3] There he organised an exhibition of works by the "mentally ill" from the collection of the art historian and psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn in 1963, and in 1968 gave Christo and Jeanne-Claude their first opportunity to wrap an entire building: the Kunsthalle itself.

[11] For decades Szeemann worked out of a studio, which he referred to as "Fabbrica Rosa" or "Pink Factory", in the Swiss village Maggia,[12] where he conceived international exhibitions and experimented with traditional museological practices.

"[14] Artists of individual mythology are among others Armand Schulthess, Jürgen Brodwolf, Michael Buthe, James Lee Byars, the musician La Monte Young, Etienne Martin, Panamarenko, Paul Thek, Marian Zazeela, Horst Gläsker or Heather Sheehan.

"[18] In 1982 he commissioned a three-dimensional reconstruction of Kurt Schwitters's Hannover Merzbau (as photographed in 1933) for the exhibition "Der Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerk" in Zürich the following year.

[22] Following the opening of the exhibition "12 Environments" in the summer of 1968, which featured the works of Andy Warhol, Martial Raysse, Soto, Jean Schnyder, Kowalski, and Christo, Harald Szeemann was asked to do a show of his own.

Representatives of Philip Morris, American Tobacco Company, and Rudder and Finn, Public Relations Firm, visited Szemmann in Bern to recruit his expertise for a project.

[23] This project would entail substantial funding, with the additional benefit of collaborating with the Stedelijk (sponsored by the Holland American Line), and complete artistic freedom.

[24] The project was initially conceived whenever Szeemann, with the Director of the Stedelijk named de Wilde, traveled through Switzerland and Holland to select the works of younger artists for national shows.

Thereafter Szeemann, tired of this open war, decided to resign and become a freelance curator and operated under his newly founded Agency for Spiritual Guest Work.

Large-scale sculptures by artists as: Bruce Nauman, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Beuys, Richard Serra, Chris Burden, Jessica Stockholder, Hanne Darboven, and Ute Schroder were viewed in relation to video installations by: Gary Hill, Mariko Mori, Zhang Peili, Paul McCarthy, and Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky.

[26] There were "physical/ ephemeral" pieces by younger artists, such as Jason Rhoades and Richard Jackson, and the famous large-scale black rats by Katharina Fritsch, which were shown earlier at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York.

[26] Szeemann included a historical section with bronze cast self-portraits of the eighteenth-century artist Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, an ancestral figure to contemporary performance art.

[26] Surrounding the Messerschmidts were photographs, drawings, and relics by artists as Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Hermann Nitsch, Otto Muhl, Günther Brus, and Arnulf Rainer.

[27] Paolo Baratta named directors for the different sections of film, architecture, theater, music, dance, and also visual arts, Szeemann's area of appointment.

Szeemann was appointed the Visual Arts Director, succeeding his predecessor Jean Clair, with only five months to prepare for the 1999 Venice Biennale but with the expectation that he would also direct the following show in 2001.

[27] With the last two Biennales as example, under the directorships of Jean Clair and Germano Celant, Szeemann determined that the international exhibition and national pavilions should be dedicated to young artists and he informed this to all participating countries.

[citation needed] 1997-2005: Department of Visual Arts, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany[33] 1998: Award for Curatorial Excellence, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College[34] 2000: Max Beckmann Prize[35] 2005: Das Glas der Vernunft[36] 2005: Awarded a "Special Gold Lion" at the Biennale in Venice [37] Throughout Szeemann's life he had collected all documentation related to his work and life.

It consists of: The collection is open to researchers and a published finding aid is available online: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2011m30 Szeemann invented the modern-day Großausstellung ("great exhibition"), in which the artworks are tied to a central concept and are assembled into new and often surprising interrelationships.

Important reference points were subversiveness, alternative lifestyles (for example Monte Verità), and the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total artwork", Wagner's concept of a work which spans all the arts, to which his own exhibitions were also indebted).