The first major American survey exhibition of the legendary Belgian artist, Marcel Broodthaers featured approximately one hundred and sixty works by the influential conceptual artist, including sculptures, paintings, drawings, books, prints, installations, photos, and an installation of slide projections, all made between 1963 and 1975. Two paradigmatic installations bookended the show: Entrance to the Exhibition (1974), a room of framed photos of Broodthaers’s art with a gaggle of palm trees its center; and The White Room (1975), a full-size recreation of one-and-a-half rooms from the artist’s apartment studio in Brussels, with “art” words (“easel,” “museum,” “color,” “paper”) printed on the walls. Selections from his Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles (1968–1972), Broodthaers’s best known work critiquing the museum as a site of value production, were also shown, as well as other works more broadly concerned with language and the categorical impulse in art.
Marcel Broodthaers debuted at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and traveled to MOCA and two other museums.
The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue.
Marcel Broodthaers was organized by Marge Goldwater and Michael Compton for Walker Art Center in association with the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.