Cahiers d'Art Institute Events

Christopher Vacchio, Director of Research of the Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings Catalogue Raisonné, will present "The Long Lives of Artworks: Cataloguing Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawings" at the 110th CAA Annual Conference on February 19, 2022. This presentation is a part of the session titled The Living Catalogue Raisonné, organized by the Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association (CRSA). This session will be presented live online from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. ET.

Sol LeWitt's wall drawings, conceptual artworks that derive their meaning from the artist's written instructions or drawn plans, pose a complex challenge for catalogers. Because the artworks are not object-based, their cataloging and definition are uniquely difficult. However, LeWitt did not begin using standardized certificates until 1984, nearly twenty years after creating his first wall drawings. It was around this time that LeWitt also began creating what we call "variations" of his wall drawings—either installation variations, where LeWitt made a one-time edit to adapt a given work to a specific architectural setting or exhibition format, or formal variations, in which LeWitt created a new work explicitly based on the old. LeWitt’s previous catalogues raisonnés, published in 1984, 1989, and 1992, did not account for the artist’s ability to change and edit his artworks over time (even after they had been sold). Vacchio's presentation will focus on how assembling a new digital catalogue allowed the team to develop a methodology of cataloging not only the artist’s conception of each work, but also its full history. In doing so, the team collaborated with the artist’s Estate and Studio to develop guidelines based on the artist’s wishes for how the works can be reinstalled and adapted in the future. That process will be continuously integrated into the online catalogue raisonné, and goes hand in hand with the efforts by the Estate to create a program of ensuring the materials of the wall drawings and the knowledge of their installation techniques are maintained in perpetuity.

The other presentations for this session, The Living Catalogue Raisonné, will be:

"A Case Study: Trisha Brown’s Born-Digital Catalogue Raisonné"
Susan Rosenberg, St. John's University

"Inches Woven per Day: A Tapestry Artist’s Records and the Catalogue Raisonné"
Mae Colburn

"Re-imagining the Catalogue Raisonné as Generative Digital Scholarship"
Liz Neely and Ariel S. Plotek, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum