I still remember standing in front of Wolfgang Tillmans’ Concorde Grid as Andrea Rosen sold the last complete set to some art adviser from Paris who’d started talking to her before I did, and I was offered a few loosies, at unbundled prices. I got the book instead. But now I wonder if I should just YOLO it and make some.
While researching something else in the Hirshhorn’s archives recently, I stumbled across the museum staff’s correspondence with Tillmans and his gallerists about their acquisition of a Concorde Grid edition in 2006.
Actually, it was about designing the lighting for the Hirshhorn’s 2007 Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition, because conservators stipulated a lower light level than the artist wanted, in order to protect the museum’s new acquisition. But no worries, it turns out Tillmans had also provided an exhibition copy in addition to the “original,” 10-year-old C-prints, so just go ahead and turn up the lights, blast those suckers!
“[Tillmans] feels that implicit in the terms of the acquisition was the idea that the exhibition copy could be shown at light levels that he prefers to show his work,” wrote a curator to a conservator.
Which reminds me of something I’d heard Tillmans say before, that collectors of his unframed prints get the media file and a certificate of authenticity, and are able to reprint it as needed. He was talking about his large-scale prints, but I wonder if that applies for his smaller unframed works, too? Or maybe just to Concorde Grid, because it’s at once both large and small? Actually, re-reading this now, reprinting requires the destruction and return of the original print, so this is actually handled differently from an exhibition print. Also, MoMA stipulates two identical color prints whenever a work enters their collection, so maybe it’s nbd after all. nvm
Wolfgang Tillmans interview, 2021: ‘I don’t really believe in the possibility of absolute protection or in the inferiority of a slightly altered print.’ [lightingthearchive.org via @bbhilley.bsky.social]