Gardens and Gatekeepers: Marcel Broodthaers’s inclusive installations

for Tank Magazine

Marcel Broodthaers, Un Jardin d'Hiver, 1974. (2017)

For my fourth piece for Tank Magazine I wrote on the curious choice of Frieze week exhibition by Hauser & Wirth London, a whole-gallery installation by the late Belgian conceptual artist Marcel Broodthaers.

The modern white cube gallery can trace an almost direct lineage back to these winter gardens via the Crystal Palace of the Great Exhibition of 1851, designed by Joseph Paxton who based his models on the palm house at Kew. For Broodthaers, the curator operates in the same way as the Victorian collector, driven by the same desire to show off wealth and knowledge as a means of excluding certain people while inviting others.

Gardens and Gatekeepers: Marcel Broodthaers’s inclusive installations is published by Tank Magazine.