As a Conservation Assistant at the Getty Research Institute, artist Melissa Huddleston is privy to the depth’s of the institution’s massive holdings. Among these, nestled deep in the Getty Archives, is curator Harald Szeemann’s entire collection of correspondence with artists, scholars and other curators. But that’s not all! There’s also his library of rare monographs, artists’ books and publications, collected from the 1950s until his death in 2005.
Szeemann also founded the Museum of Obsessions in 1973, except it did not exist in real-life. Like the nature of an obsession, it only existed in his mind, and he says that its function was to “give direction to the Agentur fur Geistige Gastarbeit” (translation: Agency for Spiritual Guest Work). He used the Museum of Obsessions as an incubator of sorts for his broader curatorial practice, much of which was focused around two types of obsessions. He labeled the first type a “primary obsession,” being more of a compulsion toward the making of stuff or environments. Such obsessions are usually associated with the mentally ill, folk artist, or outsider artists like Henry Darger. The second type of obsession is artwork created by artists, whose obsessions become viewed as art rather than pure neurosis.
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