Shapolsky et al
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In 1971 Guggenheim Museum in New York canceled Haacke’s show on the request of the Museum’s Director Thomas Messer to eliminate two pieces. Exhibition was canceled and curator Edward Fry was fired. Work titled Shapolsky et al Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real-Time Social System as of May 1, 1971 presented a documentation - photographs of 142 properties, owned by two or three families, who had assembled vast empires of slum housing in New York. There were recorded facts available in the New York Public Library collected by the artist.
“By tracing the interrelationship and connections between, and the often hidden titles of, these various owners Haacke revealed the structure of these slum empires. Simple, matter-of-fact tracking of tenement holdings, the pieces are without any accusation or polemical tone.” (Foster, 2004) Director Messer explained his decision to cancel the exhibition describing Haacke’s work as “work that violates the supreme neutrality of the work of art and therefore no longer merits the protection of the museum.” (Foster, 2004) This dispute raised a question about what does neutrality of work of art mean and what defines aesthetic, artistic practices as opposed to political, journalistic one.
In Rosalyn Deutsche’s opinion the other very important aspect of Haacke’s real-estate work is that he brought two types of architectural space into confrontation : “the slum housing of New York massive underclass and the luxurious ‘neutrality’ of the uptown, exclusionary, high art institution with their total obliviousness to the situation of the large majority of people who share the same urban space. Deutche’s reading of Haacke’s work - as an effort to juxtapose social spaces as defined by architectural structures - is an important additional interpretation of his practice.” (Foster, 2004)