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Gallery Talk: Wolf Vostell’s Experiments with Concrete

A concrete cast of a television sits atop a wooden table.
Wolf Vostell, German, Endogene Depression V, 1980. Concrete cast of a TV on wooden table. Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Purchase in memory of Eda K. Loeb, 2022.339. © The Wolf Vostell Estate.

Gallery Talk

Harvard Art Museums
32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

This event requires registration; see further details below.

Briana J. Smith will discuss Wolf Vostell’s concrete sculptures, including concrete casts of television sets and a concrete book. She will also describe how his project Concrete Cadillacs, installed as part of West Berlin’s 1987 Sculpture Boulevard, incited a massive public debate about art in public space and even inspired concrete parodies of his work.

This talk is offered in conjunction with the exhibition Wolf Vostell: Dé-coll/age Is Your Life (January 20–May 5, 2024).

Led by:
Briana J. Smith, Associate Director of Studies, Committee on Degrees in History & Literature, Harvard University

Gallery talks are limited to 18 people and registration is required. You can register by clicking on the event on this form, beginning at 10am the day of the talk.

Please meet in the Calderwood Courtyard, in front of the digital screens between the shop and the admissions desk.

The Harvard Art Museums are now offering free admission every day, Tuesday through Sunday. Please see the museum visit page to learn about our general policies for visiting the museums.

Support for Wolf Vostell: Dé-coll/age Is Your Life is provided by the Ernst A. Teves Memorial Fund and the Care of the Busch-Reisinger Museum Collection Endowment. Related programming is supported by the M. Victor Leventritt Lecture Series Endowment Fund. In addition, modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.

The Harvard Art Museums are committed to accessibility for all visitors. For anyone requiring accessibility accommodations for our programs, please contact us at am_register@harvard.edu at least 48 hours in advance.