If any of you are involved in complex cataloguing questions, especially for contemporary art, and enjoy puzzling over them for inordinate amounts of time, here is a conundrum for you. How would you approach a situation like this?
The artist created a work specifically for a temporary exhibition. The original work was projected video imagery on the fa?ades of the museum building. We created a full catalogue record in our collections system for this work. Subsequently the artist created a derivative version of the piece to be offered for sale through the artist's gallery, in an edition of 4. The museum is acquiring edition 1/4 this work. It consists of the same imagery as the original, but it has been re-edited, has acquired a sound track, and is designed primarily as an indoors single-channel video projection. However, in our museum's case, the artist is permitting the work to be shown again as an outside projection on the museum fa?ades exactly as the original work was, as well as indoors as a single-channel projection. It may also be significant that the original work was created under severe time constraints and the artist viewed it more or less as a work in progress. But it had to be shown in the exhibition in an "unfinished" state because the artist simply ran out of time. Essentially our options are 1) create a separate catalogue record for the new derivative work, or 2) treat both the original projection and the derivative piece as two "manifestations" of a single "work" (loosely following FRBR concepts). I suppose a broader question is, do any of you follow FRBR concepts when cataloguing works of this nature? If this is too esoteric for the list, feel free to respond off-list. Thanks, Will Real Carnegie Museum of Art
