“New York: 1962–1964” is the last book we developed together with Germano Celant. Germano died shortly after our initial concept meetings in early 2020. As noted in our introduction to the book (see link in bio for the full text) Germano was always interested in the idea of format and how it could be subverted or transgressed. The exhibition catalogue format is familiar and codified—foreword, introduction, essay, plates, checklist, credits—but we knew from the start that this book would swerve in a more esoteric direction. Germano was focused in seeing work in the context of its moment. Building on our shared obsession with contextual mass media—photography, graphic design, newspapers, film, television, the Internet—we devised this book to follow the logic of a magazine, wherein the catalogue images of the artworks from the exhibition would be situated within an editorial river of events coursing through the culture of that time. In terms of print, the so-called picture magazines that papered the newsstands in ’62—think LIFE and LOOK—were the perfect reference for this islands-in-river approach. Bits and pieces of text, captioned photos, letters, interviews, sidebars, etc., flow around splashy ad pages and the longer form, richly-illustrated features that make up the editorial well. That familiar separation between stylistically homogenous editorial and riotously diverse advertising lent a ready-made system to distinguish artworks (as ads) from the news of the day: the contextual texts and images that capture the spirit of the city in the early 60s. @thejewishmuseum @studiocelant #NY6264 #2x4inc