Contemporary Art in 1948: “The Boston Affair”
Octavian Esanu
This paper draws upon a body of research I have developed in order to examine
the emergence of “contemporary art” (understood as new art historical category and art
institutional model) in post-1989 Eastern Europe.1 The paper I propose for this
conference, however, crosses the Atlantic to take a look at another historical moment,
when the phrase “contemporary art” first came into prominence. It discusses the so-called
“Boston Affair,” as the American press at the time referred to it. In 1948, the top officers
of the Institute for Modern Art in Boston announced their decision to change the name of
their institution to the Institute for Contemporary Art, and this decision provoked a strong
reaction from artists, critics and the public. Their reaction was triggered, in fact, by the
meaning that the managers of the Boston ICA had invested in their chosen phrase
“contemporary art” in order to set their organization apart from “modern art.” The
latter—they argued—had become another term in the vocabulary of the political left,
with which they did not want to be associated. Unpacking the term “contemporary” as it
is used by the Boston ICA, I refer to other meanings invested in the term in the aftermath
of WWII, looking at such expressions as “contemporary music,” “contemporary history,”
“contemporary dance,” and the “contemporary episteme.”
The methodological approach deployed in this paper is inspired by
Begriffsgeschichte (“the history of concepts,” or “conceptual history”)—a method of
historical analysis which takes great interest in the linguistic and semantic aspects of the
discipline of history. In my paper the term “contemporary” is regarded as the main unit of
analysis, as I investigate its use in art historical periodization and in the naming of
reformist art institutions. The discipline of art history, which in all the variety of its
methods still for the most part treats artifacts and cultural events as manifestations of
social conditions, might also benefit from a closer inspection of its vocabulary.
1
See, for instance, a text that examines the role played by the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art
Network in Octavian Esanu, “What Was Contemporary Art?,” ARTMargins 1, no. 1 (2012): 5–28; see also
Chapter 4 in Octavian Esanu, Transition in post-Soviet Art; The “Collective Actions” Group before and
after 1989 (New York and Budapest: Central European University Press, 2013).