This text announces the Buenos Aires opening of the exhibition of Conceptual art works organized by the artist, activist, and critic Lucy Lippard and Jorge Glusberg. The opening took place on December 4, 1970, at the CAYC premises and the exhibition presented a survey of the Conceptual movement, with works by the main Conceptual artists on the international stage at the time. Glusberg, who signed the text, names the major characteristics of the movement and places it, in his own particular way, in the category of systems art, though that category is not mentioned in the document. 

Ever since it was founded, the CAYC (Centro de Arte y Comunicación), helmed by the cultural promoter, artist, and businessman Jorge Glusberg, was intended as an interdisciplinary space where an experimental art movement could flourish. The establishment of collaborative networks connecting local and international artists and critics played a key role in this process. The exhibitions shone a light on these exchanges, in which overviews of trends or individual artists introduced the innovations of international contemporary art and made Argentine and Latin American artists better known on the global scene.

The exhibition known as 2.972.453—the title refers to the population of the city of Buenos Aires at that time—presented works by international Conceptual artists as part of a string of exhibitions named after the population count of the host city.    

The event was jointly curated by Lippard—one of the major promoters of North American Conceptual art, which had received global recognition a few months earlier at Information, the show presented at MoMA in 1970—and Jorge Glusberg. Between them, these two created a dialogue among different works at this exhibition at the CAYC. In all these pieces, the value of the underlying ideas was considered more important than the material execution of the works. Lippard and Glusberg both operated here as curators and as artists.   

In this newsletter, the Argentinean critic describes the distinctive traits of the so-called “Conceptual art” movement, placing it in the same category as “systems art,” just as he did in the other exhibitions he has been presenting since the late 1960s. On this occasion he explains that processes replace the “finished products of good art;” statistics, diagrams, and interventions or projects reveal the mechanisms of art and the act of valuing the work itself rather than just taking possession of an object.  

The catalogue produced for this exhibition included artists’ bios and statements and documentation of their works, as well as other information about the works on display that was expanded upon in statements by Lippard and Glusberg. With all due discretion, given the local conditions at the time—the de facto military government of General Aramburu that had been in power since 1966—North American critics noted the political aspects of Conceptual works created in Argentina.