Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington's New York Sculpture, 1902-1936 Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington's New York Sculpture, 1902-1936 Multiple Occupancy Common Love, Aesthetics of Becoming Social Forces Visualized: Photography and Scientific Charity, 1900-1920 Edward Koren: The Capricious Line Pictures for Books: Photographs by Thomas Roma Modernism and Iraq The New Acropolis Museum Treasures Rediscovered: Chinese Stone Sculpture from the Sackler Collections at Columbia University Revolutions: A Century of Makonde Masquerade in Mozambique Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York Architecture in Print: Design and Debate in the Soviet Union 1919–1935, Selections from the Collection of Stephen Garmey Guide to Phlamoudhi "Please, teach me..." Rainer Ganahl and the Politics of Learning Restoring Byzantium: The Kariye Camii in Istanbul & the Byzantine Institute Restoration The Troubled Search: The Work of Max Abramovitz Moscow: City, Spectacle, Capital of Photography Reflection: Seven Years in Print—The LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies Jean Fautrier, 1898–1964 Paris as Gameboard: Man Ray's Atgets Arte Povera: Selections from the Sonnabend Collection Architect of Dreams: The Theatrical Vision of Joseph Urban Percival Goodman: Architect, Planner, Teacher, Painter Experiments in the Everyday: Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts—Events, Objects, Documents Brushed Voices: Calligraphy in Contemporary China Mastering McKim's Plan: Columbia's First Century on Morningside Heights Robert Motherwell on Paper Apostles in England: Sir James Thornhill and the Legacy of Raphael's Tapestry Cartoons The Old World Builds the New: The Guastavino Company and the Technology of the Catalan Vault, 1885–1962 The Post-Pre-Raphaelite Print: Etching, Illustration, Reproductive Engraving, & Photography in England in and around the 1860s Unfaded Pageant: Edwin Austin Abbey's Shakespearean Subjects Robert Smithson Unearthed: Drawings, Collages, Writings Victorian Pleasures: American Board and Table Games of the Nineteenth Century from the Liman Collection Impossible Picturesqueness Sexual Difference: Both Sides of the Camera
Please, teach me: Rainer Ganahl and the Politics of Learning

"Please, teach me..."
Rainer Ganahl and the Politics of Learning

William Kaizen, with an Introduction by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Wallach Art Gallery, 2005
9 x 6 1/2", 170pp., 463 illus., 442 in color
ISBN 1-884919-19-7, Paper, $35

For more than 10 years, Ganahl has been engaged in a subtle exploration of the points of overlap of art and learning, using a variety of media including photographs, videos, books, wall texts, and tapestries. Much of Ganahl's work falls into the following categories: Libraries, collections of scholarly books, intended to be perused by gallery visitors; Seminars and Lectures, where he attends and photographs seminars and lectures by leading scholars; Readings, where he photographs and/or videotapes invited participants as they analyze theoretical texts with him; Studies, portraits of himself as a learning machine, documenting his efforts to study new languages; and Dialogs, either interviews or collaborations outside educational institutions. Ganahl has had numerous solo exhibitions in Europe and New York and was selected as one of three Austrian representatives to the Venice Biennale in 1999.

William Kaizen, a Columbia University doctoral candidate in art history, is the curator of the Wallach Art Gallery exhibition and primary author of the exhibition catalogue, which provides a comprehensive overview and a scholarly exploration of the artist's work. In her introduction to the catalogue, Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak discusses her personal connection to Ganahl. She sees in his work an answer to Marx's question, "Who will educate the educators?"

Kaizen's essay takes up the politics of Rainer Ganahl's claim that education is art's "abhorred other" and discusses the means through which the artist creates possibilities for both art and knowledge production. A color plate section with commentary by the artist includes more than 400 images that document Ganahl's varied artistic practices during the past decade. Two additional contributions by the artist—"Marx and again Marx: Antonio Negri interviewed by Rainer Ganahl" and "A Portable Library for Columbia University"—expand the understanding of his practice.