Doing Things Together: Objectives and Effects of Harald Szeemann’s Happening & Fluxus, 1970

Abstract Harald Szeemann’s exhibition Happening & Fluxus (Kölnischer Kunstverein 1970) was the first to bring Fluxus into an institutional art world context. Previously avoiding such situations, Fluxus had primarily grown through artist-based networking, collaboration and self-curation during the 1960s. The exhibition evoked conflict both before and after the opening but had surprisingly little impact on Fluxus’s aftermath. This article explores Szeemann’s art historical take on the works in Happening & Fluxus. It concludes that by reducing attention to Fluxus’s collaborative strategies and network structure, Szeemann overlooked the characteristics that are today acknowledged as the group’s most significant.