Stories of Almost Everyone

In its continued emphasis on an art of ideas—inherited from the legacies of conceptual and post-conceptual art—contemporary art often enlists objects to perform as evidence within constellations of research and inquiry. Whether they are borrowed from everyday life or sculpted into new forms, art objects are tasked with conjuring the descriptions that accompany them. What challenges does such mediation pose to the inherent muteness of objects? How do artists choose to speak on behalf of reticent artifacts and the otherwise inert by-products of material culture and the natural world? In what ways do museums and other institutions participate in these arrangements? Stories of Almost Everyone is organized around the premise that contemporary art objects possess narrative histories and inner lives that the conventions of display can only, at best, approximate. This exhibition and publication address the means by which a broad range of contemporary artworks and artifacts traffic in meaning a