Returning to its roots in display-related rubrics, K, responds now to the history and horizons of ‘The Modern,’ that renowned museum in New York. The next arrival in our roomy ‘Rote Insel’ rest area is researcher and raconteur Michelle ‘Kleio’ Elligott, whose recent writing focuses on polymathic, self-taught museum director, curator, and exhibition designer René D’Harnoncourt (1901–68). With K,’s constant, P. Krishna, she considers the museum’s evolving relationship to ideas of innovative installation, archival practice, and how the past may find itself reclaimed in the future.

Michelle ‘Kleio’ Elligott is the Chief of Archives, Library, and Research Collections at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. She recently organized Devenir moderne, part of the MoMA exhibition Etre moderne at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. She co-directed the Museum’s widely acclaimed Exhibition History web archive project; co-edited the institution’s first self-published history, Art in Our Time: A Chronicle of The Museum of Modern Art (2004); and co-curated the MoMA PS1 exhibition 1969. With her “Modern Artifacts” series, she is a regular contributor to Esopus Magazine. Elligott’s next book, René d’Harnoncourt and the Art of Installation, will be released in Fall 2018.