But should we condemn the institution [National Gallery of Canada, ed.] for failing to present the work [Los Desaparecidos by Jamelie Hassan, 1981, ed.] in accordance with the artist's sanction, or the conservator for generating instructions that conflict, in some ways, with those supplied by the artist? To answer this question, it is important to note that the generation of explicit instructions is not the only way in which an artist sanctions features of her work. Selling the work into the collection of a major museum, with its established policies and conventions, is itself an act of presentation which affects what the artist has sanctioned. [...] Thus we have an explicit sanction [for presenting and installing the work, ed.] [A]nd an implicit sanction, that the physical integrity of the pieces be maintained. There is nothing internally contradictory or incoherent about this pair of sanctions.
Irvin, 2006, p. 150
When the artist supplies a set of instructions for installation, this is part of what makes the artwork what it is. I have elsewhere referred to this as the artist's sanctioning of features of the work (Irvin, 2005). The artist's sanctioning is the determination of features of the artwork through the artist's actions or communication [...] and a full understanding of the work will include an awareness of such features. [...] Although the artist is responsible for sanctioning these features, it is important to note that the artist [Liz Magor, ed.] did so [...] only as a result of dialogues in which museum curators were crucial participants [National Gallery of Canada, ed.]. The museum and its agents may play a central role in the generation of sanctions, and thus in the determination of feautures of the work. [...] Conservators often participate actively in this process [...]. In such cases, the artist's interaction with the conservator serves to specify which observable features of the objects are essential to the work, and which (if any) are merely contingent. In indicating these details to the conservator, who then incorporates them into the official institutional policy with regard to display of the work, the artist sanctions certain features of the work. [...] Violating the artist's sanction may sometimes be justified, but this should be done only for compelling reasons, and typically the violation should be compensated for by providing information to the audience about how their experience of the work differs from the experience they would have had if the artist's sanction had been adhered to.
Irvin, 2006, p. 144 - 46
