The Catalogue for the Public Library of Private Acts

The (semi-)fictional institution has a long history as an artists’ device. The methods for establishing institutions (or ‘institutions’) such as these are often highly performative, from manufacturing photographic or administrative ‘records’, to adopting a character or persona, to simply declaring that a particular group or formation is an institution. Writing is implied in each of these tactics, though it is curiously underexplored critically in this context. This chapter considers how text performs in The Catalogue for the Public Library of Private Acts, a (semi-)fictional institution which takes on histories of sexuality studies, as well as the contemporary phenomenon of the ‘public programme’, or cultural programming that runs alongside a museum or gallery exhibition.