Joseph Kosuth is one of the pioneers of Conceptual art and installation art, initiating language based works and appropriation strategies in the 1960s. His work has consistently explored the production and role of language and meaning within art. His more than fifty year inquiry into the relation of language to art has taken the form of installations, museum exhibitions, public commissions and publications throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia, including seven Documenta(s) and eight Venice Biennale(s), one of which was presented in the Hungarian Pavilion (1993). Awards include the Brandeis Award, 1990, Frederick Wiseman Award, 1991, the Menzione d'Onore at the Venice Biennale, 1993, and the Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government in 1993. He received a Cassandra Foundation Grant in 1968. In June 1999, a 3.00 franc postage stamp was issued by the French Government in honor of his work in Figeac. In February 2001, he received the Laura Honoris Causa, doctorate in Philosophy and Letters from the University of Bologna. In 2001 his novel, ‘Purloined’ was published by Salon Verlag, Cologne. In October 2003 he received the Austrian Republic’s highest honour for accomplishments in science and culture, the Decoration of Honour in Gold for services to the Republic of Austria. Kosuth’s work entitled ni apparence ni illusion opened at the Musée du Louvre, Paris in 2009 and became a permanent installation in 2014. His commission to create a work for the façade of The Hague was unveiled in 2011. Kosuth is currently working on a permanent work for the new Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, a major site-specific installation for a new cultural center in Kongsberg, Norway. In 2015 the Instituto Superior de Arte, at the University of Havana, awarded him a Honoris Causa doctorate, presented during the 12th Havana Art Biennial.

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