AbstractIn 1969, American artist George Brecht (1926–2008) mounted an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art featuring sculptural assemblages of objects placed on chairs. The artist called these works “footnotes.” Brecht never traveled to LA for the show and instead delegated the execution of his footnotes to museum staff. Today, five of the original chairs sit unaccessioned in LACMA storage, too significant to discard yet not deemed authentic enough to register as works of art by George Brecht. This essay narrates the fascinating details of the life of Brecht’s footnotes and relates them to the artist’s larger practice, as well as to the project of the Fluxus group with which he was associated. It addresses whether and how practices such as Brecht’s—centered on delegated, provisional, and reconfigurable objects/projects—can be absorbed into institutional structures and art historical narratives. Finally, it proposes and draws tentative conclusions about rethinking art history since the 1960s ...