The Record: Contemporary ART and VINYL. Exhibition Schedule: Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC., September 2, 2010‐February 6, 2011; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA., April 15‐September 5, 2011. Trevor Schoonmaker, ed. The Record: Contemporary ART and VINYL. Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, 2010. 216 pp.; 466 color plates; 55 b/w illustrations. $30.55 (paper 0‐938989‐33‐2 amazon.com) The Record: Contemporary ART and VINYL at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is, quite appropriately, a mix. And, like any good mix, the exhibition includes perennial hits, lesser‐known works by familiar artists, and more than a few new or recently excavated works. Taking as its focus contemporary art’s use of vinyl records as “metaphor, archive, icon, portrait or transcendent medium,” the exhibition offers a wide‐ranging view of how this single object has remained a catalyst for innumerable visual artists over the past forty‐five years and, as all exhibitions should seek to do, merges a rigorous curatorial program with an almost guilt‐inducing quantity of pleasure. Curator Trevor Schoonmaker’s greatest triumph is his recognition that records aren’t simply things, the material means to a listening end. Like records themselves, with their vinyl discs, slip covers, liner notes, and engraved sounds waiting to be released, the exhibition is an audio‐optical‐tactile cornucopia, a repository of cultural memory and nostalgia, and an changing temporal experience. It is, thus, far more than the sum of its parts and a striking demonstration that exhibitions that limit themselves to the mute display of inert works of visual art in a neutral gallery space are missing out on vast wells of potential.