In Kulturgeschichte 1880-1983, Darboven's numerical indices punctuate a stream of ready-made imagery appropriated from books, magazines, postcards and elsewhere. The piece's 1590 pages of visual montage and text sit in frames of exactly the same size, hung in a floor to ceiling grid that covers the walls of the exhibition site with a quasi-taxonomic chart of visual culture. Nineteen objects tied to everyday life, art and to German history complete the installation. This tapestry of pictorial, print, and handwritten information is subdivided into groups of like images pertaining to historical, cultural and political themes:

• the two world wars
  
• an inclusive collection of knitting and weaving patterns
  
• original pages of the news magazines Stern and Der Spiegel from the time of the publication of the fake Hitler diaries and the polemic that ensued
  
• the catalogue of the Ludwig collection of Post-War Art representing a vast group of artworks, mostly from the 1960s
  
• the beginnings of industry in France, Germany, Eastern Europe, the USSR, and the new world
  
• posters and postcards about the Russian Revolution
  
• a German Kulturfahrplan, a timetable which parallels occurrences in art, politics, and science
  
• the history of popular printing and postcards
  
• movie stars and rock stars
  
• New York City doorways