New York artist Rutherford Chang has brought his installation of over 1,000 copies of The Beatles' 'White Album' to FACT in Liverpool, the band's hometown. The piece, which took eight years to assemble, features copies of the album with handwritten notes, drawings, and other traces left by previous owners, and is on view for the first time in the UK. The exhibition, titled 'We Buy White Albums,' also invites the public to sell their copies to the artist.
This matters because it transforms a mass-produced cultural artifact into a collective portrait of fandom and personal history, using the album's iconic minimalist cover as a canvas for decades of human expression. By staging the work in Liverpool, the installation deepens its connection to the Beatles' legacy while engaging the local community in an ongoing, participatory art project that blurs the line between collecting and social commentary.