Could the Artist Not Be Wrong? A Critical Notice of Sherri Irvin's Immaterial: The Rules of Contemporary Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).

This article critically examines Sherri Irvin’s 2022 book *Immaterial: The Rules of Contemporary Art*, focusing on her account of “custom rules” that govern the display, conservation, and participation in contemporary artworks. Using case studies of Jan Dibbets’s *All shadows that occurred to me* (1969) and Sarah Sze’s *Migrateurs* (1997), the article highlights how museum conservators play a constitutive role not only in preserving but also in realizing these works, which often remain indeterminate until such interventions. It raises concerns about the extent of the artist’s authority or “sanction” over the work’s rules, given instances of artistic inconsistency and retrospective rule clarification, and questions whether conservators might sometimes be epistemically justified in diverging from the artist’s pronouncements. The discussion underscores the structural indeterminacy and evolving nature of certain contemporary artworks, suggesting that their identity may depend on ongoing collaborative processes involving artists, conservators, and institutions.