SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Beginning in 1998, New York City–based Japanese artist On Kawara subtly minimalized his longstanding already-minimalist Today series, the date-painting project he began in 1966. Still ritualistically maintaining the self-imposed constraints of the project (principally, that the date on which the painting was begun be its alphanumeric subject and that it be completed before the end of that day and, if not, destroyed), Kawara opted to modulate the reception of a week’s worth of these works (January 1 to January 7, 1997) by stationing them, under the title Pure Consciousness, in nineteen kindergartens across the globe. Inasmuch as it presents an account of such modulated acts of reception, the archival project On Kawara: Pure Consciousness at 19 Kindergartens constitutes a kind of genealogical reprise, a third act in the drama of withdrawal that the kindergarten exhibitions themselves represent vis-à-vis the Today series as it existed—and, a for