This paper employs the ethnographic approach of ‘messy text’ to investigate just what kind of obligation the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen was about to take on when it acquired Wolfgang Tillmans’ large-scale work Life is Astronomical Installation (2001–2012), and to raise awareness that while artists are key in the ongoing process of negotiating intent for the sake of transmission and the legibility of artworks, de facto it is a pluralist approach that is required. Following this approach, in the conversations between the artist, his assistant, the curator and the conservator, uncertainties and ambiguities are allowed to become visible. This case study illuminates that it is in the nature of costewarding complex installation artworks that ongoing exchange is necessary, but that some questions may remain unresolved at present because resolving certain issues may take another decade, the evolving life experience of artworks, artists, and caretakers, in which practical action is tested against the information available.