Curating the Complex & The Open Strike

by Terry Smith

Curating the Complex & The Open Strike offers a visionary analysis of what Terry Smith identifies as the “visual arts exhibitionary complex.” In this book, the renowned art historian and writer maps the institutional and quasi-institutional framework for contemporary art that sprawls across the globe. He then delves into a powerful form of curatorial activism rising up in the exhibitionary complex: Open Strike. This is the inaugural volume of the series Thoughts on Curating, edited by Steven Henry Madoff.

If we ask where the curating of art occurs these days--in which places, which kinds of place, and how--apparent answers immediately appear: everywhere, expanding as if to ubiquity. Yet at the same time, we sense, with fragile purpose. In this, his newest book, Terry Smith explores the contemporary contexts of curating, looking for less apparent answers.

Smith maps the dimensions of the visual arts exhibitionary complex, including its dialectical dance between institutionalization and deinstitutionalization; the persistence of professional classifications of curatorship; the given and changing categories of art exhibitions; the increasing variety of curatorial styles; the underthinking about publics; and (undistracted by curationism) the changing roles of art making and exhibiting art within an exhibitory iconomy that is at once viral and consumptive. A mapping of this kind might help us toward some answers to the more important questions: why curate art these days and in the name of which interests?

Genres: Art

90 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2021

About the author

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Reviews

[Sally Elhennawy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many interesting observations but ultimately I was uncertain what this book was meant to cohere into. Would have loved a much more in-depth consideration of Open Strike rather than a few pages tacked onto the end of a fairly dull compendium.

[bri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for my Contemporary Art in Exhibition class and I did find that this book brought up a lot of very interesting points and concepts surrounding a whole variety of topics ranging from exhibition work to strikes and revolution but the author would not continue going into depth of each point. There was a brief introduction it felt like and then immediately on to the next. I was incredibly interested in all of the points mentioned and was excited to see the strikes in Lebanon being mentioned so openly, but nothing else came after the introductory points.