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Curating the Complex and the Open Strike
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?
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?
- GenresArt
96 pages, Paperback
Published May 3, 2022
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