Curated From Within: the Artist as Curator
Artists invented what we now understand as modern curating. The various avant-gardes established types of display that fundamentally changed what was possible in an exhibition context. Their efforts were later echoed by other practices of independent artist-run spaces, also known as “artist-run initiatives,” that drew curating close to interventionist and activist intentions.
Barbarians at the Gates: Corporate Art Institutions Against the ‘People’
The world of global art institutions is based, at least in theory, on the capacity to adequately represent liberal ‘free-spirited’ contemporary artists. Yet what does it mean when apparently progressive art is exhibited in the same high-profile international museums that largely relegate women and artists of non-Western heritages to silence and invisibility?
Art and Celebrity: the Quest for Ultravisibilty
Controversy surrounding Björk’s recent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art raises a number of questions about the role of major art institutions in the 21st Century. These questions go far beyond fusty reactions over a pop star exhibiting in the hallowed halls of a high-end museum. Instead they indicate a broader crisis of identity for public art institutions beset by neoliberalism’s privatising demands for ever-greater profits.
New Worlds Inc. the Global Museum Franchise
A new cultural district in Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Island, incorporates new lavish outposts of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums. These particular ‘outposts’ will feature specially designed buildings by high-ranking glitterati of the international architecture firmament, Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel. The resulting ‘utopia’ is of a kind that only the conjoined cooperation of global multinationals could conjure.
To produce value under Capital is a misfortune because it means producing value for somebody else.