After Institutions - (Critic's Essay) by Karen Archey (Paperback)

About the Book

After Institutions expands upon an Institutional Critique to look beyond what cultural institutions were to what they are and what they might become.

Book Synopsis

Faced with waning state support, declining revenue, and forced entrepreneurialism, museums have become a threatened public space. Simultaneously they have assumed the role of institutional arbiter in issues of social justice and accountability. The canon of Institutional Critique has responded to the social embeddedness of art institutions by looking at their inner workings. In After Institutions, Karen Archey addresses contemporary art's sociopolitical entanglements by expanding the definition of Institutional Critique, looking beyond what cultural institutions were to what they are and what they might become.

Review Quotes

Archey's book articulates the possibility of a politicized art that goes beyond mere style without sacrificing the possibility of its appeal to a wider constituency.-- "art-agenda"

Institutional critique has historically evaded aesthetics in favour of works that are thinking rather than feeling in nature, something Archey seeks to rebalance in her selection. Casting artists like Zoe Leonard and Derek Jarman into this light, united by their responses to the AIDS crisis, proves successful: the former's Strange Fruit (1992-97), consisting of fresh fruit ripped open, sewn back together and scattered across a gallery floor as metaphor for the ravaged body, challenges healthcare institutions' failure of care and subtly mocks in its ephemeral form the museum's instinct to collect and preserve. Aesthetics and critique, then - a point well made.-- "ArtReview"