Thinking Contemporary Curating - (ICI Perspectives in Curating) by Terry Smith (Paperback)

About the Book

"Thinking Contemporary Curating is the first book to offer an in-depth analysis of the volatile territory of international curatorial practice and the thinking--or insight--that underpins it. In five essays, renowned art historian and critic Terry Smith describes how today curators take on roles far beyond exhibition making, to include reimagining museums; writing the history of curating; creating discursive platforms and undertaking social or political activism, as well as rethinking spectatorship. The catalyst for the publication was 'The Now Museum' conference that ICI produced in collaboration with the CUNY Graduate Center and the New Museum in New York in 2011. In panel discussions and lectures over 30 leading artists, art historians, curators, and museum directors, such as art historian Claire Bishop, Okwui Enwezor (Director, Haus der Kunst), Massimiliano Gioni (Associate Director and Director of Exhibitions, New Museum), Lu Jie (Director, Long March), Maria Lind (Director, Tensta Konsthall) and Terry Smith discussed the diversification of the notion of the 'museum of contemporary art, ' providing intergenerational perspectives on recent developments across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. This spurred a year-long journey for Smith, responding to ideas, events, and encounters in the artworld in the process of questioning what 'curating' is today, which forms the heart of this publication."--Publisher's description.

Book Synopsis

What is contemporary curatorial thought? Current discourse on the topic is heating up with a new cocktail of bold ideas and ethical imperatives. These include: cooperative curating, especially with artists; the reimagination of museums; curating as knowledge production; the historicization of exhibition-making; and commitment to extra-artworld participatory activism. Less obvious, but increasingly of concern, are issues such as rethinking spectatorship, engaging viewers as co-curators and the challenge of curating contemporaneity itself. In these five essays, art historian and theorist Terry Smith surveys the international landscape of current thinking by curators; explores a number of exhibitions that show contemporaneity in recent, present and past art; describes the enormous growth world wide of exhibition infrastructure and the instability that haunts it; re-examines the contribution of artist-curators and questions the rise of curators utilizing artistic strategies; and, finally, assesses a number of key tendencies in curating as responses to contemporary conditions. Thinking Contemporary Curating is the first book to comprehensively chart the variety of practices of curating undertaken today, and to think through, systematically, what is distinctive about contemporary curatorial thought.

Review Quotes

Smith's book... considers the issue of what it means to curate "the contemporary". It draws on his broad knowledge and lengthy experience in the field to produce an account that is global in scope and that considers a remarkable range of exhibitions, institutions and practices. [It] tellingly describe[s] the increasingly professional, institutional, academic, theorized, and historically informed character of curating.--Julian Stallabrass "Artforum"

Art critics, art historians, the general public, and even artists don't pay sufficient attention to the curatorial thought behind exhibitions. They tend to assume that it is the same kind of thinking that they do. Thinking Contemporary Curating tries to distinguish what is distinctive about how curators think and what they do, yet also identify what they share with other artworld actors.--Orit Gat "Modern Painters"

Concisely informative (for academic texts), [it offers]. at least for this reader, a long-needed overview of the professionals who-- even more than artists, dealers and collectors, and way more than critics-- run the art world today.--Peter Plagens "Art in America"