Overview
Exhibitions have become the medium through which most art becomes known and assessed. But the art exhibition is an increasingly critical and unstable category. Constantly reshaped by artists and curators, the exhibition has become both a prominent anddiverse part of contemporary culture. Thinking About Exhibitions presents a multi-disciplinary anthology of writings on exhibition practice by curators, critics, artists, sociologists and historians from North America, Europe and Australia. Texts in the collection are
grouped in sections which focus on the history of the exhibition, forms of staging and spectacle, and questions of curatorship, spectatorship and narrative. As well as critical essays, the anthology includes exhibition proposals, dialogues, position papers, case studies, polemic
articles and interviews.
Synopsis
An anthology of writings on exhibition practice from artists, critics, curators and art historians plus artist-curators. It addresses the contradictions posed by museum and gallery sited exhibitions, as well as investigating the challenge of staging art presentations, displays or performances, in settings outside of traditional museum or gallery locales.
Booknews
An anthology of 27 essays debating the contexts of exhibitions from traditional gallery to social protest. The contributing curators, critics, artists, and historians focus on the history of exhibition, forms of staging and spectacle, and issues of curatorship, spectatorship, and narrative. In particular, the ruminations on postmodernism's "museums without walls," and the effect of the NAMES AIDS quilt project suggest that exhibitions as such have shed their passive past and become interactive mediums with powerful cultural messages. Includes photographs. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)