How curating has changed art and how art has changed curating: an examination of the emergence contemporary curatorship.Once considered a mere caretaker for collections, the curator is now widely viewed as a globally connected auteur. Over the last twenty-five years, as international group exhibitions and biennials have become the dominant mode of presenting contemporary art to the public, curatorship has begun to be perceived as a constellation of creative activities not unlike artistic praxis. The curator has gone from being a behind-the-scenes organizer and selector to a visible, centrally important cultural producer. In The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), Paul O'Neill examines the emergence of independent curatorship and the discourse that helped to establish it.O'Neill describes how, by the 1980s, curated group exhibitions―large-scale, temporary projects with artworks cast as illustrative fragments―came to be understood as the creative work of curator-auteurs. The proliferation of new biennials and other large international exhibitions in the 1990s created a cohort of high-profile, globally mobile curators, moving from Venice to Paris to Kassel. In the 1990s, curatorial and artistic practice converged, blurring the distinction between artist and curator. O'Neill argues that this change in the understanding of curatorship was shaped by a curator-centered discourse that effectively advocated―and authorized―the new independent curatorial practice. Drawing on the extensive curatorial literature and his own interviews with leading curators, critics, art historians, and artists, O'Neill traces the development of the curator-as-artist model and the ways it has been contested. The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) documents the many ways in which our perception of art has been transformed by curating and the discourses surrounding it.

Product Description: The Oldest City: The Story of St. John's Newfoundland is an epic drama of North America's most historic city. In its 400 years, St. John's has been molded by stoic fishermen, intrepid aviators, brilliant statesmen, devoted clerics, brave social reformers and hard working business people...read more

Product Description: Locating the Producers investigates how and why more long-term and/or accumulative public art projects have began to emerge in response to single locations, and provides in-depth examination of sustained public art projects, including: The Blue House, IJburg (NL), Trekroner Art Plan, Roskilde (DK), Grizdale Arts, Cumbria (UK), and Edgware Road, London...read more