‘The Exhibition and Its Histories’ is a one-day symposium in which leading international figures from the field of curatorial practice will discuss and interrogate the increased emphasis in recent years on the ‘exhibition form’ within art and art history education. Paralleling the rise of the curator’s position within the contemporary art landscape, the institutional teaching of art and art history has increasingly tended towards an analysis of the exhibition as well as the artist and the artwork. This is most evident in the form of post-graduate curatorial programmes, which have proliferated over the past decade. The symposium will seek to address, among other concerns, the following questions:
- Why has the history of exhibitions come into currency at this specific moment?
- How does the study of exhibition histories contribute to the discipline of art history?
- Why study the exhibition? What does it offer us that the study of an artwork or an artist's practice does not?
Below are a number of resources for those interested in exhibition making and its histories. Firstly is a selection of articles that we feel particularly pertinent to the symposium itself. Secondly a list of some of the periodicals being published. Thirdly a selection of the ever growing library of books on the subject, most of which should be available in a well stocked art library.
TO SHOW OR NOT TO SHOW
- Jens Hoffmann and Maria Lind in conversation, Mousse Magazine
‘Remembering Exhibitions’: From Point to Line to Web’
- Reesa Greenberg, Tate Paper
Emergence
- Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, Nought to Sixty, ICA London
Look and Learn
- Conversation, Frieze
Positively White Cube Revisited
- Simon Sheikh, e-flux journal
1,2,3 THINKING ABOUT EXHIBITIONS
- On Curating
On Curating
(online)
#OpenCurating
(online)
RedHook
(online)
Manifesta Journal
(online and print)
The Exhibitionist
(print only)
Journal of Curatorial Studies
(online and print, subscription needed)
Exhibition Histories
- Series published by Afterall
Thinking about Exhibitions
- Bruce W. Ferguson, Reesa Greenberg, Sandy Nairne (eds.)
What Makes a Great Exhibition
- Pauline Marancola (ed.)
Curating Subjects
- Paul O'Neill (ed.)
The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Cultures
- Paul O'Neill
Cultures of the Curatorial
- Beatrice von Bismarck, Jörn Schafaff, Thomas Weski (Eds.)
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Curating But Were Afraid to Ask
- Hans Ulrich Obrist
A Brief History of Curating
- Hans Ulrich Obrist (ed.)
The Power of Display
- Mary Anne Staniszewski
Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space
- Brian O'Doherty
Benjamin Fallon is an independent curator, writer and designer currently based in Stockholm where he is part of the CuratorLab programme at Konstfack. He served as co-director of Embassy Gallery between 2008 and 2010, was a member of Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop’s Artistic Programme Committee from 2006 to 2008, and ran his self-initiated project ONEZERO between 2005 and 2008. Ben is an occasional visiting lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art and Edinburgh College on the Contemporary Art Practice course.
Recent projects include 'Cycling Through' screening as part of Lux Tramway festival of moving image, Tramway Glasgow 2012 ‘Banal Inferno’ exhibition, CCA Glasgow 2010, ‘Hello World’ exhibition Embassy Gallery, 2010, ‘Broadcast Yourself’ project as part of ‘No Soul for Sale’ Tate Modern, 2010 and ‘Warehouse of Horrors’ +44 141 Glasgow, 2009.
Benjamin is instigator of the working group ‘Let’s get together and call ourselves an institute.’ researching the possibilities for new forms of institutional practice.
http://www.theopenseas.orgKirsteen runs Parallel Lines, an agency for curatorial projects and research based in Glasgow. Over the past three years she has worked on projects including new commissions and accompanying publications with artists Graham Fagen and Corin Sworn at Timespan in response to the unique historical and geographical context of Sutherland in Highlands of Scotland; presentations including a programme at Salon Populaire, Berlin on her ongoing curatorial research with the extensive Lindsay Anderson archive held at the University of Stirling; and as Programmer: Professional and International Visits for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. In 2012 she enrolled as an AHRC-funded doctoral researcher at Glasgow School of Art to develop a thesis on the recent history of the curatorial in Scotland. Between 2010-2011, she led the VIRE: VAGA International Research Enquiry commissioned by the Scottish Arts Council, investigating the conditions and needs of curators in Scotland working internationally.
http://www.parallellines.org.ukHarry Weeks is a doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh. His PhD research project, initiated in 2010, is entitled Negotiations of Community in Contemporary Art and examines the convergences of post-communist political philosophy and contemporary art practice. He curated the Ethics, Nationalism and the Theatrics of Documentation Film Lounge programme at Stills Gallery, Edinburgh in 2011 and has spoken internationally on a variety of issues relating to contemporary art and politics. He convened the Feminisms of Multitudes Panel at the AAH General Conference in 2012 and is co-convener of 'The Exhibition and its Histories' symposium to be held in Edinburgh in March 2013. His paper entitled Re-cognising the Post-Soviet Condition: Contemporary Art in the Baltic States was published in March 2010 in ‘Studies in Eastern European Cinema’. In early 2013 a chapter examining contemporary performance practice entitled Ethics in Public will appear in the edited book Interactive Contemporary Art: Participation in Practice, published by IB Tauris and edited by Kathryn Brown.
http://hjjweeks.tumblr.com