Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media (Leonardo) - Softcover

Graham, Beryl; Cook, Sarah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262528428 ISBN 13: 9780262528429

Publisher: The MIT Press, 2015

Synopsis

Redefining curatorial practice for those working with new kinds of art.

As curator Steve Dietz has observed, new media art is like contemporary art―but different. New media art involves interactivity, networks, and computation and is often about process rather than objects. New media artworks are difficult to classify according to the traditional art museum categories determined by medium, geography, and chronology and present the curator with novel challenges involving interpretation, exhibition, and dissemination. This book views these challenges as opportunities to rethink curatorial practice. It helps curators of new media art develop a set of flexible tools for working in this fast-moving field, and it offers useful lessons from curators and artists for those working in such other areas of art as distributive and participatory systems.

The authors, both of whom have extensive experience as curators, offer numerous examples of artworks and exhibitions to illustrate how the roles of curators and audiences can be redefined in light of new media art's characteristics. Rethinking Curating offers curators a route through the hype around platforms and autonomous zones by following the lead of current artists' practice.

About this title

About the Author:

Beryl Graham, an arts organizer and educator, is Professor of New Media Art at the University of Sunderland, and coeditor of CRUMB (the Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss Web site).

Sarah Cook is a curator and researcher working at the intersection of art, digital and electronic media, and science. She is the coauthor (with Beryl Graham) of Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media (MIT Press), and in 2004 cocurated the touring exhibition, “Database Imaginary.” She is Dundee Fellow at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee.

Review:

Rethinking Curating is an invaluable road map to the landscape of contemporary curating and the ways in which the 'behaviors' of new media art have changed institutions, exhibitions, and the roles of curators and audiences. Outlining the characteristics of new media art and their histories, the book comprehensively explores functions of the curator―as filter, producer, or editor―and the exhibition―as touring show, festival, or platform. Multiple artworks and exhibitions serve as case studies that effectively illustrate the complex topography of curating in and for the 21st century.

―Christiane Paul, Curator, Whitney Museum

The processes of displaying, collecting, and interpreting new media artworks offer considerable challenges to individuals and institutions across the contemporary art world. New media projects and exhibitions are innately complex. And whatever their complexity, they frequently involve much higher levels of public participation and interactivity. In this context, Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook's Rethinking Curating provides an intelligent, well-informed, and creative analysis which will be immensely valuable for the better understanding of this fast-changing field.

―Sandy Nairne, National Portrait Gallery, London

About this edition

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0262528428
• ISBN 13: 9780262528429
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 370