This handbook provides the definitive guide to commissioning contemporary art. Every step and stage is revealed and demystified from the initial invitation to an artist to the financing of a project, from the drafting of contracts to the final siting and installation of works, from the care and preservation of commissioned pieces to their interpretation and publicity. Combining theoretical and conceptual considerations with practical ones, Buck and McCleans lively and instructive text is s...

This is the definitive guide to writing engagingly about the art of our time. Invaluable for students, arts professionals and other writers, it brims with practical tips that range across the full spectrum of art-writing including academic essays; press releases and news articles; texts for auction and exhibition catalogues, gallery guides and wall labels; op-ed journalism and exhibition reviews and writing for websites and blogs. Gilda Williams, a London correspondent for Artforum, points...

Now that we 'curate' even lunch, what happens to the role of the connoisseur in contemporary culture?‘Curate’ is now a buzzword, applied to everything from music festivals to artisanal cheese. Inside the art world, the curator reigns supreme, acting as the face of high-profile group shows and biennials in a way that can eclipse and assimilate the contributions of individual artists. Curatorial-studies programs continue to grow, and the business world is adopting cu...

Written in accessible, nontechnical language, this book's twenty-three essays provide invaluable conservation guidelines for a variety of materials and media. Focusing also on proper storage techniques and environmental control, contributors offer information on emergency planning, disaster management, and identifying damages that may require professional treatment.

An eye-opening look at collecting and investing in today’s art marketArt today is defined by its relationship to money as never before. Prices have been driven to unprecedented heights, conventional boundaries within the art world have collapsed, and artists think ever more strategically about how to advance their careers. Art is no longer simply made, but packaged, sold, and branded. In Art of the Deal, Noah Horowitz exposes the inner workings of the cont...

The international controversy over who "owns" antiquities has pitted museums against archaeologists and source countries where ancient artifacts are found. In his book Who Owns Antiquity?, James Cuno argued that antiquities are the cultural property of humankind, not of the countries that lay exclusive claim to them. Now in Whose Culture?, Cuno assembles preeminent museum directors, curators, and scholars to explain for themselves what's at stake in this struggle--and why...

As the art world eagerly embraces a journalistic approach, Aesthetic Journalism explores why contemporary art exhibitions often consist of interviews, documentaries and reportage. This new mode of journalism is grasping more and more space in modern culture and Cramerotti probes the current merge of art with the sphere of investigative journalism. The attempt to map this field, here defined as ‘Aesthetic Journalism’, challenges, with clear language, the definitions of both art and journali...

One might believe that museum studies is a stable field of academic inquiry based on a set of familiar institutional forms and functions. But as institutions museums have never been stable or singular, and neither has the discipline of museum studies. Museum studies as a field of academic inquiry has received little critical attention. One result of this neglect has arguably been a lack of invention in museum studies; another is the distancing of academic museum studies from museum practic...

Exhibition environments are enticingly complex spaces: as facilitators of experience; as free-choice learning contexts; as theaters of drama; as encyclopedic warehouses of cultural and natural heritage; as two-, three- and four-dimensional storytellers; as sites for self-actualizing leisure activity. But how much do we really know about the moment-by-moment transactions that comprise the intricate experiences of visitors? To strengthen the disciplinary knowledge base supporting exhibition ...

This book analyzes practices of collecting in European art museums from 1989 to the present, arguing that museums actualize absence both consciously and unconsciously, while misrepresentation is an outcome of the absent perspectives and voices of minority community members which are rarely considered in relation to contemporary art. Difficult knowledge is proposed as a way of dealing with absence productively.Drawing on social art history, museology, postcolonial theory, and memory...

This ebook is Judy Freya Sibayan's artistic autobiography exploring 39 years as visual artist, curator and editor of Ctrl+P. Inspired by Hélène Cixous, the figure of HerMe(s) is invoked for a new kind of artistic autobiography, hyperlinked to the internet and a practice, evident in major works like Scapular Gallery and Museum of Mental Objects, which developed from her development of a distinctive form of institutional critique.Judy Freya Sibayan is based in the Philippines. She is...

Since the crisis in governance which led to a shortage of capable board members, recent years have seen the emergence of the enterprising arts organisation – a development which has led to the need for new types of board members who have a greater understanding of 'mission, money and merit' within a cultural construct.This innovative book explores the world of the arts board member from the unique perspective of the cultural and creative industries. Using a wide range of research t...