Manifesta, the first itinerant European Biennial for Contemporary Art, emerged in a post-wall, globalizing Europe. Founded in 1993, it organized traveling exhibitions aimed at providing a new framework for cultural exchange and collaboration between artists and curators from across the continent. The Manifesta Decade marks Manifesta's ten years of exhibits with original essays, unpublished images, and texts that not only document the different Manifesta exhibits but also examine the cultural, curatorial, and political terrain of the Europe from which they sprang.Including contributions from philosophers, historians, and anthropologists, interviews with architect Rem Koolhaas and historian Jacques Le Goff, and essays by such curators and writers as Okwui Enwezor, Boris Groys, Maria Hlavajova, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the collection traces the cultural and political developments of Europe in the 1990s. It reflects the debates incited by exhibitions such as Magiciens de la Terre, Documenta, and After the Wall and explores the changing roles of curators and artists in the new geo-political context. The issues discussed include the effect of communism's collapse on Eastern Europe, the role of Biennials in the context of globalization, and the ephemerality of exhibitions versus the permanence of the museum. The book's second section traces the history of Manifesta, from its conceptual foundations and contributions to artistic practices of the 1990s to the relationship of a roving Biennial to themes of multiculturalism, migration and diaspora. At a moment when biennials continue to proliferate worldwide, The Manifesta Decade takes Manifesta as a case study to look critically at the landscape from which new exhibition paradigms have emerged. The book's 100 images, both color and black and white, include unpublished installation shots of each Manifesta exhibition.Copublished with Roomade, Brussels, in collaboration with the International Foundation Manifesta, Amsterdam.

The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions And Biennials in Post-wall Europe

Arts & Photography

Niemojewski, Rafal

History & Criticism

Mit Pr

This book presents a snapshot of the most interesting curatorial practices in the art world today. There is an emphasis on the "now": the introduction sketches in the development of curatorial practices since the 1980s but the shows under scrutiny in the following 25 case studies have all taken place in the last few years. The selected exhibitions – chosen by an expert panel of curators – run the global gamut, from Europe and the US through Africa and the Middle East to China, and illustrate the particular challenges for curators working in both the commercial and public sectors. Large-scale shows and pop-up exhibits, permanent-collection rehangs and art fairs all have a place here. Each highly illustrated case study is structured around an interview with the curator responsible for the show. The text both tells the story of the show's making and fills in background information about the curator's work, resulting in an accessible guide to contemporary curating.

The New Curator

Hoare, Natasha

Milliard, Coline

Borthwick, Ben

Watkins, Jonathan

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Laurence King Publishing

<div>Examine one of the most significant recent transitions in the contemporary art world: the proliferation of large-scale international recurrent survey shows of contemporary art, commonly referred to as contemporary biennials.&nbsp;Since the mid-1980s biennials have been instrumental in shaping curating as an autonomous practice. These exhibitions are also said to have provided increased visibility for certain types of new art practices, notably those that are socially and politically committed, research-based,&nbsp;and site-specific, and to have undermined some of the more traditional art media, such as painting, drawing, or sculpture. They have been responsible for substantially reshaping the contemporary art world and disrupting the existing value chain of the art market, which now relies on biennials as much as it does on major museums' acquisitions and exhibitions. Rafal Niemojewski, Director of the Biennial Foundation, deftly unpicks the critical discussion and controversy surrounding contemporary biennials. Branded by some critics as showcases of neo-liberalism run amok, in which culture has become synonymous with the dollar-generating leisure industry, biennials have also been associated with the production of monumental artworks which are both highly consumable and photogenic (Instagrammable). The exhibitions we love to hate? This engaging publication makes an essential contribution to a fascinating cultural debate.</div>

Biennials: The Exhibitions We Love to Hate

Lund Humphries

Born as a vehicle for national propaganda, the art biennial today has become an outsize phenomenon mobilizing not only artists, curators and gallerists but sponsors, celebrities and politicians, commanding huge press attention and deciding the careers of artists worldwide. For a city to host a biennial today has colossal ramifications. This anthology on the art biennial gathers previously published seminal texts from around the world alongside commissioned contributions from the leading scholars, curators, critics and thinkers today--among them Carlos Basualdo, Daniel Buren, John Clark, Okwui Enwezor, Bruce Ferguson, Milena Hoegsberg, Ranjit Hoskote, Caroline A. Jones, Jakouba Konaté, Gerardo Mosquera and Rafal Niemojewski. Tracing the genealogy of the standard exhibition format--including biennials but also other recurrent exhibitions such as triennials and quadrennials--and examining some of the most famous examples of the twentieth and twenty-first century, from the Venice Biennale to the Johannesburg Biennial and the Havana Bienal to Documenta and the Asian biennials, this reader explores the artistic, theoretical, political and other ambitions of such large-scale exhibition projects. It is certain to be a vital resource for scholars, students, curators, artists and critics alike.

The Biennial Reader

Basualdo, Carlos

Hatje Cantz

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