Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating
Maura Reilly
Thames & Hudson
English
Hardcover
240 pages
230 x 170 mm
2018
ISBN 9780500239704
Despite decades of postcolonial, feminist, anti-racist and queer activism and theorizing, the art world continues to exclude ‘Other’ artists – those who are women, of colour and LGBTQ. Indeed, the more closely one examines the numbers, the more glaring it becomes that white, Euro-American, heterosexual, privileged and, above all, male artists continue to dominate the art world. The fight for gender and race equality continues apace.
Focusing on themes of feminism, race and sexuality, Curatorial Activism examines the pioneering exhibitions that have broken down boundaries and demonstrated that new approaches are possible, from Nochlin’s ‘Women Artists’ at the LACMA in the mid-1970s to Martin’s ‘Carambolages’ in 2016 at the Grand Palais in Paris. By exposing both the disparities and inclusive solutions, Reilly addresses the urgent need in the contemporary art world for curatorial strategies that provide alternatives to exclusionary models of collecting and display. In so doing, she provides an invaluable source of information for current thinkers and, in a world dominated by visual culture, a vital source of inspiration for today’s ever-expanding new generation of curators. Lucy Lippard, the renowned activist and early champion of feminist art, contributes a foreword.
(source: https://thamesandhudson.com/curatorial-activism-9780500239704)
About the Artist
Maura Reilly is the Director of the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. She has held several leadership positions in the arts, including as Executive Director of the National Academy of Design and as Senior Curator at the American Federation of Arts. She is the Founding Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she developed and launched the first exhibition and public programming space in the USA devoted entirely to feminist art. While there, she organized several landmark exhibitions, including the permanent installation of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party and the blockbuster Global Feminisms (co-curated with Linda Nochlin), among others.
maurareilly.com
(source: https://www.maurareilly.com/about.html)
About the Publisher
Thames & Hudson was founded in 1949 by Walter and Eva Neurath. Their passion and mission was to create a ‘museum without walls’ and to make accessible to a large reading public the world of art and the research of top scholars. To reflect its international outlook the name for the company linked the rivers flowing through London and New York, represented in its logo by two dolphins symbolizing friendship and intelligence, one facing east, one west, suggesting a connection between the Old World and the New. Today, still an independent, family-owned company, Thames & Hudson is one of the world’s leading publishers of illustrated books with over 2,000 titles in print. They publish high-quality books across all areas of visual creativity: the arts (fine, applied, decorative, performing), architecture, design, photography, fashion, film and music, and also archaeology, history and popular culture.
thamesandhudson.com
(source: https://thamesandhudson.com/page/about-us)
