The category of the museum, as it has been understood by museums of contemporary art over the last 30 years, is in need of a reassessment. This volume reflects on the museum of contemporary art in all its paradoxical characteristics. Over four chapters consisting of three theoretical essays and a section dedicated to discussion, questions regarding the roles and tasks of the museum of contemporary art are addressed. The anthology discusses the museum of contemporary art’s double character as a site of production as well as conservation, and emphasizes its relation to different public spheres, also exploring ways of dealing with the standards that emerge from the practices of collecting, organizing and educating. Included are contributions from art historians and cultural experts Claire Bishop, Büro trafo.K, Martha Buskirk, Beatriz Colomina, Bettina Funcke, Adrian Heathfield, Christian Kravagna, Oliver Marchart, Donald Preziosi, Sophia Prinz, Beat Wyss and Artur Zmijewski.

A curatorial situation is always one of hospitality. It implies invitations to artists, artworks, curators, audiences, and institutions; people and objects are received, welcomed, and temporarily brought together. It offers resources for material and physical support while also responding to a need for recognition, respect, or attention. Finally, and very importantly, a curatorial situation operates in the space between an unconditional acceptance of the other and exclusions legitimized through various rules and regulations.

This publication analyzes, from the perspective of hospitality, the curatorial within the current sociopolitical context through key topics concerning immigration, conditions along borders, and accommodations for refugees. The contributions in this volume, by international curators, artists, critics, and theoreticians, deal with conditions of decontextualization and displacement, encounters between the local and the foreign, as well as the satisfaction of basic human needs. Hospitality: Hosting Relations in Exhibitions is the third volume in the Cultures of the Curatorial book series.

Copublished with Kulturen des Kuratorischen, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig

ContributorsBeatrice von Bismarck, Nanne Buurman, Maja Ćirić, Alice Creischer, Andrea Fraser, Lorenzo Fusi, Wiebke Gronemeyer, Erik Hagoort, Anthony Huberman, Thomas Locher, Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer, Dieter Roelstraete, Stefan Römer, Jörn Schafaff, Andreas Siekmann, Ruth Sonderegger

An analyses of the relations created by the curatorial—relations that also constitute it.

In spite of the heightened interest in the curatorial since the late twentieth century, the structural conditions and potentials underpinning its special sociocultural status have yet to be defined. Taking this as a starting point, in this book, Beatrice von Bismarck outlines the curatorial—that field of cultural activity and knowledge which relates to the becoming-public of art and culture—as a domain of practice and meaning with its own structures, conditions, rules, and procedures.

Von Bismarck focuses on the relations created by the curatorial—relations that also constitute it. By concentrating on the dynamic fabric of relations between human and nonhuman participants, she carries out a shift within the discourse on the curatorial: rather than foregrounding partial definitions of the activity of curating, the subjectivization of the curator, and the presentation format of the exhibition, she emphasizes the interplay of all these factors. She proposes a conceptual framework geared toward highlighting the activity, the subject position, and the resulting product as always already dynamically interrelated in its genesis, articulation, and function. Not least, this situates the curatorial condition in the context of key parameters of societal developments over the last half century.

The category of the museum, as it has been understood by museums of contemporary art over the last 30 years, is in need of a reassessment. This volume reflects on the museum of contemporary art in all its paradoxical characteristics. Over four chapters consisting of three theoretical essays and a section dedicated to discussion, questions regarding the roles and tasks of the museum of contemporary art are addressed. The anthology discusses the museum of contemporary art’s double character as a site of production as well as conservation, and emphasizes its relation to different public spheres, also exploring ways of dealing with the standards that emerge from the practices of collecting, organizing and educating. Included are contributions from art historians and cultural experts Claire Bishop, Büro trafo.K, Martha Buskirk, Beatriz Colomina, Bettina Funcke, Adrian Heathfield, Christian Kravagna, Oliver Marchart, Donald Preziosi, Sophia Prinz, Beat Wyss and Artur Zmijewski.

A curatorial situation is always one of hospitality. It implies invitations to artists, artworks, curators, audiences, and institutions; people and objects are received, welcomed, and temporarily brought together. It offers resources for material and physical support while also responding to a need for recognition, respect, or attention. Finally, and very importantly, a curatorial situation operates in the space between an unconditional acceptance of the other and exclusions legitimized through various rules and regulations.

This publication analyzes, from the perspective of hospitality, the curatorial within the current sociopolitical context through key topics concerning immigration, conditions along borders, and accommodations for refugees. The contributions in this volume, by international curators, artists, critics, and theoreticians, deal with conditions of decontextualization and displacement, encounters between the local and the foreign, as well as the satisfaction of basic human needs. Hospitality: Hosting Relations in Exhibitions is the third volume in the Cultures of the Curatorial book series.

Copublished with Kulturen des Kuratorischen, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig

ContributorsBeatrice von Bismarck, Nanne Buurman, Maja Ćirić, Alice Creischer, Andrea Fraser, Lorenzo Fusi, Wiebke Gronemeyer, Erik Hagoort, Anthony Huberman, Thomas Locher, Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer, Dieter Roelstraete, Stefan Römer, Jörn Schafaff, Andreas Siekmann, Ruth Sonderegger

An analyses of the relations created by the curatorial—relations that also constitute it.

In spite of the heightened interest in the curatorial since the late twentieth century, the structural conditions and potentials underpinning its special sociocultural status have yet to be defined. Taking this as a starting point, in this book, Beatrice von Bismarck outlines the curatorial—that field of cultural activity and knowledge which relates to the becoming-public of art and culture—as a domain of practice and meaning with its own structures, conditions, rules, and procedures.

Von Bismarck focuses on the relations created by the curatorial—relations that also constitute it. By concentrating on the dynamic fabric of relations between human and nonhuman participants, she carries out a shift within the discourse on the curatorial: rather than foregrounding partial definitions of the activity of curating, the subjectivization of the curator, and the presentation format of the exhibition, she emphasizes the interplay of all these factors. She proposes a conceptual framework geared toward highlighting the activity, the subject position, and the resulting product as always already dynamically interrelated in its genesis, articulation, and function. Not least, this situates the curatorial condition in the context of key parameters of societal developments over the last half century.