The Artist as Curator: An Anthology

This is an anthology of essays that first appeared in The Artist as Curator, a series that occupied eleven issues of Mousse from no. 41 (December 2013/January 2014) to no. 51 (December 2015/January 2016). It set out to examine what was then a profoundly influential but still under-studied phenomenon, a history that had yet to be written: the fundamental role artists have played as curators. Taking that ontologically ambiguous thing we call “the exhibition” as a critical medium, artists have often radically rethought conventional forms of exhibition making. This anthology surveys seminal examples of such exhibitions from the postwar to the present, including rare documents and illustrations.

It includes an introduction and the twenty essays that first appeared in Mousse, a newly commissioned afterword by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and two additional essays that appear here for the first time, discussing twenty-two exhibitions by the Avant-Garde Argentinian Visual Artists Group; Mel Bochner; Marcel Broodthaers; Hank Bull, Shen Fan, Zhou Tiehai, Shi Yong, and Ding Yi; John Cage; Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, and the CalArts Feminist Art Program; Collaborative Projects Inc. (Colab); Alice Creischer, Andreas Siekmann, and Max Jorge Hinderer; Liam Gillick and Philippe Parreno; Group Material; Richard Hamilton and Victor Pasmore; David Hammons; Martin Kippenberger; Mark Leckey; Goshka Macuga; Lucy McKenzie and Paulina Olowska; Hélio Oiticica; Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari; Martha Rosler; Avdey Ter-Oganyan; Philippe Thomas; and Andy Warhol.