Description
Book SynopsisDescribes the questions and challenges that museums face in acquiring and preserving contemporary art. This book comprises of essays by twelve curators representing a range of museums. It considers general issues including the acquisition process, and collecting by universal survey museums and museums that focus on modern and contemporary art.
Trade Review"In this volume of thoughtful essays, curators, conservators, scholars, and others in the museum world address how institutions should collect, exhibit, and care for the new art... [T]he essays by seasoned professionals bring a new dimensions to the museum-going experience."--Ann Landi, ArtNews "This book is a sensitively-edited collection of twelve essays (including a historical introduction by the editor), which addresses the complexity of the problems and issues that Western museums confront in dealing with contemporary art today. With its selection of diverse and intriguing case studies and specific focus on the contemporary art scene, it is an important and welcome addition to one of the primary fields of museum studies concerning the significance of collecting and collections for museums."--Masaaki Morishita, Museum and Society
Table of ContentsCollecting the New: A Historical Introduction by Bruce Altshuler 1 The Right to Be Wrong by Howard N. Fox 15 To Have and to Hold by Robert Storr 29 9Minutes 45 Seconds by Jeffrey Weiss 41 Breaking Down Categories: Print Rooms, Drawing Departments, and the Museum by Christophe Cherix 55 Keeping Time: On Collecting Film and Video Art in the Museum by Chrissie Iles and Henriette Huldisch 65 Collecting New-Media Art: Just Like Anything Else, Only Different by Steve Dietz 85 Beyond the "Authentic-Exotic": Collecting Contemporary Asian Art in the Twenty-first Century by Vishakha N. Desai 103 The Unconscious Museum: Collecting Contemporary African Art without Knowing It by Pamela McClusky 115 The Accidental Tourist: American Collections of Latin American Art by Gabriel Perez-Barreiro 131 Collecting the Art of African-Americans at the Studio Museum in Harlem: Positioning the "New" from the Perspective of the Past by Lowery Stokes Sims 147 The Challenges of Conserving Contemporary Art by Glenn Wharton 163 Acknowledgments 179 Index 181 Photography Credits 194
