Touring Lecture Series:
Terry Smith in Conversation with Boris Groys, Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, NYU
Wednesday, October 22, 2013
ICI Curatorial Hub
Closed-door session
Past Events:
Book Launch & Reading with Terry Smith
Tuesday, September 18, 2012, 7–9pm
New York University
Department of Art History
300 Silver Center, 3rd floor
100 Washington Square East
New York, NY 10003
Terry Smith in Conversation with Sofia Hernández Chong Cuy, Curator, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros
Sunday, September 30, 2012, 3–4pm
New York Art Book Fair
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, NY 11101
Terry Smith in Conversation with Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Artistic Director, dOCUMENTA(13)
Sunday, October 14, 2012, 3pm
The New Museum
235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002
Terry Smith in Conversation with Jens Hoffmann, Director, Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art
Tuesday, October 23, 2012, 7pm
Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art
California College of the Arts
350 Kansas Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
Terry Smith in Conversation with Mary Jane Jacob, Executive Director of Exhibitions, SAIC
Sunday, November 18, 2012, 1pm
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611
Terry Smith
Monday, November 19, 2012
The School of Art Institute of Chicago
37 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago, IL 60603
Terry Smith in conversation with Julian Myers, Associate Professor, California College of the Arts
Saturday, February 16, 2013
12:30–2pm
College Art Association 101st Annual Conference
Sutton Parlor North, 2nd Floor
Hilton New York
1335 Avenue Of The Americas
New York, NY 10019
Terry Smith in Conversation with Maria Lind, Director, Tensta Konsthall
Monday, April 1, 2013
ICI Curatorial Hub
Terry Smith in Conversation with Mami Kataoka, Chief Curator, Mori Art Museum
Saturday, August 3, 2013, 2–4pm
Mori Art Museum
Roppongi Hills Mori Tower (53F)
6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato-Ku, Tokyo, Japan
FREE & open to the public
Contemporary Art and Contemporaneity
Thursday, August 22, 2013, 6pm
Museum of Contemporary Art - Metelkova 22
Tomšičeva 14
SI-1000 Ljubljana
Since 2000, Terry Smith has argued that artists, architects, curators and art theorists have been responding to the nature of contemporary reality in terms of its definitive quality, its contemporaneity. He will discuss the key ideas underlying his controversial books: Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, What is Contemporary Art?, Contemporary Art: World Currents, and Thinking Contemporary Curating. What are the main currents of art practice today? Which patterns occur on global scales, and do these relate to local situations? How has art practice changed the nature of contemporary curating? Is it possible to curate contemporaneity itself? His new book, Contemporary Art and Contemporaneity, edited by Professor Ales Erjavec and published in Slovenian by the Slovenian Society of Aesthetics, will be launched on the occasion of this lecture. The book contains important chapters from his books, and the text of a lecture he gave at the Moderna Galerija in 2010.
Terry Smith in Conversation with Zdenka Badivonac, Director, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana
Friday, August 23, 2013
Closed-door session, not open to the public
Terry Smith in Conversation with Paul O'Neill
Saturday, September 14, 2013, 3pm
New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
Author and art historian Terry Smith will be in conversation with Paul O'Neill, author of The Culture of Curating, the Curating of Culture(s) (2012) and Director of the Graduate Program, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. Having both recently published the only book-length essays to map out contemporary curatorial practices, Smith and O'Neill will discuss trends in curatorial thought in a rapidly evolving international field. As part of the ongoing research and conversations related to his recent publication, Thinking Contemporary Curating (2012), Smith has been speaking with preeminent curators and art historians, including Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Sofia Hernández Chong Cuy, Jens Hoffmann, Mary Jane Jacob, Julian Myers, Maria Lind, Mami Kataoka, and Zdenka Badovinac. This is the seventh public presentation in the series of conversations that will lead to Thinking Contemporary Curating Volume 2. Moderator: Johanna Burton, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement at the New Museum. Respondent: Liam Gillick.
About Thinking Contemporary Curating
“Do curators think in ways that are unique to their profession? Can curatorial thought be distinguished from the thinking processes within the myriad of closely related practices—especially art criticism, art history and art making—and from curating within other kinds of museum or display spaces, public and private?”
–Terry Smith
Thinking Contemporary Curating is the first book to offer an in-depth analysis of the volatile territory of international curatorial practice and the thinking—or insight—that underpins it. In five essays, renowned art historian and critic Terry Smith describes how today curators take on roles far beyond exhibition making, to include reimagining museums; writing the history of curating; creating discursive platforms and undertaking social or political activism, as well as rethinking spectatorship.
The catalyst for the publication was “The Now Museum” conference that ICI produced in collaboration with the CUNY Graduate Center and the New Museum in New York in 2011. In panel discussions and lectures over 30 leading artists, art historians, curators and museum directors, such as art historian Claire Bishop, Okwui Enwezor (Director, Haus der Kunst), Massimiliano Gioni (Associate Director and Director of Exhibitions, New Museum), Lu Jie (Director, Long March), Maria Lind (Director, Tensta Konsthall) and Terry Smith discussed the diversification of the notion of the “museum of contemporary art,” providing intergenerational perspectives on recent developments across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. This spurred a year-long journey for Smith, responding to ideas, events and encounters in the art world in the process of questioning what “curating” is today, which forms the heart of this publication.
“Through his act of global metacurating, Terry Smith places different and sometimes contradictory curatorial practices and attitudes into a panorama that fascinates and intellectually engages the reader. It is a must-read for everybody who wants to understand the inner logic of contemporary art processes.”
–Boris Groys, Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, New York University
Thinking Contemporary Curating is the first in a new series entitled Perspectives in Curating developed by ICI to provide sustained analysis on topics that are pressing for curators now.
Thinking Contemporary Curating was made possible, in part, by grants from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation. Additional support for this publication was received from the ICI International Forum Patrons Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy, Haro and Bilge Cumbusyan, Carol and Arthur Goldberg, Belinda Kielland, Patricia and Charles Selden, Younghee Kim-Wait, Georgia Welles and Elizabeth Erdreich White.
By Terry Smith. Introduction by Kate Fowle
Softcover, 272 pages, 54 B&W illustrations
Published by Independent Curators International (ICI), 2012
Thinking Contemporary Curating is available as digital and softcover versions and is distributed by Distributed Art Publishers (DAP), ISBN: 978-0-916365-86-8. Paperback, 6.25 x 8.5 inches, 256 pages, 25 black-and-white illustrations. $19.95. Order the book here.
