Institutional Critique and After explores the history and contemporary reassessment of the Institutional Critique movement launched in the late 1960s by artists including
Michael Asher and
Hans Haacke.
One of the movement's key aims was the exposure and ironization of the structures and logic of museums and art galleries. The movement was redeveloped in the 1980s and after by
Andrea Fraser,
Renée Green, Fred Wilson, and others who engaged in more interactive and performative interventions; and has been vigorously reoriented in recent years to address issues such as globalization.
The publication will explore histories, theories, diverse locations and different kinds of institutional and alternative space. It will touch on traditional forms of art, but also on installations, performance, new media practices, and cultural activism. Its central questions will turn on the critical potential of art (and institutions) and whether—and if so how—they can stimulate social or political change.
With texts by art historians, critics, curators, and artists such as
Isabelle Graw, Alexander Alberro,
Jens Hoffmann,
Andrea Fraser,
Renée Green, and Lauri Firstenberg.
Published with The Southern California Consortium of Art Schools (SoCCAS), as the second volume of a series of anthologies dedicated to contemporary art issues (also available:
Recent Pasts - Art in Southern California from the 1990s to Now);
Black Sphinx: On the Comedic in Modern Art.
John C. Welchman is a professor at the Department of Visual art of University of California, San Diego. His works focuses on modern and contemporary art history and critical theory. His numerous publications include a monograph on
Mike Kelley, of which he has also edited the
collected writings (MIT Press, Les presses du réel / JRP|Ringier).
