The year 2018 will kick off with the launch of the book How Institutions Think on Monday 15 January, at 6.30 – 8.30 pm, during which I will be in conversation with Paul O’Neill, Lucy Steeds and Mick Wilson, the editors. The event will be hosted by The Showroom, which also hosted the launch of The Curatorial Conundrum, published in 2016, and which was the first in a series of three books on current curatorial practice and discourse, published by CCS Bard and The MIT Press. Emily Pethick, The Showroom’s director, contributed an essay to the new book and will join us in conversation. More information on the book, see below and here:
Contemporary art and curatorial work, and the institutions that house them, have often been centers of power, hierarchy, control, value, and discipline. Even the most progressive among them face the dilemma of existing as institutionalized anti-institutions. This anthology–taking its title from Mary Douglas’s 1986 book, How Institutions Think reconsiders the practices, habits, models, and rhetoric of the institution and the anti-institution in contemporary art and curating. Contributors reflect upon how institutions inform art, curatorial, educational, and research practices as much as they shape the world around us. They consider the institution as an object ofienquiry across many disciplines, including political theory, organisational science, and sociology.
Bringing together an international and multidisciplinary group of writers, How Institutions Think addresses such questions as whether institution building is still possible, feasible, or desirable; if there are emergent institutional models for progressive art and curatorial research practices; and how we can establish ethical principles and build our institutions accordingly. The first part, ‘Thinking via Institution’, moves from the particular to the general; the second part, ‘Thinking about Institution’, considers broader questions about the nature of institutional frameworks.
Gerrie van Noord 