Institutional Critique

"Institutional critique" is an artistic practice that reflects criticallyon its own housing in galleries and museums and on the concept and social function of art itself.Such concerns have always been a part of modern art but took on new urgency at the end of the 1960s,when--driven by the social upheaval of the time and enabled by the tools and techniques ofconceptual art--institutional critique emerged as a genre. This anthology traces the development ofinstitutional critique as an artistic concern from the 1960s to the present by gathering writingsand representative art projects of artists from across Europe and throughout the Americas whodeveloped and extended the genre. The texts and artworks included are notable for the range ofperspectives and positions they reflect and for their influence in pushing the boundaries of what ismeant by institutional critique. Like Alberro and Stimson's Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthologythis volume will shed new light on its subject through its critical and historical framing. Evenreaders already familiar with institutional critique will come away from this book with a greaterand often redirected understanding of its significance.Artists represented include Wieslaw Borowski,Daniel Buren, Marcel Broodthaers, Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel, Hans Haacke, Robert Smithson,John Knight, Graciela Carnevale, Osvaldo Mateo Boglione, Guerilla Art Action Group, Art Workers'Coalition, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Michael Asher, Mel Ramsden, Adrian Piper, The Guerrilla Girls,Laibach, Silvia Kolbowski, Andrea Fraser, Fred Wilson, Mark Dion, Maria Eichhorn, Critical ArtEnsemble, Bureau d'Etudes, WochenKlausur, The Yes Men, Hito Steyerl, Andreas Siekmann

Blake Stimson is Professor of Art History at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Pivot of the World: Photography and Its Nation (2004), and coeditor (with Alexander Alberro) of Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology (2000), both published by the MIT Press.