01: Isabella Achenbach On The Artist As Curator (An Anthology) edited by Elena Filipovic

From Pressed Coffee 02

I like books where I don’t have to start at page one, and finish hundreds of pages (and weeks!) later. The Artist As Curator (An Anthology) has been my go-to quarantine read, with 22 scholarly essays about exhibitions that changed the way people view and think about art and, equally important, how and why it is shown. The important connecting thread between each of the spotlighted, ground-breaking exhibitions: they were all curated by artists. The editor, Elena Filipovic, wrote in her introduction,

Many artist-curated exhibitions—perhaps the most striking and influential of the genre—are the result of artists treating the exhibition as an artistic medium in its own right, an articulation of form. In the process, they often disown or dismantle the very idea of the “exhibition” as it is conventionally thought, putting its genre, category, format, or protocols at stake and thus entirely shifting the terms of what an exhibition could be.

Questioning and shifting the form of exhibitions feels particularly pertinent today, and these historic examples of artist-initiated projects are important research (and inspiration!) for contemporary innovation—the best kind of which usually doesn’t come from within institutions. 

– Isabella Achenbach

Isabella Achenbach (IA) is based in Detroit, MI and works as an independent visual arts curator while holding a position as the curatorial affairs manager at Cranbrook Art Museum.