This special issue is dedicated to the memory of Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019), the first African and Black curator and director of documenta11 (2002) and the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). The articles and personal tributes collected here recognize the profound impact left by the Nigerian art historian, curator, poet, and educator who transformed the curatorial present of global exhibitions and anticipated their decolonizing futures. Enwezor created political platforms and artistic manifestos that not only changed the form and function of global exhibitions, but also opened up new ways to align activism with aesthetic practices, performative displays, and curatorial initiatives. Contributors--art historians and critics, curators, and artists--address how Enwezor's approach to the exhibition as a "space of public discourse" intersects with theories of affect, indigeneity, race, queer studies, and feminism. Contributors: David Adjaye, Hoor Al Qasimi, Natasha Becker, Naomi Beckwith, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Jody B. Cutler-Bittner, Jane Chin Davidson, Shane Doyle, Tamar Garb, Kendell Geers, Salah M. Hassan, Amelia G. Jones, Abdellah Karroum, Monique Kerman, Mohammed Ibrahim Mahama, Julie Mehretu, Susette S. Min, Wangechi Mutu, Sabine Dahl Nielsen, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Alpesh Kantilal Patel, Anne Ring Petersen, Yinka Shonibare, Penny Siopis, Mary Ellen Strom, Przemyslaw Strozek, Mikhael Subotzky

"'Thinking contemporary curating' is the first publication to comprehensively explore what is distinctive about contemporary curatorial thought. In five essays, art historian, critic, and theorist Terry Smith surveys the international landscape of current discourse; explores a number of exhibitions that show contemporaneity in present, recent, and post art; describes the enormous growth world-wide of exhibitionary infrastructure and the instability that haunts it; re-examines the phenomenon of artist-curators and curator-artists; and assesses a number of key tendencies in curating - such as the reimagined museum, the expanded exhibition, historicization and recuration, infrastructural activism, and engaged spectatorship - as responses to contemporary conditions." -- book cover.

Edited by Paul O'Neill. Introduction by Paul O'Neill, Annie Fletcher.

A handbook of new curatorial strategies based on pioneering examples of curators working to offset racial and gender disparities in the art world Current art world statistics demonstrate that the fight for gender and race equality in the art world is far from over: only sixteen percent of this year’s Venice Biennale artists were female; only fourteen percent of the work displayed at MoMA in 2016 was by nonwhite artists; only a third of artists represented by U.S. galleries are female, but over two-thirds of students enrolled in art and art-history programs are young women. Arranged in thematic sections focusing on feminism, race, and sexuality, Curatorial Activism examines and illustrates pioneering examples of exhibitions that have broken down boundaries and demonstrated that new approaches are possible, from Linda Nochlin’s “Women Artists” at LACMA in the mid-1970s to Jean-Hubert Martin’s “Carambolages” in 2016 at the Grand Palais in Paris. Profiles key exhibitions by pioneering curators including Okwui Enwezor, Linda Nochlin, Jean-Hubert Martin and Nan Goldin, with a foreword by Lucy Lippard, internationally known art critic, activist and curator, and early champion of feminist art, this volume is both an invaluable source of practical information for those who understand that institutions must be a driving force in this area and a vital source of inspiration for today’s expanding new generation of curators.

"Featuring approximately 250 works by over thirty artists from across the African continent, Snap Judgements presents a range of highly individual artistic responses to the unprecedented changes now taking place in Africa and provides new insight into the increasing role of the visual arts within the global cultural community. In addition to introducing audiences to the multiple imaginations and voices that constitute today's African artists, the book explores ways that this body of photo-based art arises from the dialectic of African aesthetic values and Western influences."--BOOK JACKET.

Carolee Thea's interviewees are Joseph Backstein, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Okwui Enwezor, Charles Esche, Massimiliano Gioni, RoseLee Goldberg, Mary Jane Jacob, Pi Li, Virginia Perez-Ratton and Rirkrit Tiravanija.