Biennials and Beyond

Biennials and Beyond documents 25 of the most significant and pioneering exhibitions that took place between 1962 and 2002. Some shows have been selected for their innovative installation, others for the impact they had on the reception of contemporary art either globally or in a given country, and yet others for the role they played in advancing significant trends in recent art. Together they form an exceptional sourcebook for anyone interested in contemporary art, the history of exhibitions and curatorial practice.

Within the past decade, the history of art exhibitions has become an important area of academic and critical inquiry. Exhibitions are hubs of interaction within the art world, the places where artists, dealers, critics, and collectors come together, and where the newest art first comes before the public. Biennials and Beyond is the first book to position a range of contemporary exhibitions in the context of art history, providing installation photographs, exhibition floor plans and critical texts from the time, as well as an expansive account of recent exhibition history by Bruce Altshuler.

Paired with Altshuler's Salon to Biennial: Exhibitions that Made Art History: 1863 – 1959, Biennials and Beyond outlines a new reading of art history based on canonical exhibitions. The volume surveys such post-war developments as the role of commercial galleries during the 1960s, the influence of museums and corporate groups, artist-run spaces, and the impact of globalization on the art world. Biennials and Beyond will be of great interest to the academic market, for adoption on courses on twentieth-century art at all levels, and it will have significant appeal to galleries, museums, collectors and a general public interested in contemporary art.