Faculty & Staff Publications

PERFORMANCE IN THE MUSEUM

Performance in the Museum charts the main stages of the inclusion of performance in the museum from the 1970s to the present day. While performance emerged in the late 1960s as an anti-institutional form of art, it has recently gained an extraordinary visibility in contemporary art museums. This book focuses on three specific areas affecting museums: how to display performance art; conservation of performance art; and acquisition. What emerges from this study is that the museum, although rarely anticipating the specific issues raised by performance, has assumed a unique position in devising curatorial strategies adapted to this medium. Through close analysis of a selection of exhibitions and curatorial practices from many different parts of the world, and from specific periods from the past fifty years, this book identifies key moments of the integration of performance in the museum, thus filling a crucial gap both in the history of performance and curatorial studies. Despite the recent surge of exhibitions on performance and the part played by museums in this phenomenon, the history of the display, the conservation and the acquisition of live performance remains largely uncharted. This book offers a thought-provoking and highly readable assessment of some fundamental questions in contemporary curatorial practice. The book is part of the new series New Directions in Contemporary Art being edited by SIA London faculty Marcus Verhagen and to be launched early 2021.

CREATIVE LEGACIES

Creative Legacies provides a nuanced investigation of specific topics relevant to artists’ legacies. The book includes carefully selected perspectives from many of the world's foremost thought-leaders and practitioners in this field. Readers will come away from the book with a greater awareness of the complex issues central to working with creative individuals and how these and the scholarly dialogues pertaining to them affect the legacies in the present as well as in perpetuity. Unlike a 'how-to' guide or an instruction manual, Creative Legacies illustrates that there is no singular or standard approach when working with artists; it highlights a spectrum of issues and considerations essential to understanding how a creative legacy is perceived and maintained economically, curatorially and critically. The editors are Bryan Faller and Kathy Battista from Sotheby’s Institute, New York, and the following SIA New York colleagues have also contributed chapters: Christine Kuan, Judith Prowda, Ann-Marie Richard, Eric Wolf and Tom McNulty. You can find more information about the book on Lund Humphries’ website here.

PROVENANCE RESEARCH TODAY

Covering key aspects of provenance research for the international art market, this accessible publication explores a range of themes including challenges and best practice to considerations specific to Nazi looted art and the trade in illicit antiquities. Provenance research is a crucial component of any art-market transaction. Without a provenance it is often difficult to establish a work’s authenticity, its true value or who has legal title. Whether buying, selling or simply maintaining an artwork in either a private or a public collection, the days when a blind eye could be turned to the history (or the lack of a known history) of a work have long gone. Proper, thorough and effective provenance research is the minimum required and demanded in today’s art world – a world that is increasingly recognising the need for greater and more effective self-regulation in the face of fakes, forgeries and challenges to ownership or authenticity that are now commonplace. Provenance Research Today is essential reading for a broad audience, from those studying to become part of the art world or professionals starting a career in provenance research, to collectors or would-be collectors, dealers, galleries, auction houses, police and art lawyers.

RE-ISSUE, RE-IMAGINE, RE-MAKE

In recent years, there has been a great deal of interest in ‘design classics’, both in their increased availability and affordability through re-issues, and in their widespread re-interpretation by contemporary designers and artists. Focusing on chairs, this book examines this significant aspect of contemporary design practice. It does so, not only in terms of works by well-known designers, but also relative to ubiquitous designs such as the monobloc, Thonet number 14, and Ming chairs. These varied examples of re-imagining and re-working are examined from an international perspective as designers and artists across the globe seek to bring new formal, material, and narrative interpretations to these iconic designs. Renewed interest in do-it-yourself, together with the growth of hacking, open-source design and digital fabrication, have all contributed to an expansion of the concepts of re-imagine and re-make in the new millennium. Embraced by professionals, amateurs and companies alike, these developments further attest to the diverse practice of re-interpretation in contemporary design. Bringing together key examples of the re-issuing, re-imagining and re-making of design icons, the book draws on observations from designers, artists and manufacturers in order to understand the varied motivations behind these activities. It places the works within their historical and cultural context, and considers the boundaries between art and design. Further, the book interrogates the issues of authenticity and authorship and the ethical and legal rights to copy and to alter iconic objects that are raised by these re-interpretations.

New Art, New Markets

Originally published in 2011, Iain Robertson’s A New Art from Emerging Markets introduced and examined three types of emerging markets for contemporary art: recently established, maturing, and mature. This fully revised second edition updates the reader on these rapidly evolving markets and adds a vital new section on South America. As well as surveying emerging art markets throughout the world, the book is concerned with how value in non-Western contemporary art is constructed largely by external political events and economic factors rather than aesthetic considerations. For instance, Dubai's political risk has increased markedly with the threat of a terrorist attack in the Emirate, which for one of the world's newest art-market hubs will undoubtedly affect the progress of prices for Middle-Eastern and Indian art. The book also considers whether new art markets grow better organically, driven by commercial imperatives, or with government intervention, constructing a cultural and economic infrastructure within which an art market can be placed.

Pop Art (Art Essentials)

Pop Art refers to a post-war movement connecting art with popular culture. Billboard signs, comic books, and movie stars were just some of the subjects chosen by pop artists, such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and Claes Oldenburg, to name a few, to illustrate the contemporary world in which they lived. Largely characterized by bold and strident colors combined with a cool-eyed appropriation of contemporary imagery, pop art sought to highlight both the negative and positive facets of modern culture. The newest installment in the Art Essentials series explores this phenomenon, which had its roots in post-war British and American consumerism before spreading and capturing the imagination of young artists. After establishing the origins of the form, the book delves into subjects like the role of stardom and glamor in pop art and how pop art vocabulary grew to include political figures and even war imagery. As written by Flavia Frigeri, an authority on the subject, this book is an essential guide for anyone fascinated by the pop art movement.

Photography and the Art Market

The first part of this essential handbook provides an art-business analysis of the market for art photography and explains how to navigate it; the second is an art-historical account of the evolution of art photography from a marginal to a core component of the international fine-art scene. In tracing the emergence of a robust art-world sub-system for art photography, sustaining both significant art-world presence and strong trade, the book shows the solid foundations on which today's international market is built, examines how that market is evolving, and points to future developments. This pioneering handbook is a must-read for scholars, students, curators, dealers, photographers, private collectors and institutional buyers, and other arts professionals.

Flows and Counter-Flows; Globalisation in Contemporary Art

Over the past quarter of a century, artists have made powerful interventions in debates around globalization, addressing various dimensions of cross-border exchange, from mass migration to the dynamics of translation, and devising new ways of conceptualizing them. Marcus Verhagen’s Flows and Counterflows: Globalisation in Contemporary Art tells the story of those interventions, dwelling in particular on projects that draw out both the dangers and the tangible or imaginable benefits of global exchange.

Visual Arts and the Law

This essential handbook offers art professionals and collectors an accessible legal analysis of important principles in art law, as well as a practical guide to legal rights when creating, buying, selling and collecting art in a global market. Although the book is international in scope, there is a particular focus on the US as a major art centre and the site of countless key international court cases. The book embraces the interdependence between legal, ethical, as well as art-historical considerations. It addresses fundamental topics such as: the role of due diligence in buying and selling art; the issues which can arise when relationships or transactions are not formalized by a written contract; critical differences in individual nations' copyright regimes, such as moral rights and artist resale rights; how courts analyse copyright infringement cases in visual art; specific laws relating to auctions and the relationships among the auction house, consignor and buyer; the balance between freedom of expression and an individual's rights of privacy and publicity; the liabilities of expert opinions on authenticity and on the valuation of works of art; and how the statutes of limitation apply to works that have been stolen or whose legal title is otherwise challenged. This authoritative but accessible and wide-ranging volume is essential reading for arts advisors, collectors, dealers, auction houses, museums, investors, artists, attorneys, and students of art and law.