Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser (Writing Art)

Andrea Fraser's work, writes Pierre Bourdieu in his foreword to Museum Highlights, is able to "trigger a social mechanism, a sort of machine infernale whose operation causes the hidden truth of social reality to reveal itself." It often does this by incorporating and inhabiting the social role it sets out to critique -- as in a performance piece in which she leads a tour as a museum docent and describes the men's room in the same elevated language that she uses to describe seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. Influenced by the interdisciplinarity of postmodernism, Fraser's interventionist art draws on four primary artistic and intellectual frameworks -- institutional critique, with its site-specific examination of cultural context; performance; feminism, with its investigation of identity formation; and Bourdieu's reflexive sociology. Fraser's writings form an integral part of her artistic practice, and this collection of texts written between 1985 and 2003 -- including the performance script for the docent's tour that gives the book its title -- both documents and represents her work.The writings in Museum Highlights are arranged to reflect different aspects of Fraser's artistic practice. They include essays that trace the development of critical "artistic practice" as cultural resistance; performance scripts that explore art institutions and the public sphere; and texts that explore the ambivalent relationship of art to the economic and political interests of its time. The final piece, "Isn't This a Wonderful Place? (A Tour of a Tour of the Guggenheim Bilbao)," reflects on the role of museums in an era of globalization. Among the book's 30 illustrations are stills from performance pieces, some never before published.

Museum Highlights: The Writings Of Andrea Fraser

Arts & Photography

Alberro, Alexander

Fraser, Andrea

History & Criticism

Mit Pr

Both institutional critique and reference work, documenting the intersection of politics (in the form of political donations) and art museums.
 2016 in Museums, Money, and Politics examines the intersection of electoral politics and private-nonprofit art institutions in the United States at a pivotal historical moment. In a massive volume that is both institutional critique and reference work, the artist Andrea Fraser documents the reported political contributions made by trustees of more than 100 art museums, representing every state in the nation, in the 2016 election cycle. With campaigning that featured attacks on vulnerable populations, the vilification of the media and "cultural elites," and calls to curtail civil rights and liberties, the 2016 election cycle transformed national politics. It was also the most expensive election in American history, with over $6.4 billion raised for presidential and congressional races combined. More than half of this money came from just a few hundred people―many of whom also support cultural institutions and serve on their boards. 
 2016 is organized like a telephone book. Contribution data is laid out in dense, color-coded tables alphabetically by name of donor. With this data filling approximately 950 pages, the book offers a material representation of the interface between cultural philanthropy and campaign finance in America. It also provides an unparalleled resource for exploring the politics of the museum world. 2016 includes an afterword by Jamie Stevens, the former curator and head of programs at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, who traces the book's development; an introduction by Andrea Fraser elaborating on the links connecting cultural philanthropy, campaign finance, and plutocracy; a section on each museum represented; and a section including data summaries and additional data. The book presents a powerful argument that supporting the arts must involve more than giving donations to museums; it must also include defending the values, social structures, and political institutions of an open, tolerant, just, and equitable society.

2016: in Museums, Money, and Politics

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

The MIT Press

The second title in the Clarion series spotlights the artist Nikita Gale, whose multimedia work applies the lens of material culture to examine the role authority plays in political, social, and economic systems.\nImmersing the audience in sound and light, Nikita Gale’s END OF SUBJECT subverts understandings of viewership by prompting spectators to question their subjecthood within 52 Walker’s site-specific installation. Creating an aurally and visually rich environment, Gale engages with the architecture of the space, stimulating all senses, and muses on the boundaries of performance art. Considering and fracturing the physical space of the installation, the artist employs abolitionist ideology and institutional critique to simultaneously rupture and rebuild facets of the art institution.\nWith an introduction by Ebony L. Haynes and a suite of poems by Harmony Holiday, this publication considers Gale’s multidisciplinary approach in addressing historical hierarchies of visibility. A text by the esteemed artist Andrea Fraser offers reflections on the various interventions at play during a gathering held in the exhibition.\nAbout Clarion 
The Clarion series of illustrated publications is positioned as an extension of each exhibition at the groundbreaking gallery space 52 Walker, curated by Ebony L. Haynes. The program focuses on showcasing conceptual and research-based artists from a range of backgrounds and at various stages in their careers. The series title is derived from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, the oldest of its kind, at the University of California, San Diego. Octavia Butler attended this workshop in the 1970s. Butler’s writing has been influential in the conceptual framework of the program and the Clarion series. With a sleek design influenced by encyclopedias, each publication features color reproductions of the works on view, alongside an introduction by Haynes, commissioned essays, artist texts, archival materials, and more.

Nikita Gale: End of Subject (Clarion)

Holiday, Harmony

Gale, Nikita

David Zwirner Books/52 Walker

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