Salon to Biennial

Description

Salon to Biennial documents the most important international group art exhibitions from 1863 to today, and will become the key and most comprehensive reference book on the subject of contemporary art group exhibitions. Salon to Biennial will be published in two volumes; Volume 1, scheduled for publication in the Fall of 2007, begins with the Salon des Refusés, Paris, 1863, and the beginning of the evolution of the exhibition format, and ends with the ‘The New American Painting,’ a multi-location international exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1958-59.Bruce Altshuler is Director of the Program in Museum Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York University. Altshuler is the author of The Avant-Garde in Exhibition: New Art in the 20th Century and Isamu Noguchi;editor of Collecting the New: Museums and Contemporary Art and co-editor of Isamu Noguchi: Essays and Conversations. He has published numerous essays on modern and contemporary art and holds a Ph.D in Philosophy from Harvard University.

“A must-read… Brilliantly conceived and beautifully executed… retells the story of modern art in a wholly original way… Suitably for its subject, this chronicle of exhibitions is stunning in its presentation. It twins the expert knowledge of Bruce Altshuler […] with the art-book skills of Phaidon’s editors… If part two is even half as good as this first part, anyone interested in art, taste and politics in the twentieth century will want to own and use the pair of them.”—RA (Royal Academy of Arts magazine)

“The role of exhibitions in the making of art history is now widely recognised… Students of art, art history and curatorial studies will eagerly welcome this direct route to archival sources, especially for the excellent installation photographs it provides… There are wonderful discoveries to be made in its pages, things that leap off the page with the force of the contemporary… At such moments one can imagine this book in the hands of artists and begin to envisage ways in which they might animate and reactivate the histories it contains.”—Art Monthly

“[An] important compendium… Extremely useful. Especially helpful are the installation shots… The illustrations of gallery viewers combine with installation shots to evoke the events and their significance for visitors as vividly as one could hope for. The rich assemblage of reviews is highly revealing, with its juxtaposition of hostile and favourable notices… The juxtaposition of these reviews with detailed information about the exhibitions offers valuable insights into educated and popular views on contemporary art throughout the period… This book will serve as a text-book, as an invaluable resource for scholars and as a rich source of browsing.”—The Art Newspaper