A Brief History of Curating

A Brief History of Curating by Hans Ulrich Obrist has been published for the first time in Russian as part of the joint publishing program of Garage Center for Contemporary Culture and Ad Marginem Press.

Featuring 11 interviews with some of the most influential and forward-thinking curators of the past fifty years, A Brief History of Curating maps the history and development of the field from the early independent curators of the 1960s and 70s, to the experimental institutional programs developed in Europe and the US, the inception of Documenta, and other influential biennales and fairs.

Among those interviewed are Pontus Hulten, the first director of Centre Pompidou in Paris and independent curator Harald Szeemann. In the aftermath of the Second World War, when works by Picasso and Magritte — though to be ‘debauched and pro-communist' - were removed from American art museums, and at a time when the American abstract expressionists were hardly known in Europe, it was the heroes of Obrist's book who introduced viewers on both continents to some of the most important artists of the time. Considered to be the founding figures of curating, all 11 interviewees not only promoted the careers of artists through exhibiting their works — such as Johannes Cladders, who would later discover Joseph Beuys - but they also explained the cultural and social significance of contemporary art to a wider public audience.