The Center publication, What Makes a Great Exhibition?, is now available as an eBook through Amazon. Published in 2006 and conceived and edited by Center Executive Director Paula Marincola, the thought-provoking anthology features contributions from 14 curators and historians on questions related to curatorial practice and contemporary exhibition-making.
The volume's distinguished contributors include Iwona Blazwick on a century of trailblazing at London's Whitechapel Art Gallery, Thelma Golden on issues informing ethnically-focused exhibitions, and Robert Storr on the meaning of "exhibition" and "exhibitionmaker." Aiming to stimulate dialogue about "how overarching issues meet on-the-ground practicalities," the anthology also provides an accessible list of questions compiled by Marincola that help inform a reading of the volume's texts.
Get the eBook online, and browse all of the Center's major books and publications in the Reading Room.
Excerpt from Robert Storr's "Show and Tell"
"A good exhibition is never the last word on its subject. Instead it should be an intelligently conceived and scrupulously realized interpretation of the works selected, one which acknowledges by its organization and installation that even the material on view—not to mention those things which might have been included but were not—may be seen from a variety of perspectives, and that this will sooner or later happen to the benefit of other possible understandings of the art in question."