Claire Bishop

Claire Bishop (1971, London) is an art historian, critic and author. She is visiting professor for Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London, and since 2008 associate professor in the PhD Program for Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York. In addition to numerous articles in art journals, her publications include Installation Art: A Critical History (Tate/Routledge, 2005), Participation (Whitechapel/MIT Press, 2006) and Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (Verso, 2012). In her current book Black Box, White Cube, Gray Zone: Dance Exhibitions and Audience Attention (TDR, 2018), Bishop explores the impact of changing digital technologies on contemporary art and performance. (2019)

Publications

Books

• Installation Art: A Critical History, London: Tate, and Routledge, 2005, 144 pp. [1]

• editor, Participation, London: Whitechapel, and MIT Press, 2006, 207 pp.

• editor, with Silvia Tramontana, Double Agent, London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2008, 138 pp. Catalogue. [2]

• editor, with Marta Dziewańska, 1968/1989: Political Upheaval and Artistic Change / Momenty zwrotne w polityce i sztuce, Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art, 2010, 504 pp. (English)/(Polish)

• Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London: Verso, 2012, 390 pp.
  • Umetni pekli: participatorna umetnost in politika gledalstva, trans. Aleksandra Rekar, afterw. Bojana Piškur, Ljubljana: Maska, 2012, 359 pp. (Slovenian)
  • "Partycypacja i spektakl", trans. Piotr Juskowiak, Kultura Współczesna 2, 2013, pp 26-36. Trans. of Conclusion. (Polish)
  • Sztuczne piekła: sztuka partycypacyjna i polityka widowni, trans. Jacek Staniszewski, Warsaw: Fundacja Nowej Kultury Bęc Zmiana, 2015, 497 pp. (Polish)
  • Infiernos artificiales: arte participativo y políticas de la espectaduría, trans. Israel Galina Vaca, Ciudad de México: Taller de Ediciones Económicas, 2016, 461 pp. Excerpt. [3] (Spanish)
  • Jinkō jigoku: gendai āto to kankyaku no seijigaku [人工地獄: 現代アートと観客の政治学], trans. Toshikatsu Ōmori, Tokyo: Firumuātosha, 2016, 535 pp. (Japanese)
  • Yapay cehennemler: katılımcı sanat ve izleyici politikası, trans. Mine Haydaroğlu, Istanbul: Koç Üniversitesi, 2018, 394 pp. (Turkish)

• Radical Museology, or, What's Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art?, London: Koenig Books, 2013, 79 pp. [4]
  • Muzeologia radicală sau: ce anume e "contemporan" în muzeele de artă contemporană, trans. Raluca Voinea, Cluj: Idea Design & Print, 2015, 87 pp. (Romanian)
  • 래디컬 뮤지엄 : 동시대 미술관에서 무엇이 '동시대적'인가, trans. 구정연 외, Seoul: 현실문화, 2016. (Korean)
  • Museologia radicale, ovvero, Cos'è "contemporaneo" nei musei di arte contemporanea?, trans. Nicoletta Poo, Milan: Johan & Levi, 2017, 86 pp. (Italian)
  • Museología radical: o, ¿qué es "contemporáneo" en los museos de arte contemporáneo?, trans. Araceli Alemán, Buenos Aires: Libretto, 2018, 126 pp. (Spanish)
  • Radikális muzeológia, avagy mi a "kortárs" a kortárs művészeti múzeumokban?, trans. Sárai Vanda, Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, 2018, 80 pp. (Hungarian)

• Tania Bruguera in Conversation with / en Conversacion con Claire Bishop, eds. Donna Wingate and Ileen Kohn, New York/Caracas: Cisneros, 2020, 296 pp. (English)/(Spanish)

Essays

• "Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics", October 110, Fall 2004, pp 51-79.
• "The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents", Artforum, Feb 2006, pp 178-183, PDF; repr. in Right About Now: Art & Theory since the 1990s, eds. Margriet Schavemaker and Mischa Rakier, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2007, pp 58-68.
• "What Is a Curator?", 2007. Paper presented at Shifting Practice, Shifting Roles: Artists' Installations and the Museum, Tate Modern, Mar 2007. [5]
  • "¿Qué es un curador? El ascenso (¿y caída?) del curador auteur", Denken Pensée Thought Mysl 7, La Habana: Criterios, May 2011. (Spanish)
• "Unhappy Days in the Art World? De-skilling Theatre, Re-skilling Performance", Brooklyn Rail, Dec 2011.
• "Delegated Performance: Outsourcing Authenticity", October 140, Spring 2012, pp 91-112.
• "Digital Divide", Artforum, Sep 2012, pp 434-442. On contemporary art and new media.
• "Reconstruction Era: the Anachronic Time(s) of Installation Art", in When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013, ed. Germano Celant, Milan: Progetto Prada Arte, 2013, pp 429-436.
• "The Perils and Possibilities of Dance in the Museum: Tate, MoMA and Whitney", Dance Research Journal 46:3, Dec 2014, pp 62-76. Three institutional histories of dance in the museum from the 1930s to the present day: Tate, MoMA and Whitney. [6]
• "History Depletes Itself", Artforum, Sep 2015, pp 324-330, n408. A critical review of Danh Vo's exhibitions mothertongue and Slip of the Tongue at the 2015 Venice Biennale. [7]
• "Black Box, White Cube, Gray Zone: Dance Exhibitions and Audience Attention", TDR: The Drama Review 62:2 (T238), Summer 2018, pp 22-42. "Relocated from the ‘black box’ of experimental theatre to the gallery ideal of the ‘white cube,’ dance in the museum brings about new forms of performance (the dance exhibition) and new protocols of audience behaviour (in which smartphone photography is permitted, even encouraged). This is the ‘grey zone’ of recent performance, which is both a symptom of, and compensation for, the virtual character of contemporary attention." [8]
• "Palace in Plunderland", Artforum, Sep 2018, pp 93-97, n316. "A grumpy take-down of NY"s new performance venue The Shed, in Hudson Yards." [9]
• with Nikki Columbus, "Free Your Mind: A Speculative Review of #NewMoMA", Paper Monument, n+1, 7 Jan 2020.

Links

• Personal website
• Academia.edu
• Profile on The Graduate Center CUNY
• Publications on GC CUNY