Le 100 mostre che sconvolsero il mondo

If it is true that art is “what artists make,” this volume starts from a different assumption, according to which a view of contemporary art history that privileges the moments when artists’ investigations took shape through exhibitions is plausible and possible. Abandoning the traditional narrative mode, based on the figure of the individual artist or on the succession of movements, the aim is to draw a map that highlights the centrality of art exhibitions, the critical engagement that has sustained them, and the daring that has moved and moves the action of curators and museum systems. The Salon des Refusés in 1863, the first edition of the Venetian Biennale in 1895, the exhibition on “degenerate art” in 1937… Each of these exhibitions certifies or preludes a change in taste and a change in the relationship between art and the public, as well as in the very course of art history. The volume thus offers a new key to the history of contemporary art, for the first time told through the 100 exhibitions that made it visible.

BY
Beatrice Buscaroli – Member of the Superior Council of Cultural Heritage, she is a professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Studies and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Since 1997 she has collaborated with numerous Italian institutions in curating exhibitions.
Bruno Bandini – professor of Philosophy of Art and History of Contemporary Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, is a member of I.K.T. (Internationale Kunstleitertagung), an international association of curators and critics of contemporary art.