ARTH 4809D: Topics in Art History and Criticism: Contemporary art in the global context

Instructor: Birgit Hopfener
Winter term

Contemporary art in the global context: art practices, discourses, histories, and institutions

What is contemporary art in the global context? How to examine and interpret art beyond conventional national frameworks of art history?  What concepts of ‘the contemporary’ exist around the world and what are histories of contemporaneity?  A focus of this course is the question of how contemporary art is constituted through multiple and sometimes entangled histories and epistemologies. Based on examinations of agents, such as artists and curators, institutions and discourses of contemporaneity and global art history we will examine the question of what constitutes contemporary art in the global context, and learn about methodological approaches to contemporary art in the global context.