Hans Ulrich Obrist 
A Brief History of Curating 
By Hans Ulrich Obrist

Part of JRP|Ringier’s innovative
Documents series, published with Les Presses du Réel and dedicated to critical writings, this publication comprises a unique collection of interviews by Hans Ulrich Obrist mapping the development of the curatorial field–from early independent curators in the 1960s and 70s and the experimental institutional programs developed in Europe and the U.S. through the inception of Documenta and the various biennales and fairs–with pioneering curators Anne D’Harnoncourt, Werner Hoffman, Jean Leering, Franz Meyer, Seth Siegelaub, Walter Zanini, Johannes Cladders, Lucy Lippard, Walter Hopps, Pontus Hulten and Harald Szeemann. Speaking of Szeemann on the occasion of this legendary curator’s death in 2005, critic Aaron Schuster summed up, ‘the image we have of the curator today: the curator-as-artist, a roaming, freelance designer of exhibitions, or in his own witty formulation, a ‘spiritual guest worker’… If artists since Marcel Duchamp have affirmed selection and arrangement as legitimate artistic strategies, was it not simply a matter of time before curatorial practice–itself defined by selection and arrangement–would come to be seen as an art that operates on the field of art itself?’ This is the ebook edition of
A Brief History of Curating, originally published in print form in October, 2008.

关于作者

Hans Ulrich Obrist was born in 1968 in Zürich, Switzerland. In 1993, he founded the Museum Robert Walser and began to run the Migrateurs program at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris where he served as a Curator for contemporary art. He presently serves as the Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programs and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery, London.