A Tribute to Bernard Smith, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, November 28, 2011

Click on “View Video” at

http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/about-us/people-and-projects/bernard-smith

Panel discussion with Dr. Leon Wainwright, Lecturer in Art History at The Open University, Terry Smith, Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Pittsburg, Tessa Jackson, OBE, and Dr. Anthony Downey, Programme Director, MA Contemporary Art.

Book Launch and Panel Discussion: Contemporary Art – World Currents

Sotheby’s Institute of Art – London held a panel discussion and a book launch of Contemporary Art: World Currents by Terry Smith on Wednesday 21 September 2011. Published by Laurence King, the book was launched by Sandy Nairne, Director, National Portrait Gallery.

To view video, go to http://www.openartsarchive.org/oaa/content/contemporary-art-world-currents

http://www.sothebysinstitute.com/About/Media-Gallery/Book_Launch.aspx

A lecture during conference “Global Conceptualism: The Case of Moscow Conceptualism in an International Context,” Center for Russian Writers, Moscow, sponsored by the Stella Art Foundation, April 14, 2011

It is a nice paradox that the term ‘conceptualism’ came into art world existence after the advent of Conceptual Art – most prominently and programmatically in the exhibition Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s (New York: Queens Museum, 1999) – mainly in order to highlight the fact that innovative, experimental art practices occurred in Russia, Japan, South America, and elsewhere prior to, at the same time as and after the European and US initiatives that had come to seem paradigmatic, and to emphasize that these practices were more socially and politically engaged – and thus more relevant to the present and better art – than the well-known EuroAmerican exemplars. Triggered by remarks made by some of the key artists back in the day (and some made, later, by curators), I wish to revisit the terms ‘Conceptual Art’ and ‘conceptualism’ as pointers to what was at stake in the unraveling of late modern art during the 1960s and in art’s embrace of contemporaneity since.

Posted as part of “Empty Zones: Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Actions,” curated by Boris Groys, Russian Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale

http://www.ruspavilion.ru/en/symposium/report–31/

Published in e-flux journal, #29 (11, 2011) online at

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/267

Among the many symbolic resonances attending Ai Weiwei’s disappearance on 3 April into the custodianship of the Chinese authorities is the sad state of his website, once among the most trafficked in China…

See “The Art of Dissent: Ai Weiwei”, The Monthly, June 2011.

http://www.themonthly.com.au/ai-weiwei-art-dissent-terry-smith-3356

The following is taken from the Australia Council for the Arts.

Contemporary art theorist Terry Smith and distinguished art director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor are being honoured for their innovative and meaningful contribution to Australian visual arts and culture, receiving the Australia Council Visual Arts Award and Medal respectively.

Parliamentary Secretary for the Prime Minister, Senator Kate Lundy presented the awards at a ceremony on 20th May at the National Gallery, Canberra.

Formerly titled the Australia Council Emeritus Award, the Australia Council Visual Arts Award and Medal is an annual recognition of outstanding contributors to Australian visual arts.

Professor Terry Smith will receive $40,000 for his role as a respected critic, theorist and historian of Australian art within Australia and overseas, contributing to contemporary art theory and further advancing the reputation of the Australian artistic sector.

Featuring an extract from the Introduction to Contemporary Art: World Currents (London: Laurence King; Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2011).

The following is taken from the Global Art and the Museum.

Terry Smith is acknowledged world wide as the leading authority in the theory of contemporary art. We therefore are honoured and grateful to have his consent to prepublish parts of the general introduction of his forthcoming book Contemporary Art: World Currents (London: Laurence King; Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2011). The text explains the contents and aims of the book. We have selected those parts, which break down the general phenomenon of contemporary global art into three “world currents,” which are distinguished from each other, and thus develop a novel analysis of the present situation in the art world. Thus, our text selection serves to awaken the curiosity of our website users to read the full arguments in the book coming out in 2011. The originality of the author’s approach, in emphasizing contemporaneity as the credo of a new faith, also emerges from his attention to what has occurred in late modern art since the 1950s. His career began in the context of the debate about Australia’s place in modernity in the 1960s. Making the Modern, the title of his Ph.D. thesis and subsequent book, indicates his point of departure for his present project, which could be called “Making Contemporaneity.”

Frank Jewett Mather Award citation:

Terry Smith is that rare art and social historian able to write criticism at once alert to the forces that contextualize art and sensitive to the elements and qualities that inhere to the works of art themselves. His most recent book, What Is Contemporary Art? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), contains a series of interrelated essays that unpack a vast range of topics and issues and take the reader on a theoretical tour through some of the world’s most influential art museums, laying bare their conflicted missions and studying the heightening distinction, and dispute, between modern and contemporary art.

http://www.collegeart.org/news/2010/01/08/caa-announces-2010-awards-for-distinction/
Details about the Mather Award.

FRANK JEWETT MATHER AWARD

The Frank Jewett Mather Award, first presented in 1963 for art journalism, is named in honor of the art critic, teacher, and scholar who was affiliated with Princeton University until his death in 1953. It is awarded for significant published art criticism that has appeared in publication in a one-year period; the 2010 award year is September 1, 2008–August 31, 2009. The Mather award may be given for work that originated before the indicated period provided that such work extends into the award period.

Past Winners

The Frank Jewett Mather Award has been presented to many well-known art critics and writers. In the 1960s, awards were presented to Max Kozloff, Barbara Rose, and Clement Greenberg, while Lawrence Alloway, Rosalind Krauss, and Lucy R. Lippard were recipients in the 1970s. The Mather awards of the 1980s were given to Robert Hughes, Leo Steinberg, and Douglas Crimp, among others, followed by Eleanor Heartney, Arthur C. Danto, and Christopher Knight in the 1990s. Most recently, Boris Groys was honored for his essays in Art Power, which address curatorship and criticism of modern and contemporary art in public venues.

The 2009 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center Book Prize ($5,000) is awarded to Terry Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Pittsburgh for Making the Modern: Industry, Art, and Design in America (University of Chicago Press, 1993).

Jurors:
Michael Leja, University of Pennsylvania
Nancy Mowll Matthews, Williams College Museum of Art
Patricia Hills, Boston University
Jonathan Fineberg, University of Illinois and Director, Illinois at the Phillips, The Center for the Study of Modern Art

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center Book Prize will be awarded every three years to the author(s) of a book on some aspect of American Modernism (1890s – present), including architecture, criticism, design, methodology, painting, photography, sculpture, and related subjects, published within the last twenty-five years. A cash award of $5,000 will accompany the prize.

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center Book Prize will be awarded every three years to the author(s) of a book on some aspect of American Modernism (1890s – present), including architecture, criticism, design, methodology, painting, photography, sculpture, and related subjects, published within the last twenty-five years. A cash award of $5,000 will accompany the prize.

http://www.okeeffemuseum.org/the-research-center/book-prize.aspx

http://www.artknowledgenews.com/2009-09-11-22-28-23-terry-smith-named-2009-winner-of-georgia-okeeffe-museum-book-prize.html

The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, 2005

In this clip in I explain some ways of approaching unfamiliar art that I use in my course Introduction to Contemporary Art.

Professor Terry Smith at the Warhol Museum on Vimeo.

The education department at The Warhol has developed some terrific curriculum material based around Warhol’s life and art, set in the context of his time. See: The Warhol: education resource center.