The Curious Curator's Book Blog

In rising to the challenge the contributors have applied experience, insight and imagination, reminding us of artists' and the arts' great capacity to provoke, to make us question and to inspire us to think of alternatives.

Inspired by an exhibition of the same name, Institute for the Future is a collection of ideas and reflections from several artists, curators and writers from the international art world on what a cultural institution could or should be in the future. In the face of a changing world and the constantly evolving place of art and its institutions within it, the theme was important enough for me to immediately feel like I should read this book.

Unfortunately, it's very different from what I expected. Most of the contributions seem marginally related to the question that originated the discussion, and a lot of the contributors seem more interested in plugging their own work than to actively discuss the metamorphosis of the cultural institution.

There are a few very pertinent pieces, and even those which are not pertinent are still interesting, but ultimately the book looses itself inside an idea that is never fully realized.