Art and Artifact
The Museum as Medium
James Putnam
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| ‘Art and Artifact is a rare experience. It is a book concerned with complex issues that expresses them in a simple, engaging way and refrains from retreating into jargon. . . a rewarding exercise in the visual’ | | – The Art Book |
‘Excellent . . .
interesting reading’ | | – Museums Journal |
Breaking new ground as the first ever extensive survey of one of the most important and intriguing themes in art today, this book examines the often obsessive relationship between artists and museums.
From Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Portable Museum’ (Boîte en Valise) of the early 1940s to Damien Hirst’s distinctive use of vitrine displays in the 1990s, the artists of the last half century have often turned their attention to a reappraisal of the ideas traditionally associated with curatorship and display. Taxonomy, archiving, storage, and other aspects of curatorship have been variously appropriated, mimicked or reinterpreted.
The artists and artists' writings featured include such names as Tracey Emin, Hans Haacke, Christian Boltanski, Fred Wilson and Ilya Kabakov. Art and Artifact will serve as an indispensable guide to the position and likely future role of the museum at the beginning of the 21st century, whether within the walls of an institutional building or in the broader context of the urban environment.
James Putnam has staged a number of ground-breaking artists’ interventions and exhibitions and site-specific projects at unusual venues, for example the successful collaboration between Brian Eno and Mimmo Paladino at the Roundhouse, London (1999).
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|  |  | | | | ISBN 0500237905 | | ISBN-13 978-0500237908 | | | | 27.5 x 23.0 cm | | Hardback | | 208pp | | 280 illustrations, 229 in colour | | First published 2001 | | | | £29.95 | | | |  | | | | 
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