What 2017 Needs From the Art World

06-adam-mcewen.w529.h352Jerry Saltz at New York Magazine:

Whether, with the dramatic change in our politics, a paradigm shift is in the offing or the opposite is happening (and things are just becoming more of what they already are), we need to ask where this leaves the art world? Not artists. I trust they'll do whatever they have to do to adapt. And thrive. And make us see things we didn't know we needed to see until we see them. Instead, I address the playing field where we encounter art and artists; close to home in time and space: the galleries and museums.

A change in curatorial tactics is in order; one that might fit the present better than the one that's been in effect for a while. For the last decade or so we've been engaged in an intensive art-history rebalancing act. The post-crash years have been a period of a great looking-backwards to what was missed, passed over, undervalued, geographically shunted aside, or shunned altogether in generations before. Everyone was sifting through histories; rediscovery was the new discovery; course correction was the new staying the course.

This shouldn’t stop entirely. But by now this practice has tilted toward habit and obsession. (I've dished my share of it; harping on self-taught outsiders, calling for their integration into permanent collections.) Regardless, we're now treated to endless numbers of articles in art magazines on the art and artists of the 1960s and 1970s (often written by the same authors who wrote them the first time around).

more here.