Summer 2021 in Artforum

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In the summer issue of Artforum:

The call is clear: Museums must change. Amid an ongoing global pandemic and growing demands for decolonization, racial justice, and economic parity, culture needs new tools for structural transformation. In the first of two special issues focusing on this urgent topic, Artforum has invited some of our leading theorists, curators, artists, and museum directors to consider how art institutions might evolve.

Requiem for a Dream: Alex Kitnick looks to the legacy of avant-garde exhibition spaces

“The new generation of art workers scrutinize flowcharts, payroll, and fundraising the way earlier generations argued over medium specificity, facture, and ‘the crisis of representation.’”
—Alex Kitnick

School Spirit: Jessica Lynne surveys the critical impact historically Black colleges and universities have had on Black cultural preservation and production

“HBCUs, which have served as a critical nexus for Black cultural production for more than 150 years, should be seen as integral to any assessment of contemporary visual art tout court.”
—Jessica Lynne

What’s in a Name?: Kunstinstituut Melly director Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy speaks about the Rotterdam institution’s recent renaming

“Decolonizing encourages new methods for listening—deep listening, strategic listening—that you can’t find in Harvard business books on negotiation.”
—Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy

Specific Objects: Jeffrey Weiss investigates the “discrete upheaval” of the Frick Madison

“Over and over, one turns a corner to be confronted by paintings so great yet so unadorned in their presentation that, for a moment, it is almost hard to believe they’re really there.”
—Jeffrey Weiss

And: Andrew Russeth on Lee Bul, and more than thirty-five exhibition reviews from around the globe.

Plus: Julia Robinson on Jean Dupuy, María Belén Correa and Cecilia Estalles speak with Devan Díaz and Thora Siemsen about El Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina, Erika Balsom on Shengze Zhu’s A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces, Natilee Harren on Maria Chávez, Bárbara Sánchez-Kane shares her Top Ten, and much more