‘Art and its Worlds’ offers a possible history of art since 1989 told through the moments when art becomes public.

The anthology explores the myriad histories and worlds through which art is produced and experienced.

It is guided by the following questions: How are the ‘global’ and the ‘located’ shaped and understood in disparate contexts and times? How have artists experimented with modes of exhibition-making and public presentation? How do individual exhibitions connect to longer-term artistic, social and economic trajectories expressed through recurring events, collective actions and public institutions?

Key essays previously published by Afterall are included alongside new image-led presentations, translated material and commissioned texts.

The anthology addresses exhibitions, institutions and art becoming public in both broad theoretical terms and through close and careful attention to particular sites, situations and case studies.

Published in the Afterall Exhibition Histories series, in association with Asia Art Archive and the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.