A Brief History of Curating. Hans Ulrich Obrist

Whose ideas shaped what we today consider curating as a familiar phenomenon in the field of art and culture? Where did it begin, and who stood at the origins of this practice—without which it is now difficult to imagine any exhibition?

One of the most renowned curators of our time, Hans Ulrich Obrist, devoted a book to these questions — A Brief History of Curating. In it, he documents the legacy of influential curators and the field’s most innovative ideas, starting from the 1960s, and presents a unique selection of 11 interviews with pioneers of curatorial practice. Among them are Harald Szeemann, Walter Hopps, Johannes Cladders, Jan Leering, and others.

Through these texts, the development of the curatorial field becomes visible — from the early practices of independent curating in the 1960s–1970s and experimental institutional programs that emerged in Europe and the United States, to documenta and the rise of the biennial. Conceived as “an act of protest against forgetting,” this publication has gained wide recognition as a foundational book for both students and professionals, and is also a bestseller in its field.

About the Author

Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968) is one of the most influential curators of our time, as well as an art critic and historian, and Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries in London. He organized his first exhibition in 1991 in his own kitchen, and today his practice includes more than 300 projects worldwide.

Obrist is the co-founder of the research platform 89plus, which explores the generation born in the digital age. He is also widely known for the Interview Project — a long-term series of recorded conversations with artists, architects, and thinkers, totaling over 2,000 hours, featuring figures from Gerhard Richter to Dimitar Sasselov. One of Obrist’s drawings — a conceptual portrait of a conversation captured during an interview — became the cover of the Ukrainian edition of A Brief History of Curating.

Team

Publisher: ist publishing
Author: Hans Ulrich Obrist
Interlocutors: Walter Hopps, Johannes Cladders, Jan Leering, Harald Szeemann, Franz Meyer, Seth Siegelaub, Werner Hofmann, Walter Zanini, Anne d’Harnoncourt, Lucy Lippard
Foreword: Christoph Cherix
Afterword: Daniel Birnbaum
Translation from English: Alina Kuchma
Design and layout: Ostap Yashchuk
Literary editing: Olha Petrenko-Tseunova
Proofreading: Iryna Kurhanska
Project management: Kateryna Nosko, Anastasiia Leonova