Contemporary art

The term contemporary art is loosely used to refer to art of the present day and of the relatively recent past, of an innovatory or avant-garde nature

Tracey Emin
*Hate and Power Can be a Terrible Thing* (2004)
Tate

© Tracey Emin

In relation to contemporary art museums, the date of origin for the term ‘contemporary art’ varies.

The Institute of Contemporary Art in London, founded in 1947, champions art from that year onwards. Whereas The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York chooses the later date of 1977. In the 1980s, Tate planned a Museum of Contemporary Art in which contemporary art was defined as art of the past ten years on a rolling basis.

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Left Right

Contemporary Art and the Role of Interpretation

Helen Charman and Michaela Ross

Recent research indicates that the taught curriculum in art and design secondary school education pays scant attention to meaning-making in visual art. This paper explores possibilities for teaching interpretation through a report on an action-research project based on Tate Modern's Summer Institute for Teachers, held in 2002. In doing so, it argues for the value and necessity of interpretation as a taught skill.
Placing Bookmarks: The Institutionalisation and De-Institutionalisation of Hungarian Neo-Avant-Garde and Contemporary Art

Maja and Reuben Fowkes

The recent interest in avant-garde art from Hungary shown by international museums such as Tate has been paralleled by transformations to the country’s art institutions as a consequence of sweeping political changes. This essay contextualises these changes in relation to the expanding global market for art from the region, and examines the impact that initiatives by private galleries as well as artists and curators are having on the writing of a critical history of Hungarian art.
Andrei Tarkovsky and Contemporary Art: Medium and Mediation

Robert Bird

The rediscovery of the Soviet film director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) as an artist in the cinema allows us to see his films anew as vital participants in the contemporary art world. Citing references to the filmmaker’s long-take aesthetic in contemporary art, this paper argues that Tarkovsky’s concepts of the imprinted image and of time in cinema are particularly significant today for video artists who investigate media as the material texture of modernity.
Show Time: Curating contemporary art

What are the exhibitions that truly changed the course of the discipline, provoked public reactions and contributed to a more complex understanding of what exhibition-making means today?