What does it mean to make, critique, or curate art within global systems of power?
This graduate seminar examines the recent history of contemporary art as a set of interlocking global systems—institutional, economic, political, technological, and ecological—that shape how art is produced, circulated, interpreted, and valued. Moving beyond earlier framings that focused primarily on inclusion within Euro-American frameworks, the course instead interrogates how globality itself is constructed, maintained, resisted, and reimagined.
We will study a range of art-world infrastructures, from museums, biennials, and art fairs to grassroots initiatives Throughout, we ask how legitimacy is conferred, how narratives are stabilized or disrupted, and how artists, curators, critics, institutions, and even nation states operate within—and sometimes against—these systems.
Using case studies drawn primarily from the so-called Arab world alongside Asia, Europe, and the United States, the course traces alternative genealogies of modern and contemporary art, with particular attention to practices of refusal, counter-public formation, and critical world-building. We will engage key debates around postcoloniality, decolonization, cultural diplomacy, patronage, climate crisis, and the role of technology in reshaping authorship and curatorial authority.
Through close reading, visual analysis, discussion, writing, and research, students will be invited not only to analyze global art worlds, but to critically position themselves within them—articulating their own methods, ethical commitments, and modes of engagement as practitioners and thinkers working under contemporary global conditions.
- Instructor: Deena Chalabi