Garage organizes reading groups around key texts on the history of contemporary art.
This series of seminars is inspired by the anthology Fifty Key Texts in Art History published by Routledge in 2012—a collection of critical commentaries on seminal writings from the classical period to the late twentieth century that have shaped art history as an intellectual tradition and an academic discipline. The book features contributions by over thirty art historians and theorists from British and US universities.
The seminars offer critical readings of seminal texts by Vasari, Winckelmann, Guy Debord, Hal Foster, Geeta Kapur, Rasheed Araeen, Judith Butler, and other authors. Participants are invited to read the original writings by critics and philosophers and commentaries on them in reverse chronological order.
The seminars require independent reading of texts indicated in the bibliographical list in preparation for every meeting. The meetings will be devoted to the discussions of texts.