Exhibitions

Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which art objects (in the most general sense) meet an audience, a temporary presentation of art. In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" (the French word) or "show". more...

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In UK English, they are always called "exhibitions" or "shows", and an individual item in the show is an "exhibit".

Such expositions may present pictures, drawings or sculptures by individual artists, groups of artists or collections of a specific form of art. The art works may be presented in museums, art halls, art clubs or private art galleries. An important distiction is between those where some or all of the works are for sale, normally in private art galleries , and those where they are not. Sometimes the event is organized on a specific occasion, like a birthday, anniversary or commemoration.

Kinds of Exhibitions

There are different kinds of art exhibitions, like retrospectives, which look back over the work of a single artist, individual expositions, group expositions, or expositions on a specific theme or topic. Art exhibitions can be juried, invitational, or open. A juried exhibition has an individual or group which acts as judge of submitted artworks and chooses which are to be shown. In an invitational exhibition, the organizer of the show asks certain artists to supply artworks and exhibits them. An open exhibition allows anybody to enter artworks and shows them all.

History of Art Exhibitions

The practice of art exhibitions dates back to at least 1673, when the royally sanctioned French institution of art patronage, the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (a division of the Académie des beaux-arts), held its first semi-public art exhibit at the Salon Carré. This began the type of regular exhibition where any artist could submit a work for show. These became extremely important, and often contoversial, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and fostered the development of academic art. The story of art in these centuries cannot be told without frequent reference to these exhibitions, which spead to all the major Western nations. Beginning in 1725 the salon was held in the Palace of the Louvre, when it became known as Salon de Paris. In London, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (as it now known) has been held annually since 1769.

The history of modern art exhibitions in America starts with the 1913 Armory Show in New York. It was the first time that European avant-garde art was presented in the New World. Probably the most prominent art exhibition of contemporary art is the 1955 founded documenta in Kassel, Germany. It takes place every five years, presenting international artists and art trends. Of similar prominence is the Biennale in Venice, Italy, which is held biannually. Art works are presented in pavilions per country at this exhibition.

Read more at Wikipedia.org