Exhibiting Ourselves

Never before has our relationship with material culture been so tortured as now, in the 21st century. We have the capacity to buy more consumer products than ever before, and so we do—while simultaneously bemoaning our burgeoning closets and bewildering array of choices. Then, as we tire of our toys, we are encouraged to make sense of it all by entering the world of art, where we encounter a farrago of names, canvases, sculptures, installations, performances and concepts of all shapes and sizes. It is part of what arts journalist David Balzer calls “curationism,” and, apparently, it is taking over a whole lot of the world beyond the gallery walls.

Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else is a compact book with a rather large thesis. As the subtitle argues, the profession has evolved and mutated into something much more grandiose than the fusty...