The much-bemoaned “deskilling of art” extends beyond the canvas. In recent years, the rise of research-based practices in contemporary art has somewhat paradoxically sparked a shift in the role of critic from the trained connoisseur to the cultural flâneur, dabbling in amateur anthropology, ethnography, biological sciences, technology and political history. In this talk, writer and editor Kate Sutton will look at what criteria still remain for the evaluation of contemporary art today and how art criticism can respond to its current circumstances.

Kate Sutton is a writer and curator currently based in Zagreb, after nearly a decade in Russia, where she helped found the non-profit art space Baibakov Art Projects. Since 2018, Sutton has served as Artforum’s commissioning editor of international reviews. In addition to contributing to magazines like Artforum, Bidoun, Frieze, The Hollywood Reporter and LEAP, she has penned catalogue essays for artists including Nilbar Güreş, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Monica Bonvicini, and Basim Magdy. From 2019-2020, she joined David Maljković as the co-director of the WHW Academy, a tuition-free educational program founded by the What, How and For Whom? Collective in Zagreb.

The program of the Cursor Gallery is possible through kind support of Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Prague City Council, State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, City District Prague 7, GESTOR – The Union for the Protection of Authorship
Partners: Kostka stav
Media support: ArtMap, jlbjlt.net, Náš REGION
and Mladý svět and UMA: You Make Art