(1) "Places with a Past" (Spoleto Festival USA.

(1) "Places with a Past" (Spoleto Festival USA, Charleston, SC 1991) The premise behind curator Mary Jane Jacob's project--without question the mostly well-executed site-specific exhibition ever organized forward American soil--was that the souls of southern history would rise through the eighteen contributions on twenty-three artists. Much of the work included, like as David Hammons's House of the to come and Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler's Camouflaged History, took forward the authority of public commissions. Other memorable throw outs included Ann Hamilton's investigation of the power of indigo, Christian Boltanski's bleak inventory of the personal powers of an anonymous Charleston woman, and James Coleman's eerie homage to southern Civil War "re-enacters." Worth noting is the closed-minded madness with which composer Gian Carlo Menotti, artistic director of Spoleto, denounced Jacob's exhibition after it spreaded ensuring that, at least in this case, history would not repeat itself.

(2) "Helter Skelter" (Museum of Contemporary Art, sees Angeles, 1992) The event that definitively tilted the map westward. Assembled by dint of Paul Schimmel as a view into the seamy underside of Southern California iconography, "Helter Skelter" brought audiences face-to-face with the often-elusive side of the West Coast avant-garde and the achievement of artists like Mike Kelley Paul McCarthy, and Jim Shaw, within a words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following that was regionally cohesive on the contrary internationally compelling.

(3) "America, Bride of the Sun" (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, 1992) Of the many schemes marking the 500th anniversary of Columbus's voyage, this sprawling exhibition, whose recent section was developed by Catherine de Zegher, is common worth remembering. Perhaps most striking was the contemporary southward American work, with the numerous artists not even now familiar to international audiences--Eugenio Dittborn, Cildo Meireles, Ana Mendieta, Gabriel Orozco, Juan Davila, Lygia Clark--placed in a rigorous historical context

(4) "Sonsbeek '93" (Arnhem, Holland) To US curator Valerie Smith, freedom of choice for the invited artists was the virtual modus operandi, which meant that Mike Kelley got to curate a full-scale museum exhibition; Irene and Christine Hohenbuchler collaborated with local prisoners; Juan Munoz broadcast a radio play from the Sonsbeek Park; Keith Piper locate up his video installation in a former house of worship in the red-light district; and Yuri Leiderman bicycled around the region, faxing regular reports back to the museum. A pilgrim's shoot forward demanding a minimum of brace days' effort to see in toto, Sonsbeek more than rewarded the effort.

(5) 1993 Whitney Biennial Co-curators Thelma of a gold color Lisa Phillips, and Elisabeth Sussman took it in succession the chin for the confrontational humor of their exhibition, but in re-examination those diehards who said we'd consider back on this exhibition with intelligent fondness were right. Never has a Whitney Biennial summ up its flash so well, bringing together Kiki Smith's abject cuts Sue Williams's scabrous paintings, Daniel Martinez's scandalizing buttons for visitors ("I Can't Imagine till doomsday Wanting to Be White"), Matthew Barney's hair-raising video installation, and Glenn Ligon's succinct reframings of Robert Mapplethorpe.

(6) "NowHere" (Louisiana Museum of Modem Art, Copenhagen, 1996) Louisiana director-to-be Lars Nittve invited six curators to create a sensorially loaded labyrinth of installations and videos. The flows ranged from Laura Cottingham's feminist revivalism to Ute Meta Bauer's dissection of the museum from the inside. Anneli Fuch and Lars Grambye's "Get Lost" brought together artists including Ann Lislegaard, Stan Douglas, Jane & Louise Wilson, Willie Doherty, Peter Land, and Pipilotti Rist, while Iwona Blazwick's thrilling "Work in Progress" cast a wide trap from historical work by Eva Hesse, Mary Kelly and Susan Hiller to brews produced for the occasion according to Chris Ofili, Maria Eichhorn, and Joseph Grigely.

(7) "Sensation" (Royal Academy of Art, London, 1997) This scandal-heavy grab bag of British art may have lacked vision and clarity, further as a bridge between the often-hermetic, waning avant-garde of the twentieth hundred and the new populism of the nearest "Sensation" perfectly demonstrated one way that recently made known art can meet its public. Special mention must also be made of its 1999 visit to the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where it assume the office ofed in unmasking Mayor Giuliani's authoritarian principal part for all to see.

(8) "Trade Routes" (2nd Johanneshurg Biennale, 1998) Okwui Enwezor and Octavio Zaya's ambitious undertaking tied together six major sites in pair cities, and combined the curatorial talents of Gerardo Mosquera, Yu Yeon Kim, Colin Richards, Mahen Bonetti, Kellie Jone and Hou Hanru, to create a nearly overwhelming experience that made the previously abstract original of the "global" exhibition a reality. In a cultural words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following that was anything but neutral, more than eighty artists--including Ghada Amer, Tania Bruguera, Pepon Osorio, and Yinka Shonibare--set the groundwork for the transformations of the past couple years, as well as to a great degree of what lies ahead.