ABSTRACT
In order to expose the political economy underlying such monographic exhibitions, one must first explore the repositioning of the various players in the field by asking the following questions: What has changed in the position of the artist and, more specifically, in the division of institutional attention between emerging and established artists? What has changed in the function of contemporary art museums or of art museums more generally? This chapter attempts to answer these questions by tying them to the neo-liberal economic models that have come to permeate the art world and currently shape its underlying mechanisms. Based on the conceptualization of the monographic exhibition, the chapter shows how it functions as a branding device used not only by museum directors but also by businessmen and political institutions. A monographic exhibition of Murakami was to inaugurate the 2012 opening of Al-Riwaq, an extension of Mathaf, the national Museum for Modern Art in Doha.
