Overview volume of contemporary art practices examining problems, beliefs and contradictions that the family as an institution embodies

The family is a rare topic in contemporary art. Burning Down the House: Rethinking Family engages with the family as a tradition, idea, and lived reality. The exhibition untangles some of the crucial problems, beliefs, and contradictions that the family as an institution embodies, bringing together works by forty artists—ranging from the mid 1970s to the present, as well as selected works from the collection of the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen—in which notions of family, and representations of the stereotypical, bourgeois family in particular, are problematized.

Text by: Helen Hester, Sophie Lewis, Jennifer C. Nash, Laura McLean-Ferris