Things Fall Apart - by Allison Glenn (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Things Fall Apart: Notes on Rupture includes a multitude of voices and approaches, offering a combination of critical texts, image-driven artist sections, an experimental sonic intervention, and information about the partners, sites, and collaborative programs that make up the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Art. Things Fall Apart expands upon the curatorial concepts of rupture, syncopation, and resistance through an in-depth curatorial essay, new commissions of short-form texts by curators, artists, and scholars, as well as a conversation with the Toronto Biennial of Art's first National Advisory. Individually, the Biennial's artworks uncover hidden histories, reframe colonial cartographies, and reconsider notions of borders. But together, they orient us on a temporal plane where inherited, ancestral, and Indigenous epistemologies dynamically engage with our contemporary moment and provide a platform for future thinking.

About the Author

Allison Glenn is a New York-based curator and writer focusing on the intersection of art and public space through public art and special projects, biennials, and major new commissions by a wide range of contemporary artists. For over fifteen years, Glenn has been devoted to realizing ambitious and experimental exhibitions and site-specific projects with artists working across the globe.

Her previous roles include Artistic Director of The Shepherd; Co-Curator of Counterpublic Triennial 2023, Senior Curator at New York's Public Art Fund; Visiting Curator at The University of Tulsa; and Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. She also held a curatorial position with New Orleans' international art triennial, Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp. She gained broad acclaim for curating the pathbreaking 2021 exhibition Promise, Witness, Remembrance at Louisville, Kentucky's Speed Art Museum.