This five-week course examines concepts that have become increasingly relevant to contemporary artists working in a variety of media over the past 50 years. It concentrates on more recent art, understood against the backdrop of modern art movements. In this class we will look at some of the broader theories, practices, and institutions that have emerged in the contemporary art world. Subjects include aura, the digital, photography, monumental and unmonumental sculpture, new image painting, time, science, the environment, personal and cultural identity, religion and spirituality, memorialization, relational aesthetics, the museum, and festivalism. The course will be more thematic than chronological, and will cover art and artists in the emerging and changing global art market of today.