This course examines contemporary art’s most pervasive practices of production, distribution, and consumption: the international art exhibitions. In the recent decades, these exhibitions take place in cities and sites that are not considered traditional cultural centers and their number rapidly increases. Curators explain this pervasive phenomenon as an important mean to decentralize art production and open it to cultural difference by creating a meeting point between local artistic production and international one. In contrary to this view, critics and scholars argue that these spectacular exhibitions mark the complete subjection of art production to global capital and neoliberal rationality that either reduces or commodifies cultural difference. They point out how these mega-exhibitions enhance the global tourism industry and in some cases intensify urban gentrification. The course analyses these critical issues by combining theoretical study in the classroom with experiential visit in one of these international exhibitions. Each year the students visit, together with the class instructor, a different exhibition and in this way will be able to apply theoretical and critical discussions and terms on specific test cases.