In the fall of 2016, water protectors at Standing Rock used an unusual form of artistic protest while resisting law enforcement personnel. They held plywood shields covered with reflective Mylar, angled so that police officers approaching them saw their own reflections. The action was part of the Mirror Shield Project, initiated by the contemporary artist Cannupa Hanska Luger.

The most general approach to define art is to view it as the deliberate creation of objects or experiences with formal, expressive, or imaginative value. As a rule, art is assessed for its creative qualities rather than its practical utility. Yet, this definition quickly becomes difficult to defend if you find yourself in a room with Duchamp’s urinal on a plinth. So, how have people tried to answer this question, and what are the limitations of their definitions?

Graffiti and street art have traditionally relied on a distinct form of artist identification. Creatives used tags as their names, with repeated, recognizable imagery often substituting for formal attribution. However, problems with this form of identification arose as street art gained formal market recognition and artists began building reputations in the salesroom.

Ask curators where art belongs, and the answer will often be philosophical. That’s why experimentation with spaces for art exhibitions has been ongoing for many decades. Explore some interesting examples of non-traditional exhibition spaces, each chosen with a specific purpose.

The provocative and still appealing nature of conceptual art lies partly in the ambiguity of ownership and authorship. Let’s look at Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings as an example. A wall drawing can arrive at a museum in an envelope containing a diagram, instructions, and a certificate. The instructions cover everything from the color palette and line thickness to density and wall specifications. Once the exhibition is over, the wall can be painted over. So, is LeWitt’s artwork destroyed? Not exactly.

For decades, the global art marketplace has been concentrated in established cultural centers such as New York, London, and Hong Kong. Today, however, wealthy Gulf countries are reshaping the map of the international art world, with new hubs of growing global significance emerging across the region.