What is research in the visual arts?

"Based on the 2007 Clark Conference, What Is Research in the Visual Arts? explores fundamental questions, both philosophical and practical, for those working with visual art. What is research, why and how do we do it, and what place does it have in art making and the understanding of art today? Thirteen authors consider the pleasures, passions, and dangers of research and its attendant obsessions and encounters with incoherence, chaos, and wonder. How does the process of inquiry engender meaning? In what complex ways is research bound up with writing, teaching, curating, and making? Why are we obsessed with the idea of research?"--Jacket.