The expression ‘Arte Útil’, or ‘Useful Art’, suggests that art can be a tool or device. This concept has been proposed by the artist Tania Bruguera and a group of researchers, museum directors, curators and designers informally gathered in the Association of Useful Art to describe people who, ‘through self-organised groups, individual initiatives or user-generated content develop new methods and social formations to deal with issues that were once the domain of the state.’ For Bruguera and her fellows, these actions are not isolated examples, but part of a history of art as a mechanism of societal transformation that modernism subordinated, and which is urgent to both describe and update as a mode of intervention in the world. This course introduces the notion of Arte Útil through discussions of the following themes: artistic genealogy; criteria; artistic case studies; information sources; theoretical debates; critical terminology; examples of exhibitions; implementation in a museum context.