The Curator as Artist Syllabus
The Curator as Artist Syllabus
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This course surveys historical and contemporary issues in the exhibition and display of art and material culture. The course explores the theory and practice of exhibition production, focusing on the following subjects: the history of collections; the emergence of the modern museum; typologies of exhibition; the rhetoric of exhibition making; art world economies; the role of the curator; the politics of publicity; the global traffic in contemporary art.
Guest editors: Dorothee Richter and Barnaby Drabble. Contributions by: Marianne Eigenheer, Barnaby Drabble, Dorothee Richter, Sarat Maharaj, Beatrice von Bismarck, Per Hüttner and Gavin Wade, Rober M. Buergel and Ruth Noack, Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt, Maria Lind and Paul O'Neill, Oliver Marchart, Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook, Marion von Osten, Sarat Maharaj and Giliane Tawadros, Ute Meta Bauer and Marius Babias, Walter Grasskamp. The reader presents a cross-section of the voices that populate the ongoing debate about, on the one hand, how and in what terms curating functions as a critical cultural practice, and on the other, what methodologies and histories exist with which we can critically analyse curatorial work today. This collection of essays was first published in 2007 by Revolver, in Frankfurt am Main and ICE, Institute for Curatorship and Education, Edinburgh College of Art as the first ICE Reader. Editor: Marianne Eigenheer Guest Editors: Barnaby Drabble and Dorothee Richter
Subsequently published as a special edition of OnCurating
The Phd study, completed in 2010, addresses interest in the role of the curator as author and producer, arguing for the value of shifting critical focus away from curating and towards the exhibition. It proposes that, when thought of in terms of knowledge production, exhibitions are actually constituted by the combined activities of artists, curators, institutions and their publics. With reference to three case studies it examines how exhibitions can be understood as sites of collective negotiation of knowledge, and goes on to question the curatorial role in relation to this new understanding. Beginning with the question ‘How do we talk about curating?’ the study observes the development of curatorial discourse since the beginning of the 1990s. Through analysis of this critical development and the frequent announcements of a crisis in curating, it identifies several perennial points of impasse for the development of the exhibition. The study suggests that these have arisen as the result of a professional model bound to a framework of cultural traditions, which have come to define institutional practice at the beginning of the 21st century. In response to this rigid model, the study proposes an alternative in which the field of exhibition making is understood as a dynamic network of influences, where roles and codes of conduct are interchangeable and hierarchical characteristics prone to continual reconstitution. In this way production in the exhibition field is redefined as not only the making of art objects for display, or the forming of art-experiences but also the reception of these. The study looks in detail at three exhibitions that explore ideas of collective and collaborative methods of production, curated by independent curators between 2003 and 2007. It considers to what extent and at what stages curatorial decisions influenced the forming of temporary communities of practice, concluding by identifying what can be learned from exhibitions when they are observed as experiments in the collective negotiation of knowledge.
This international symposium examined the emerging practice of performing arts curation. Organized by the Arts Curators Association of Québec in partnership with Tangente and the Faculté des arts of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), “Envisioning the Practice” was held in Montréal (Canada) on April 10-13, 2014. Artistic partners Studio 303 and SAT. /La Société des arts technologiques offered performance programming for this special event. An open call for papers in 2012 and 2013 resulted in ninety propositions, and forty-six were chosen by an international blind jury. Thirty-seven of these papers were submitted by their presenters for inclusion in the proceedings. Over the last thrity-five years, numerous conferences, organizations, publications and graduate university programs have been devoted to developing the profession of contemporary visual arts curation. During this period, the concept of “performing arts curation” – a métier variously known as presenter, programmer, artistic direction, creative producer and cultural agent -- has previously been little discussed among practitioners. In 2010, a collection of texts entitled “Curating Performing Arts” was produced by Frakcija Performing Arts Journal No. 55 in Croatia and, in spring 2014, the journal Theater from Yale University in the United States proposed the theme of “performance curators.” An initial meeting of artists and arts curators was organized in 2011 in Essen, Germany and called “Beyond Curating: Strategies of knowledge transfer in dance, performance and visual arts” was held with support from Tanzplan Essen. Additionally, a premier graduate certificate program, the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP), was inaugurated at Wesleyan University (U.S.A) in 2011. Building on these events, “Envisioning the Practice” served to create further parameters and grounds on which to foster theories about the practice. This symposium brought together a wide variety of recent discourses on curation in all performance disciplines (dance/movement, music/sound, theatre/text-based, interdisciplinary, media arts, performance art and emergent practices) in order to enrich, structure and theorize possibilities of curating in these fields, with an interest in “best practices”. Curators (institutional, independent, artist-curators), artists, artistic directors, programmers, presenters, producers, arts administrators, art historians, art critics, scholars and university students proposed papers exposing various aspects of current practices in performing arts curation.
Identity-Exhibitions Reconsidered: exhibiting Indigenous artists in Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture questions the significance and value of group exhibitions based on the identities of non-Western artists by analyzing the exhibition, Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture (2008-2012), as a case study. The growing discourse of identity politics and post-colonial studies brought a need to exhibit artists of non-Western cultures, who have been historically excluded from arts institutions. Multicultural policies were employed, however, the outcomes, at times, performed a disservice to the artists. Effectively, curators segregated non- Western artists from Western artists, burdened the artists as ambassadors of their cultural identity, and essentialized the artworks based on the artist’s identity. As exhibitions centered on cultural identity continue to be curated, discussions and symposiums between scholars, curators and artists seek to uncover suitable and diverse frameworks to exhibit non-Western cultures and if they are still necessary. Methodologically, this dissertation deconstructs Beat Nation in order to query the necessity of identity exhibitions and how to execute a well-curated identity exhibition. Beat Nation exhibited Indigenous artists across North America, exploring the connections between Indigenous cultures, hip-hop and art by examining the works of artists who mix forms of urban culture with Indigenous cultural identities. The exhibition toured across Canada, received critical acclaim and a high number of viewers. Divided into three chapters through a curatorial perspective, this paper examines the context surrounding the exhibition and the reasons for its birth, as well as its framework, the terminology used and the content of the artworks by drawing upon theories of post-colonialism and decolonization. Beat Nation is a model for a well-curated identity exhibition that does not solely focus on Indigenous identities as it moves beyond identity, centering on shared artistic practices through hip-hop and remix culture as the artists Indigenize and decolonize colonial spaces.