Global Curatorial Futures

For ArtAsiaPacific’s special 25th anniversary issue, we asked Yung Ma, curator of the Contemporary Art and Prospective Creations Department at Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Clara Kim, Daskalopoulos Senior Curator, International Art (Africa, Asia and the Middle East) of Tate Modern, London, to consider the future of curatorial practices, from the lexicon to its geography, the focus of institutional resources and the expanding boundaries of the field of art. The following is an edited version of their conversation.

Although we’ve been asked to talk about the future, let’s first take a step back and start from the present, and explain how the institutions that we work for came to be. In my case, the Centre Pompidou was envisioned as an all-encompassing arts institution, opened in 1977 to renew Paris’s status as a global cultural capital, with the Musee National d’Art Moderne as one of the many components. While the institution is