Curating.info

Guest editor, Mathew Poole
Contributions by Amanda Beech, Roger M. Buergel, Bridget Crone, Andrew Hunt, Jaspar Joseph Lester, Matthew Poole, Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson


Open to submission from those involved in education at postgraduate and doctorate level within visual arts, The Journal of Visual Art Practice provides a platform for issues to be discussed in a public sphere and has established a reputation for supporting and disseminating in-depth scholarly, developmental, applied and pedagogical research within the visual arts.

Although the journal encompasses both the theoretical and the practical and encourages debates that are relevant across visual art disciplines, Volume 9 No. 2 is the first to focus specifically on curating. This special issue has been guest edited by Matthew Poole, Programme Director of The Centre for Curatorial Studies at The University of Essex. He presents an introduction to his research project on the topic of anti-Humanist curating and has invited seven distinguished contributors to discuss their own take on the subject.

Underlying Poole’s project is an exploration of the limitations and problems of Liberal Humanist ideology and politics in relation to curatorial practices. He highlights that curatorial practices and discourses are largely dominated by Liberal Humanist ethics: institutions emphasise the ‘social value’ of contemporary art, and so therefore the curator is put in the position of having to realise these ‘socially beneficial’ goals. In the opening essay, Matthew Poole introduces these ideas and suggests that they may be explored and expanded to consider how curatorial practice can continue to have a political role, whilst avoiding becoming a pawn in a Neo-Liberal Post-Fordist Capitalist political agenda.

Contributions by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Maria Lind and Jens Hoffman, originally slated to be part of this issue, didn’t materialise for the final publication, however the journal still has an impressive breadth of focused arguments and debates. The collection of essays build up a strong body of research and thought that reflects the conversations each of the contributing curators have had with Poole and binds all their specialist areas of interest together.

The first three essays - by Buergel, Crone and Beech - each approach the issue of the image and how it is implicated through curatorial practice from different standpoints, and collectively build a persuasive case as to how curatorial practice regularly undermines art work as well as suggesting ways in which this can be avoided.
In the first contribution, Roger M. Buergel discuses ambiguous affiliations between the known and the unknowable in the work of Alejandra Reira and its display, and, in its ability to evoke the subjectivity of history, suggests her work as a case study for anti-humanist exhibition-making.

Bridget Crone further develops this investigation into ambiguity and the image, in her essay ‘The Image; Disaffect in the theatre of representation’. She explores the possibility of the image without a dependency upon a relationship with a human subject or viewer, using the examples of The Otolith Group, Hito Steyerl, Rabih Mroué, Gail Pickering and Tom Nicholson, and subsequently offers a model of curating where structure and methodology are the focus rather than the binding of affective processes usually used to experience the image.

The third essay, written by Amanda Beech, brings together the previous two contributions by exploring curatorial style specifically, proposing further questions about scepticism and doubt that regularly underlies critical curatorial practices today and the subsequent political implications.

Andrew Hunt compares his own experience of curating in locations on the periphery to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guartttari’s book Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature in order to suggest how ‘minor curating’ could counteract the hegemonic curatorial practice. He argues that an ethical approach to exhibition making that involves affirmative modes of critical humour and humility will encourage critical effectiveness in curatorial practice, as well as help avoid curatorial narcissism and tensions between utopian, social and political thoughts on display.

Jasper Joseph-Lester, taking a looser, but nevertheless poignant, approach to the subject matter, discusses the ‘curation’ of public space, in his essay ‘Non-relational regimes of urban modernisation’. Through an exploration of urban planning proposals for Coventry in the 1940s and again in 2008, he argues that gaining the support of ‘the public’ is imperative for urban development, yet a real socially-engaged dialogue is false; instead urban planning simply embodies a political construct. The inclusion of this essay jolts us into considering the entire curatorial debate in the context of wider political hegemony.

The final essay in the publication, ‘Curatorial counter-rhetorics and the educational turn’ by Mick Wilson and Paul O’Neill, gives an overview of the changing relationships that curators have had towards educational discourse, provoked by ‘moral panics’ throughout Europe and the US since the 1960. Wilson and O'Neill insightfully explore how this ‘educational turn’ has impacted on the programming and rhetoric used by both art and educational institutions, reinforced by a culture of reputational economy, and attempts to counter-act this with experimental educational structures.

Whilst the journal is not widely available, this issue is definitely worth trying to get your hands on. Poole has instigated a thorough discussion of what is an increasingly relevant topic in current curatorial practice throughout Europe and North America as more and more publicly funded institutions have to fight to prove their public benefit. Poole’s essay and dialogue with the contributors is only an introduction to a much larger research project which we will no doubt expect more from in future.

The journal can be bought from: http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=131/view,page=1/



Preceeding the Journal of Visual Art Practice’s invitation to Matthew Poole as guest editor, two related seminars were held where the issues were thrashed out. They are definitely worth a listen:

Seminar #1:
Held at Goldsmiths College in July 2010, before the publication, Poole introduces his research and writer and critic, Robert Garnett presents his paper, ‘Humour, Deleuze, and the possibility of a Curation of Humour’, followed by a discussion with the audience.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20688258/AHC%20Goldsmiths%208thJuly2010.mp3


Seminar #2:
The second seminar was held at Whitechapel Gallery, in conjunction with the launch of the publication with Roger M. Buergel, Bridget Crone, Anselm Franke, and Matthew Poole in discussion:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20688258/AHC%20Whitechapel%2025thNov2010.m4v

What Makes A Great Exhibition?

Edited by Paula Marincola, Director of the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative (PEI).

Essays by Glenn Adamson, Paola Antonelli, Carlos Basualdo, Iwona Blazwick, Lynne Cooke, Thelma Golden, Mary Jane Jacob, Jeffrey Kipnis, Paula Marincola, Detlef Mertins, Mark Nash, Ralph Rugoff, Ingrid Schaffner and Robert Storr.


Supposedly we don’t judge a book by its cover, and with this publication we should give its title the same respect. The Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative has continually challenged arts professionals to devise exhibitions of high artistic merit by posing them with this deceptively simple sounding question: What makes a great exhibition?

The dialogue surrounding exhibitions is invariably based on theme and content. Having recently evaluated MA curating courses, I was surprised to find that syllabi too usually focus on the conceptual development of exhibitions rather than the practical tools of creating them.

Seeking to provoke this reflection beyond their direct constituency, Marincola poses this question of ‘what makes a great exhibition’ to fourteen highly distinguished curators and leading professionals in the field in an attempt to uncover the instinctive considerations and processes that they have developed through experience. Marincola also seeks to illustrate how curatorial objectives collide with the reality of practicalities in exhibition making. Refreshingly, the editor realizes that as contemporary art exhibitions attract larger and more diverse audiences this is a debate that should be readily accessible. The book therefore allows a rare behind the scenes look at exhibition making for a readership that reaches beyond curating professionals.

Each contributor responds to the question from different perspectives and experiences. Ranging from past Documenta curators and Venice Biennale commissioners, to directors of some of the world’s most prestigious museums and influential galleries, the contributors have been responsible for an impressive canon of important exhibitions. Each of these exhibitions has been individually evaluated through official texts, publications, and events, as well as through the press and media. In this anthology however, Marincola asks the contributors to think about common denominators shared in the successes - or indeed failures - of these projects, how they are produced, and their concepts formed.

Marincola has outlined the expanded complexities of the publication title question in a series of leading sub questions. These relate to all elements of exhibition development and realisation, such as marrying exhibition concept with artist's intentions; placing of works in relation to each other as well as the architectural framework; formal presentation and supporting text; catalogue and legacy; and the varying roles of and relationships between curator, institution and artist within these processes of decision making.

Outlined on the cover, Marincola reveals an expanded list of questions that she had posed to the contributors. Printed also on an inserted bookmark, the reader is prompted to continually refer back to these points of interest. Despite the authority of the essays, this transparency in the guiding questions of the publication allows the reader to participate in the dialogue and encourages us to create our own responses.

The breadth of the subject matter creates a dilemma for those attempting responses; the contributors’ styles vary considerably. Some answer in theory only, without relating to examples. This could run the risk of vague statements, sounding more like an instruction manual, the ‘how-to’ of curating. However, for example, Robert Storr's thoroughness hits the nail on the head with each of his poignant statements, referring to issues that those working in the industry are all too familiar with. He highlights the curator's pivotal role in balancing the pressures from artists, institutions, gallerists, and so on, as well as practical limitations of budget, space and those things outside of our control, whilst staying true to the original curatorial concept of the exhibition.

Others use media-specific examples to illustrate their answers. Mark Nash's exploration of the difficulties of curating film and video (as opposed to programming), is in balanced contrast to Glenn Adamson’s discussion on craft, and Ingrid Schaffner composes an inspiringly in-depth investigation into the experiential impact of wall text and labeling.

Architectural space is an underlying issue throughout the anthology of essays. This is extended to place and locality as Iwona Blazwick reflects on a century of exhibitions at Whitechapel Gallery in London.

Balancing the influences of conflicting interests is another issue that surfaces throughout. Ralph Rugoff’s debate on group shows is particularly thought-provoking; posing the question of whether a group show of bad art can only be a bad show and whether it is possible to make a great show with only great art works. Carlos Basualdo’s criticism of the lack of critical context to influential biennials and megashows holds an interesting dialogue with Thelma Golden’s essay on the politics of ethnically specific exhibitions.

For me, the key highlights were the moments when the authors directly encapsulate their answer to the question - for example, Mark Nash's poetic summary that 'the notion of a series of emotional and intellectual encounters that are montaged to form an organised, thematic sequence is at the heart of every great exhibition and every great experience of an exhibition'.

The breadth of the publication title allows for practical as well as emotive and personal responses. The contributors’ texts are interesting insights into how they individually view their role in the creation of an exhibition, and act as introductions to much larger discussions. The further debate that it promises to lead to is enticing; no doubt Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative will continue to thrash out these questions that underpin exhibition-making in future publications and events. I look forward to following their developments.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, renowned art world figure who hangs out at the top of the ArtReview Power 100 (which is indicative of something, no matter what one thinks of that list) released a book of interviews with eleven pioneer curators entitled A Brief History of Curating. Despite his status as super-curator, whilst reading this book the larger-than-life personality named on the front cover will fade into the background, as Obrist wields a light touch throughout.

The interview format is a tricky one to master. I attempted to include interviews as a key feature of Curating.info (see my interviews with Karen Gaskill and Alissa Firth-Eagland), but I put the series on permanent hiatus precisely because the format is demanding on both the interviewer and the interviewee. Interviewers are susceptible to overt attempts to appear clever with unnecessarily ornate questions (one envisions a desperate goose trying to lay a golden egg) and interviewees can veer on the side of over-cautiousness in their responses.

Obrist takes the interview format and works it well. He name drops, but rarely does the reader get the sense that he's doing it gratuitously. Obrist sometimes refers to other interviews that he's included in this book when posing questions, which cleverly develops links between the otherwise discrete stories for the reader. His questions are mostly brief and keep the focus off of him and where it belongs, which is on his subjects. He takes a difficult form that looks easy, and makes it look really easy.

Readers will be appreciative that he is so expert at orchestrating these conversations, because the subjects are truly fascinating. The curators interviewed in the book mostly began their careers in the 60s and 70s, and some of them are now deceased. The book intentionally focuses on this time period, which is not far behind us at all, but feels like a different planet compared to the contemporary art world today: Pontus Hulten describes bringing a "Mondrian to the gallery in a taxicab"; Jean Leering recounts jumping from studying architecture and doing military service to becoming Director of the Van Abbemuseum. While some of those stories are extraordinary and highlight difference, other interviews show that little is changed as well, for good and for ill: Walter Zanini describes how it is "normal" for museum officials to work collaboratively with artists, something that happens routinely today; and Lucy Lippard described protests at MoMA over "neglect of women artists" (among other things), a situation which definitely persists. One cannot help but read the situations described by the curators in the book and speculate on how these same situations might be handled today, and this is fine: it helps us understand what the past was like, get to grips with what our situation is like now, and imagine what ideal amalgam of past and present attitudes we might hope to forge for the future.

This book is definitely for those embedded in the art world. There are too many key exhibitions and historical moments and figures mentioned by both Obrist and his interviewees to make the book accessible to a wider public. That said, in a time of "for Dummies" manuals on one end and highly academic texts on the other, it's wonderful to have a book that is simply an informative and easygoing read, with the interviews so smoothly woven together, and yet still for a specialised audience.

More info and to buy: A Brief History of Curating by Hans Ulrich Obrist

New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art is a collection of essays edited by Christiane Paul (curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art), addressing several topics of concern to new media art curators. The twelve essays cover the full range of territory that curators will encounter, from understanding how artists use the medium to considering how to preserve works far into the future.

Paul's introduction to the book is a solid briefing for curators interested in new media art but who haven't ventured far into this area yet, and it also usefully summarises the many issues in the field for veteran new media curators. Though each essay is generous with concrete examples, a case studies section is also included. The case studies provide intense and practical examinations of detail which also serve to bolster the points made in the essays.

The book focuses on addressing the proverbial elephant in the room when it comes to new media and museums, which could be glibly summed up as "why don't museums get it?". As the introduction explains and several essays reiterate, museums are in the business of presentation, interpretation, and conservation, and the very nature of new media art makes those three actions difficult. In Jon Ippolito's essay "Death by Wall Label", he says "Like a shark, a new media artwork must keep moving to survive". Museums in their current configuration are clearly a little more at ease with a stationary shark (in the natural history wing, stuffed; or in the contemporary art wing, preserved nicely in formaldehyde, perhaps?) rather than the restless shark-like character of new media. There is no "set it and forget it" if you are in the business of presenting this kind of work.

So what can be done? Several of the contributors offer concrete ways of addressing the gap. Sarah Cook proposes some metaphors for curatorial thinking around these exhibitions: exhibition as software programme/data flow; exhibition as trade show; and exhibition as broadcast. Metaphor and analogy is a tool used throughout, by multiple contributors: Sara Diamond also uses the metaphor of flows in her essay; Caitlin Jones and Carol Stringari use the analogy of removing old, darkened varnish from a nineteenth-century painting when considering the challenges in conserving media works. The heavy use of metaphor and analogy, and making direct links to traditional conservation as Jones and Stringari do with their painting example, will surely make the issues seem less alien to those who are relative newcomers to the presentation and conservation of new media.

Overall this book is an excellent reference and insight into new media from leading thinkers such as Sarah Cook, Jon Ippolito, Charlie Gere, Sara Diamond, and Christiane Paul herself.

More info and to order: New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art

Recently I was interviewed by Annette Wolfsberger for LabforCulture, about this blog and my conception of art blogging in Europe. It's the beginning of a new series on cultural blogging. They ask: "Who blogs? What are they blogging about? Which audiences and communities are being engaged? What are the language-specific issues and the economic models? And how sustainable are they?"

Perhaps it's a bit 'meta', but I thought it worthwhile to point out this interview about Curating.info on the excellent culture portal LabforCulture, which is just the start of a series, and I will note that there is another great interview as part of the launch of this effort with Claire Welsby of InterventTech.

Happy reading!

The San Francisco Art Institute has a podcast series entitled "Dialogues". Two podcasts in this series may interest Curating.info readers: one featuring Laura Hoptman, and another featuring Carlos Basualdo.

Laura Hoptman curated the 2004 Carnegie International exhibition in Pittsburgh and Drawing Now: Eight Propositions at the Museum of Modern Art, Queens. In her talk, Hoptman discusses her interest in artwork that explores big questions: those of life, death, and the meaning of the universe. Carlos Basualdo is the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and an Adjunct Professor at the IUAV University in Venice, Italy. He was a co-founder (with Hans Ulrich Obrist) of the Union of the Imaginary, an online forum for the discussion of issues pertaining to curatorial practice. These podcasts are long and feature lengthy introductions, so better to listen to these when you have a bit of time.

Veteran podcasters Bad at Sports teamed up with Side Street Projects to present a 10-part podcast series entitled "What Do Curators Want?" that covers best professional practices for contemporary visual artists. While the podcasts are definitely aimed at artists (and give some terrific concrete tips to artists), the messages about professional practices are often applicable both ways. Far from theoretical talks, these short, practical discussions might be useful to curators too. Of particular interest may be hearing how the featured curators in these podcasts discuss perennial issues such as artistic quality and different types of exhibitions and exhibition venues. Compare their views to yours!

Frieze Foundation (the good folks who bring us the Frieze Art Fair, Frieze Magazine, and other goodies) also have a great podcast series. One of their recent podcasts, Cultural Cartography: Does Art Travel? is a discussion chaired by Philippe Vergne (new director of the DIA Art Foundation in NYC, former Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Walker Art Center) focusing on whether art can really speak across borders. What happens when the local becomes global? Vergne, in his introduction, questions whether we are really taking advantage of international connections and jokes that this podcast could have alternatively been titled "Pasta or chicken?", echoing that familiar refrain on long haul flights. It's a strong panel and well worth downloading.

Happy listening!

On-Curating.org is an independent international web-journal focusing on questions around curatorial practise and theory.

For the inaugural issue, the editors asked thirty-one curators a series of questions around what topics in curating they would most like to see discussed, about key resources online, and about exhibitions and peers that have influenced them.

"We have written to professionals, whose position in curating, in the arts and in theory we think most interesting and challenging in contemporary discussion. We invited a broad selection of art-world figures, curators we find critical, artist-curators and other interesting people from our direct networks."

On-curating.org is published by Dorothee Richter. The concept was developed by Dorothee Richter in cooperation with Maren Brauner, Johanna Franco Bernet, Barnaby Drabble, Irene Grillo, Petra Haider, Damian Jurt, Christoph Kern, Wolf Schmelter, Thomas Zacharias. Supported by Postgraduate Program in Curating, Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts (ICS), Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).

I listen to a lot of podcasts, mostly while I am walking around the city. I have come across some real gems in a number of subject areas, and thought I would share a few of the recent ones I've listened to that are relevant to curators with you.

Bad at Sports with Hou Hanru:
Hou Hanru is currently the Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs at the San Francisco Art Institute, and he is also a renowned curator who has curated numerous major international shows. Starting at approximately the 10 minute mark, the interview with Hou Hanru begins with a discussion of his education and how he came to be a curator. Other topics discussed include how self-organisation is a hallmark of both his career and of contemporary times, the relationship between artist and curator, and the "voice" of the curator.

Yale University with Robert Storr: (apologies for the indirect link -- scroll down the page to access the podcast with Storr)
Robert Storr is interviewed about his latest appointment, as Dean of the School of Art at Yale University. He discusses how his work as a curator and critic impacts his thinking in his current role. There are many pearls of wisdom in this podcast, one of my favourites being this statement: "...a career is not how many shows you have on your resume, it is what happens between one work of art and the next." Here Storr is referring to an artist's career, but I think the sentiment also applies to curators.

Bad at Sports with Stephanie Smith:
In this podcast, Stephanie Smith, Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smart Museum in Chicago, speaks eloquently about the works in the current exhibition on at the Smart, Adaptation. The podcast focuses quite intently on the exhibition itself, rather than Smith's practice as a curator generally. However, it is a very intelligent and interesting discussion of the work, and the conversation does touch on Smith's curatorial intentions, and on how she had to consider the way the work was presented in the Museum.

blogTO with Jacob Korczynski:
At around the 21 minute mark, curator Jacob Korczynski talks about his experiences in the Curatorial Incubator programme at Vtape, a centre for artist's video in Toronto. Jacob talks about how he researched and selected the video artists he selected for his programme.

More of these to come as I get through my playlists. Happy listening!

[In these upcoming reviews, I'll be highlighting books, podcasts, exhibitions, periodicals, and other items that I think are of particular interest to curators and those concerned with curatorial issues.]

Ideas is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's premier radio programme of contemporary thought. Their podcast highlights the best of the Ideas programmes. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for their podcast here. Their latest podcast release is a fascinating lecture by cultural critic Adam Gopnik entitled: To Sit or to Talk?.

Adam Gopnik discusses the future of museums by pondering a question that he recently asked his kids: Do you prefer theatres, where you can sit? Or museums, where you can talk? Gopnik was delivering the 2006 Eva Holtby Lecture at the Royal Ontario Museum.

His lecture discusses the evolution of musuems, from (as he puts it, in his very alliterative way) the mausoleum, to the machine, to the metaphor/mall. The lecture is an easy listen, and the evolution he speaks of is well delineated. My only contention with what he says is that it is all a little too neat, too pat. He is keen to isolate the museum into these stages of development, but it is clear that all three stages he speaks of still exist and share the same environment within which to survive. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on his lecture.