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Townhouse Curatorial Program, Cairo, Egypt
Application deadline: January 20, 2008

The Townhouse Gallery of contemporary art would like to invite professionals with a demonstrated interest in curatorial practice, critical writing or arts management to apply for an arts management/curatorial program. The course will be taught by cultural practitioners from Spain, the UK, Egypt and the broader Middle East region throughout 2008, on a part-time basis so as to accommodate those currently in employment.

The program has been designed based on feedback gathered during a pilot curatorial workshop at the Townhouse Gallery in 2007 and will be structured around a series of modules on contemporary art theory, criticism, fundraising, and innovative curatorial practices. All modules will consist of presentations by guest practitioners followed by seminars during which participants will have the opportunity to discuss and get first-hand feedback on an arts project they are currently developing. Program participants will be given reading materials in advance and will be required to work on a curatorial proposal throughout the year. At the end of the course, students will re- submit their curatorial proposals and the guest teachers will choose one project to be presented at The Townhouse Gallery.

Continue reading "Opportunity: Townhouse Curatorial Program"

Astria Suparak, a US-based curator, noted in a recent public letter that her role as a "citizen and as a curator is to enrich the communities in which I live and work, through engaging, exciting, and relevant creative work." I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly, and I'd also add that taking these actions involves an intimate knowledge of the context that one occupies and a willingness to take calculated risks. It should also be further noted that very often, curators do not work independently, and therefore institutions that employ curators are bound to support these creative risks if they truly desire to engage in a dynamic discourse around contemporary art.

Suparak was the Director of the Warehouse Gallery at Syracuse University, until she was dismissed from her post on September 30, 2007. Her supervisor, Jeffrey Hoone, Executive Director of the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers (CMAC), said the reason for her dismissal was that the gallery was being "restructured".

According to the New York Times:

Carole Brzozowski, the dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, said the content of gallery shows organized by Ms. Suparak had nothing to do with her dismissal. But people in the arts at Syracuse, including university art teachers, asserted that the ouster was related to risk-taking or innovative exhibitions she organized since becoming the director last year.

Ms. Suparak said of Mr. Hoone: "My aesthetic is very different from his. I'm interested in street art, riot grrl and D.I.Y. aesthetics." A sign at the entrance to the gallery's current show, "Come On: Desire Under the Female Gaze," reads, "This exhibition contains work generally intended for mature audiences." Ms. Suparak said it was posted at Mr. Hoone's behest.

The case of Ms. Suparak's dismissal posits very serious questions vis à vis some basic aspirations and assumptions about creative curatorial practice. As an example, in a recent interview with curator Sarah Cook, the interviewer asks (and I'm paraphrasing quite a bit) about what conditions would be considered nurturing for a curator. (The interviewer, Régine Debatty, asks specifically: "What are the conditions required to achieve "upstart media bliss"?") Ms. Cook responds: "Challenging the system - be it the art system, the museum, or the format of the exhibition - and not being afraid to take a risk (generally being an upstart). At the same time, remembering to take care of the artist and the work, take care of other people and your ethics. Creating situations for contemplation and reflection (bliss doesn't have to be monumental, it might only last a minute, but a minute worth remembering)."

I think that this quotation from Ms. Cook says it best - what better way to achieve bliss than to challenge the system, take risks, and yet simultaneously remain steadfast to your standards. In an institution where the curator has to answer to management, it is imperative that management support the sort of calculated, intelligent risks a professional curator would make. If Ms. Suparak's case is as it seems based on the available evidence, it appears that there was a failure in this relationship - this commitment to producing catalytic moments and entry points for dialogue in contemporary art, by making moves that are not always "safe". These failures are worrying, as they don't bode well for the continued enrichment of cultural experience - which means everyone, not just the curators involved, loses out.

Happy new year! I hope your holiday was a good and restful one. I was so rested I nearly didn't get this out in time... but here it is - the latest Pick 'N Mix!

• "Top ten" and other summary lists were thick on the ground as 2007 closed out. A few of my favourites in the art realm are New York Magazine's 2007 Culture Awards, the Guardian's Top Ten list (including a few turkeys and special awards), 2007's highlights according to the New York Times, and the top 100 cultural highlights of the year, selected by the CBC. Also, a last minute addition - check out curator Hans Ulrich Obrist's answer to the question "What have you changed your mind about?" at edge.org.


• MC2 is a really smart project by two very interesting curators. Mark Coetzee (Miami) and Mark Clintberg (Montreal) use SMS messages to exchange information and formulate a text around art exhibitions that they saw together. Crediting writing to "MC", their shared initials, they produce probing texts on contemporary art that also question notions of authorship. The final texts are then distributed via the web on their project website.


• I don't want to give you the impression that I am obsessed by curators producing projects in hotels, but... I couldn't resist mentioning a recent "curating contest" that took place in L'hôtel La Louisiane in Paris. Fourteen curators were each randomly assigned one room in the hotel, given a month to ponder the concept and the space, and then given ten days to mount an exhibition in that room. You can see the full list of participants and more details at the website of the gallerist who devised the contest, Olivier Robert.

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to announce a call for entries for the Hall Curatorial Fellowship, an eighteen-month fellowship for an international curator. The Hall Fellow is responsible for curating an original exhibition in keeping with The Aldrich's mission of leadership in the exhibition of significant and challenging contemporary art with an emphasis on emerging and mid-career artists. The Museum is located in Ridgefield, Connecticut, 50 miles outside New York City. The Hall Fellow will be chosen by an independent jury of distinguished art world professionals, including Carlos Basualdo of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Bonnie Clearwater of the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; and Sir Norman Rosenthal of the Royal Academy, London.

The Fellow will work with The Aldrich's curatorial team to develop his/her exhibition, oversee its installation, and collaborate with Museum staff to develop programming and an exhibition catalogue. To be eligible for the Hall Curatorial Fellowship, an applicant must be an art professional with a focus on contemporary art, and a citizen of a country other than the United States of America. The applicant must currently live and work in a country other than the United States, be proficient in English, have prior experience as a curator or co-curator of at least three professional exhibitions of contemporary art, and be able to travel to the United States.

The Hall Fellow will receive a stipend of $25,000 USD over the eighteen-month period of the Fellowship, from June 1, 2008, to December 31, 2009. The exhibition will be on view at The Aldrich from September 2009 through February 2010. Applications for the Hall Curatorial Fellowship are due at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum no later than February 15, 2008. Selected applicants will be invited for interviews at The Aldrich during March and April 2008. For full information and complete application materials, please visit the Aldrich website. Questions regarding the Hall Fellowship should be addressed to fellowship -at- aldrichart.org

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is grateful for the generosity of the Andrew J. and Christine C. Hall Foundation, which endowed the Hall Curatorial Fellowship.

Curating a Second Life by Daniele Balit
October 26, 2007; 8:00 pm, Skopje
Contact for more info: Tel: +389 2 3228 594 Email: presstoexit [at] on.net.mk

The word “avatar” derives from the Sanskrit term Avatāra, meaning “incarnation” and today, it commonly designates the identity assumed for exploring virtual worlds and online communities such as Second Life. The avatar is not only a tool or a threshold to the virtual, but often becomes an incarnation of desires. It represents the will to be different or, at least, the illusion of holding the threads of existence. At this point, the boundaries between ‘the virtual’ and perceived realities start to become very porous.

The lecture will introduce Daniele Balit’s curatorial practice and will focus on Second Night, an exhibition curated together with the French artist Christophe Bruno, for the recent Nuit Blanche (White Night) in Paris. As part of the lecture artworks by Yona Friedman, Claude Closky, Miltos Manetas, Andreas Angelidakis, Alain della Negra and Kaori Kinoshita will be presented and discussed.

Daniele Balit (Rome, 1976) is a freelance curator and art critic based in Paris. He is a PHD researcher at La Sorbonne with a research on the intersections between sound based art and experimental music. He is a founding member of 1:1 projects, established in January 2006, which functions as a platform for cultural production based in Rome and London. 1:1 projects are devoted to promote art projects, artists and artistic practices. Balit has developed projects and collaborations with different institutions, including Fondazione Pistoletto (Biella), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), CNEAI (Paris), Careof (Milan), NICC and MUHKA (Antwerp). He is currently a guest of the Visiting Curatorial Initiative (VCI) programme at press to exit project space. (via)

I've noted of late that the term "open source" gets bandied about quite a bit, not just in technology-related industries, but also increasingly in the art world. To be sure, some systems in the art world, including curatorial processes, are very open and transparent. Is it stretching it a bit, however, to relate this transparency and receptivity in the art world to the "open source" movement, a crusade mostly associated with software that you can download for free and possibly manipulate before sharing your evolution of the product with others?

Open source (appropriately, as defined by Wikipedia) "...is a set of principles and practices that promote access to the design and production of goods and knowledge. The term is most commonly applied to the source code of software that is available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent intellectual property restrictions. This allows users to create software content through incremental individual effort or through collaboration."

OK, so that's our basic definition. The Wikipedia article goes on to state: "The open source model of operation can be extended to open source culture in decision making, which allows concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities, in contrast with more centralized models of development [...] ." If we agree with this, that does seem to answer our question about the use of the term - it can be applied as a model to nearly anything. What, then, have been the interesting examples of late that cause me to go trawling on Wikipedia for definitions of open source? Let's look at them one by one:

Continue reading "Open Source Curating"