Curating.info

If pressed, I suppose I would say that one of my favourite things about art openings is the conversations that take place - since usually the room is too full to really appreciate the art.

Recently I was at an opening in a white cube and ended up chatting to the curator of the show, whose name I usually recognise as an artist. Fuelled by cheap cabernet, I peppered her with questions about how the show came about, why she was trying her hand at curating, etc. Her answer was fascinating in its simplicity: she wanted to curate this show because she was frustrated that the work had toured all over the world, but not shown in the artists' backyards.

I smiled and said something charming enough to keep her talking to me for the next few minutes, and then reflected on what she said quite closely afterward. I found it fascinating - her taking on this mantle of curator that she really wasn't interested in, out of necessity, because the work that she wanted to see simply wasn't being shown.

Her response reminded me a little bit of the DIY curators in Seattle that I blogged about, who were frustrated by being kept out of the system, and therefore began working in a host of different sites to satisfy their desire to present the work that they wanted to see. Once I had compared this reluctant curator's response to the situation of self-identified curators who don't have a white box venue to work in, it occurred to me that their motivations were extremely similar. Don't curators curate because they want to see the work they are bringing in? Because no one else is doing it? Because they think it is important that a certain group of people see a certain set of works? So important, in the case of the Seattle DIY-ers, that they will do it anywhere. So important, in the case of my reluctant curator, that she will step out of her role as an artist to just make it happen.

By force or by choice, some of the fundamental motivations behind curating an exhibition seem the same.

I'm proud to announce the (semi-recent) launch of my latest curatorial effort.

In-Site Montreal is a collection of site-specific art presented on the portal pages of five wireless internet hotspots in the Ile Sans Fil network. Artists Nicolas Fleming, Maria Legault, and Virginie Laganiere have created art works that can be viewed simply by logging in to the Ile Sans Fil network at the selected hotspots. Though the project is best viewed in-situ, you can also view the works produced by the artists for the hotspot locations at the In-Site Montreal micro-site.

I have produced a curatorial text for the project, which I would be grateful for your feedback on, my cherished readers.

The concluding paragraphs of the essay include the following statements:

The virtual spaces that In-site Montreal inhabit are amorphous areas around several accepted gathering places such as cafes, galleries, markets, and bars. They are perhaps places where as an internet user, you may intend to use the opportunity of connectivity to the network to look outward, to read news of distant places or connect with friends far away through e-mails and online social networking sites. The art practice of telematics in particular addresses the creative possibilities when two parties are connected over distance to communicate. In some way, the pieces presented on the portal pages of Ile Sans Fil's network as part of the In-Site Montreal project present something that is almost anti-telematic, in that the works look inward rather than outward. In the case of this project, a connection to someone across the globe is not sought, it is shunned in favour of a further examination and rumination on the details of the local environment.

I'm interested in this idea of the inverse-telematic, the inward-looking, the intensely-local, especially using a tool such as Wi-Fi that we are so accustomed to associate with an outward-looking, nearly-anonymous roaming of virtual terrain.

Thanks to Year Zero One for producing the project, the Canada Council for the Arts for funding the project, Ile Sans Fil for hosting the project, and Rita Godlevskis for designing the map and visual identity of In-Site Montreal.

The terms "curator" and "curating" are being slung around in a wide variety of contexts these days, mostly to do with the curator-as-filter. It is intriguing to see a term that is usually used in a fine arts context to be used in other contexts (in the three cases I mention below: the Web, interior decorating, and metadata) though it can sometime feel as though the word is being appropriated because there is no other term to describe precisely what is going on.

One of the first items like this that caught my eye was an article by Suw Charman on Strange Attractor that I quite enjoyed.

But we don't need gatekeepers anymore. We don't need people who stand between us and our stuff, deciding what to tell us about and what to ignore. We don't need arbiters of taste. [...] What we need are curators. And we need them badly. [...] Curators already exist. Some are people: Bloggers who sift through tonnes of stuff in order to highlight what they like, and who, if you have the same taste as them, can be invaluable to discovering new things to like. Some are aggregators: Site that gather lots of little bits of stuff and present them in aggregation and help us find the bits that the majority find to be good. Some are algorithms: recommendation systems and search.

As I mention earlier, it seems that we need a new word to accurately describe what is involved in filtering and dissecting content for other users of the internet. Is creating a focused list of links curating? Blogging photos of random things - is that curating? Perhaps it is to an extent, but at this time, the role and host of skills that the word "curator" summons to my mind seems a bit flattened when used to describe the function of someone I would call a "filter" (though that sounds quite impersonal and awful - hence I am proposing that a new word needs to be created) would be.

Next, an article that mildly horrified me for its use of the word curating:

For hourly fees generally ranging from $50 to $250, these microdesigners, known in the trade as rearrangers or accessorizers, will regroup the potted plants in the foyer, style the paperweight collection on the coffee table, create vignettes of country-style baskets atop kitchen cabinets or spruce up the presentation of the family china.

With me so far? People who will re-arrange the potted plants in the foyer are "microdesigners". Probably nice, inoffensive work if you can get it. Later in the article however, the c-word crops up:

For Jennifer Wong, 39, the owner of a consulting firm in Portland, Ore., not having to think about the details is "pure bliss." Ms. Wong, whose home is decorated with mid-century furniture, recently enlisted the services of Martie Accuardi, who calls herself a microdesigner and charges $75 an hour, to curate her mantelpiece. Not only does Ms. Accuardi style her client's existing decor, she augments it with pieces she brings in from her small home store. As part of her service, every few months she swaps out the old accessories and brings in new ones, adding seasonal accents.

I was gobsmacked to see that it was possible to curate a mantelpiece. I wonder in this case, if the word actually came out of Jennifer Wong's mouth and was used by the author of the piece but not directly quoted, or if the author of the piece was using her thesaurus and that is how she came up with the concept of the curated mantelpiece.

Playing devil's advocate with myself for a moment, perhaps there is some simplification going on, but the basic function of a curator is to select and choose work - so selecting and choosing items for inclusion in someone's home could be curation. Or again, is what we are talking about here simply filtering? In the first case, filtering scores of links on the web, in the second case, filtering a host of choices at the home decor shop.

Finally, curation comes up on Anil Dash's blog when he loses the metadata associated with his iTunes song library. For him the information that surrounds each song is nearly as important as the song itself, because without that context, he notes that they are no longer his songs. He goes on to say: "Art without curation or creation without witness leaves a work mute."

To that sentiment, it is easy for me to rustle up an "Amen".

Dear readers,
I hope everyone had a restorative and happy holidays.
I'm still easing myself into the new year, and so will make the first entry for 2007 on this blog a lighthearted one.

I propose getting back into (a certain sort) of curatorial headspace by downloading "Curator Defense", a game by David Howe. (It appears to be for PC only).

gHacks describes the game as such:

Pieces of art invade the museum and you have to stop them to prevent them from replacing the master pieces in your museum. It sounds pretty silly but it is actually tremendous fun. You have to place certain structures to slow down and destroy the art that is invading the museum.

The storyline sounds really fun (and perhaps even a bit familiar, to some of us!):

As the longstanding curator of a Museum of Fine Arts, it is your duty to protect the sanctity of its works. Your benefactors stubbornly believe that modern art does not belong in your museum; as your paycheck comes from them, you must uphold their wishes. An association of local curators known as MARTIA (Modern ART Is Art), on the other hand, feels that your museum should reflect a more balanced representation of the art world. [...] Word has reached your museum that tonight is the night MARTIA plans to coordinate a stream of seemingly endless waves of their modern art against your store room. Should any of their work reach your store room, your brain-dead staff will place MARTIA's art on your walls.With an arsenal of their defensive gizmos and gadgets at your side, you should be able to defend your museum. Prevent this attack on your museum from ruining your career; grab your thinking cap and get the job done!

Let me know what you think of the game in the comments.
Happy curating in 2007!

When a curator simply chooses an artist, that isn't news. (Just as a dog biting a man would not be news, either.) But when a man bites a dog, or an artist chooses a curator, we've got more of a story. (Background on the journalistic expression "Man bites dog").

I'm using "Man bites dog" in jest, of course, but it was a phrase that immediately struck me that whilst reading an article by Dana Gilerman I found at Haaretz.com.

Suzanne Landau, a senior curator at the Israel Museum, will curate the Israeli Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in June 2007. A Culture Ministry committee selected artist Yehudit Sasportas six months ago to represent Israel at the event; Sasportas, in turn, chose Landau to curate the exhibit.

An unusual move, I would say. Landau seems to think so as well:

"I have a problem with this method, in which a random group sits and selects an artist," says Landau. "It seems abnormal to me. I think this group could have irrelevant interests, and there have already been cases in the past that proved this. I have also mentioned this more than once to Idit Amichai, the coordinator of the Culture Ministry committee."

What would you suggest instead?

"That the committee choose a curator, as is the practice in other countries and as was done here in the past."

The reasoning for this inversion of process is provided a bit later on, but is glossed over:

There were also ethical problems in the past with regard to the selection of curators. "Then perhaps the problem is that Israel is a small country and there is nothing that can be done about that."

The ethical problems that would blight a selection process for a curator would also no doubt cause problems when selecting an artist. I don't have the knowledge of the art scene in Israel that would allow me to comment on this specific case with special insight. However, I think that the reasoning behind why the process ended up being a "man bites dog/artist chooses curator" situation is quite interesting. Suzanne makes a fair point in her response, but even the largest countries break down into very small art scenes, usually defined by city boundaries, but also sometimes subdivided even further. "Ethical problems" could mar a selection process in a scene of any size. The question is, how do we handle these problems, and is the solution to invert the process entirely?

Recently, I spotted a CNN story about the Louvre "inviting slam poets in to rap about paintings". In what was surely conceived as a PR-double whammy (bring in a celebrity, create a programme that appeals to youth/urban hipsters), Toni Morrison has been invited to be a guest curator this month.

The American Nobel laureate has helped the Louvre conceive a series of lectures, readings, films, concerts, debates and slam poetry that will continue through November 29. All center around her theme "The Foreigner's Home," touching on national identity, exile and the idea of belonging.

Inviting Morrison to the museum was part of Louvre Director Henri Loyrette's outreach to the United States. [...] Loyrette, who took over at the 213-year-old institution in 2001, also has been trying to shake up France's perceptions of the role of museums. "A museum for me is not just a place, it's a place for education, a place with a social role," he said.

I've heard the term "celebrity curator" tossed around quite a bit, and usually with derision. I found this move by the Louvre (rhyming intentional) to be fairly benign, however. It seems part of a larger attempt on the part of the Louvre to fill the social role that Loyrette refers to.

The larger notion of the "celebrity curator" is far more dangerous than the Louvre example I'm citing here. The rather serious role of cultural arbiter that the curator plays ensures that there is an inevitable aura of power and, subsequently, the potential for sexiness that is congruous with the idea of celebrity, but we have to be careful: that power should also not be misused. Hence, while the Louvre's move as it stands is respectable on several levels, even though Morrison is not a formally-trained curator (she has other cultural credentials), I would cringe at handing over a similar role to most actresses or pop musicians. They have cultural credentials of a sort, too, and could expand the audience of a museum, but the danger here is a dilution of a museum's mission to the point of incomprehensibility.

Morrisson's work at the Louvre has also been reported on at the New York Times (much more in-depth article than the CNN story).

Tom Moody brings two examples of the phenomenon of anonymity to our attention in a recent blog post.

Tom first discusses a recent example of the Schirn Kunsthalle's "Anonymous" show, wherein the artists and the curator are anonymous. This example is not as interesting for me as it could be, since at the end of the show the identities of the artists and the curator will be revealed. Rather anti-climactic, since after the show, will it have the same impact? I suppose it depends on the work, as always.

Tom cites an earlier example of the same concept:

Harlem's Triple Candie gallery also did an "anonymous" series in 2004 and 2005, consisting of two shows by artists whose identities won't be revealed (ever, according to co-gallerist Peter Nesbett.) The curatorial intent was essentially the same--"reaction to pernicious branding of artists in the contemporary art world"--although Triple Candie framed it more thoughtfully as an issue of "how biography informs interpretation." The shows weren't obscure: one was reviewed by Ken Johnson in the New York Times and the gallerists mentioned them in an interview they gave in Flash Art interview in this summer.

Escaping how "biography informs interpretation" is one thing, but it then leaves one wondering about the flipside of this problem - where is the accountability? Nothing creates accountability like putting your name to something.

The problem is actually bigger and harder to unpick than that simple set of diametric opposites I just proposed. For example, it is sometimes the case that curators at large institutions are simply part of staff and their name isn't necessarily attached to each piece of collateral that is released pertaining to a particular exhibition. In that case, it might be a bit harder to find the information, but usually with a bit of digging one can make an educated guess which person on staff it was.

Curatorial collectives pose a similar ambiguity - the information is there, but it remains slightly obscured who did what, who exactly chose a particular artist, etc. I've participated in a number of co-curatorial situations where the internal methods we used were not explained to prospective artists in the shows, and perhaps that lack of transparency chafed. I'm not sure.

I think that the bottom line for me is that as I study these examples, I'm finding that I like a transparent approach more and more. There is something very appealing about being able to put a face, name, and background to decisions. Biography does inform interpretation, perhaps, but isn't context such as biography an essential part of the puzzle? Or, as Sally McKay noted in the comments on Tom's post, it is important "to follow the development of one indvidual's practice as an evolving project". I think that a long-term narrative in one's practice is something to strive for, and that potential narrative is undercut by anonymity and obfuscation of roles.

Seth Godin is a marketing guru who has published numerous books and has an excellent blog. I'm not a marketer nor a businessperson with a product to sell, but I read his blog anyways because I find the underlying psychology of marketing to be quite interesting. In the end, it's all about how people relate to people, a topic that should interest anyone who has to interact with people on a daily basis (which is probably 99% of us).

Usually the content on his blog is relevant to me on this fundamental level of human psychology, not as a curator or arts administrator directly. In one of his recent posts, however, Godin has some direct critiques for curators at museums:

I think in every single case, what keeps museums from being remarkable:

a. the curators think the item on display is the whole thing. As a result, they slack off and do less than they should in creating an overall story

b. they assume that visitors are focused, interested and smart. They are rarely any of the three. As a result, the visit tends to be a glossed over one, not a deep one or a transcendent one

c. science museums in particular almost beg people NOT to think.

I can't remember the last time a museum visit made my cry, made me sad or made me angry (except at the fact that they don't try hard enough).

Definitely some food for thought in there, though probably echoes of criticisms we are all well aware of. Godin wraps the post by saying:

The takeaway for me is that in fact the issues of storytelling and remarkability and respect are universal, whether you're a non-profit or a job-seeker. It's all people, all the time.

This is true, and why it is relevant for curators and arts administrators to look to other disciplines, like marketing, for new approaches from time to time.

Perhaps it is every curator's nightmare - the gallery closes your show less than 24 hours after it opens.

The Gene Culture exhibition at Egg Space Gallery in Liverpool opened on August 9. The show is part of a broader research project by curator Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney, analysing perceptions of genetics in postmodern society. The Gene Culture exhibition contained a range of work in a variety of media, from photographs to animal parts. The show was closed down because of apparent concerns over a vegetarian restaurant being in the same building as the gallery (in case the animal parts escape?), and a skirmish over a performance at the opening event.

Ms Sweeney, a performance artist and graduate of Liverpool John Moores University, said she was disappointed with the decision.

"We had selected 10 international artists from 250 submissions and the standard of art was very high."

Artist Carrie Reichardt had her performance art piece, Pinky and Perky, banned on opening night. She was due to have worn pigs' heads in place of a bra.

Read the news article here.

Of course, this could be viewed as a blessing or a curse. The show will possibly live on and travel to other locations, and if the truism "there's no such thing as bad press" is to be believed, then one could conclude it's hard to buy the kind of press that a show being censored brings on.

The overreaction on the part of the controlling interests in the Gene Cultures case reminds me of the case from a few years ago of the Terminal 5 exhibition, curated by Rachel K. Ward, that also barely got past the vernissage.

Once again, nervous figures of authority (in this case, a sponsor of the exhibition, Jet Blue Airlines) objected to a work by Vanessa Beecroft featuring nearly naked black women with chains around their feet. Obviously a striking image, and a political statement that the sponsors balked at. Once again, an opening night party went terribly awry, this time simply because of raucous behaviour, resulting in puddles of puke and vandalised walls in the pristine terminal by Eero Saarinen at JFK airport. This was about as much as the New York Port Authority could take, and so they shut the show down. (You can read more about the show and its closure here).

However, Ms Ward is obviously a very smart cookie, and after working very hard to produce what appears to be a very interesting and tight exhibition, she managed to still generate press (and perhaps the show became even more "hooky" after being shut down by the Port Authority) and also seems to have spun off the exhibition into a derivative show, Terminal 5: Now Closed, in Paris.

I'm interested to see how Ms Sweeney makes lemonade out of the lemon of a situation she is currently in.

From "(Not) Gay Art Now" Curator Jack Pierson Comments on His (Exceptional) Show" by Bryant Rousseau, on artinfo.com:

What advantages might an artist have in assembling a show over a more traditional curator?

"I wasn't interested, and I don't think most artists would be, in making a checklist of artists to include six months in advance. I'm in awe of curators who can put three works next to each and create these incredible associations, but a lot of the best work in this show got included at the last minute. I think you gain a lot by spontaneity, by artists just trusting their subliminal instincts, by building a show's aesthetic on the fly."

Would he curate again?

"I love curating, and I'd do it professionally if I could make a living at it."

And how does spending time in a curatorial role impact his own art making? "It gets me more free, more charged up to try a little of everything," said Pierson.

"Building a show's aesthetic on the fly" strikes me as an interesting sentiment. While this particular artist/curator incorporates spontaneity into his process through the selection of works, I think most curators could and do achieve this with a combination of exhibition design and creative installation of the works themselves. Focusing on a "checklist of artists" as the only creative act seems to radically diminish the role of curator, which of course includes tasks ranging from mind-numbingly banal to incredibly fun.