Curating.info

Building on the achievements of the Wales exhibitions at the last three Biennales of Art in Venice, the Arts Council of Wales is now appointing to the following posts to work on the 2009 Biennale. It also has vacancies on its Wales at Venice Advisory Committee.

Fixed term freelance contract, fee £24,000 per annum, commencing July 2008, in Cardiff.

Duties: To select the artist or artists to represent Wales at the Biennale in 2009 and curate the exhibition. The Curator will work with the Commissioner and Project Manager and will report to the Advisory Committee. Applicants must have extensive knowledge of the contemporary visual arts in Wales and internationally and evidence the skills and track record necessary to ensure a major contribution to the presence of Wales at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Applications for the above are by letter accompanied by CV.

For information about previous Wales at Venice exhibitions visit http://www.walesvenicebiennale.org

Closing date for applications: Noon on Monday, 30 June 2008. The Council works in both Welsh and English. Further information is available online at http://www.artswales.org.uk or from the Human Resources Department: Tel: (029) 2037 6500.

Northern Ireland is preparing for its third presentation at the Venice Biennale of Visual Arts in 2009. The Venice Biennale Working Party, comprising the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and British Council Northern Ireland, is now seeking to appoint a curator, curatorial partnership or organisation to research, develop and deliver Northern Ireland’s presence.

The curator(s) should have an excellent knowledge of contemporary art practice in Northern Ireland and an understanding of developments in contemporary visual arts at an international level, along with a proven track record in the management and delivery of projects of a significant scale.

Interested parties can obtain further information from:
Craig Corsar
Arts Council of Northern Ireland
77 Malone Road
Belfast
BT9 6AQ
E-mail: ccorsar -at- artscouncil-ni.org
Web: www.artscouncil-ni.org

Proposals should be submitted on or before 4.30pm on 23 May 2008.
Interviews will be held the week commencing 10 June 2008.

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?