The role of a curator is complex and always evolving. The primary role of a curator is to assemble or select collections of works of art, or art projects, grouped around an idea or theme. Many artists are also curators, and often a curatorial project is launched in response to events or concerns in the artists’ community or with regards to the ideas investigated in the artist’s practice. Many artists curate shows as a way of gathering various artistic voices together to create new meaning or to create/extend a context for their own work. Curating a show that has a completely different subject matter than your own work can also be intellectually rewarding.

Curating is a great way to make connections with other artists and art professionals, to expand ideas about your own work, to create a dialogue within a particular community, or to give an idea a public face. Whether in a traditional gallery space or a public site, curating can give an artist experience and exposure, which may lead to a job, new work, or a newly defined community.

CURATORIAL MODELS

These days, lines blur between models of practice as a curator, (whether we can call it ‘traditional’ or otherwise), organizer, historian, artist, or critic. One way to look at a curatorial practice is in “gathering voices” together in order to expand ideas and meaning between works that might be in agreement, or in contraction to each other. One of the reasons many artist curate, is their interest in putting various “voices” together in the same space.

How we gather and represent voices has implications on how or if those voices are heard. Clearly, how we frame those voices is important. This framing includes the curatorial model, the context, i.e., institutions of all kinds, our assumptions, and the language we use. We are all in some position of authority. How and if we acknowledge our positions becomes crucial.

Consider the way press releases from institutions frame the artists work, or the institution which is presenting it. Often over the top, with phrases such as “the most important artist of our time” or how edgy the institution is for presenting this “new” work.  Be aware of how institutions “frame” exhibitions, what language they use, and whom they think their audience is. Press can be a good indicator for the study of representation. Look at the correlation between curatorial practice and the different ways that content is derived through curatorial practice. There are so many decisions and factors that determine how our work as curators and organizers gets read. Certainly the institutions we work in and who we represent are factors, and they can lend content to our exhibitions. One’s curatorial practice will be contextualized by the institution in which the work is presented.

Who is included, or more than likely who is not included in exhibitions, signs of the institution and its relationship to the community where the institution is located or “non-institutional projects,” and attempts to present ourselves outside the institutional context are all indicators of our projected content. Is there is any such thing as a non-institution? It’s certainly debatable. In addition, our gender, race, and age as curators, our own histories, the successes and mistakes we make, how we position ourselves in a historical context, or how accessible we are, are all part of the curatorial model we use and has implications on how the project maybe received. Are the voices we have gathered heard? Or repressed in the name of our own ideas?

There is some overlap in terms of how artists worry about the presentation of their own work and how organizers or curators present work. Both are thinking of how the work will be read, the artists within the curators ideas, and the curator who is often using the artists work to present ideas. There’s been a lot of discussion about the curator as artist, both pro and con.

One of the reasons many artists have developed new ways of curating has a lot to do with access, in terms of artists having access to institutions, or whether anybody will talk to them from the institutions. Many curators usually look at the same institutions when they travel to other cities to look at work. They all go to the big museums and galleries and ask who’s doing work in town. They might go to the artist-run centers, but what I think happens is it usually ends up being the same recurring list of artists that get looked at. When you travel to various cities you often see the same artists over and over again. Artists become trendy, and exhibited accordingly. Funders often complain that everyone is applying for funds to show the same artists. 

One of the curatorial models can be described as the shopping curator, in which the curator goes to the studio, has an idea of what she/he wants to do and what to say, and chooses the work accordingly. (“I’ll take one of those and two of those and ...”). I think there are both good and bad aspects about this.

Another model would be that the curator creates the content and the context of the exhibition based on the different sensibilities of the artists whose work she/he becomes familiar with, or by certain issues “in the air.” But instead of choosing specific works the curator asks the artists to create work or choose her/his own work specifically for the exhibition. This can be more risky, but often the show is better. I think it also changes the position of the voice and the framing of the exhibition. We can argue about that. This model is often inherently more interesting, and the work is rarely pushed by a non-artist to fit the context of the show. Artists are often a great judge as to how their ongoing work fits into the content of a show when they construct or choose the work accordingly. For those curators who demand to have the last word, they can always see those choices before they arrive in the exhibition space. But it’s less about shopping and more about context. The artist’s voice is usually more apparent in the exhibition.

Other exhibitions are created when a curator chooses a number of artists who choose other artists to be part of an exhibition. It expands the pooI of artists, but I often find this is a very arbitrary experience. I think there are many possibilities for going past a number of people that one knows. This model might work best for studio visits.

An artist invites her/his friends to participate in a show she/he curates. This is usually not very interesting. It’s also very arbitrary.

There’s the free-for-all where everybody hangs works, which is the model for mail art, older fax art shows, etc. “Quality” is always an issue with these projects, and most professional artists don’t participate in these kinds of projects. 

Other kinds of models also exist, such as curating a reading room. Armando Rascon created what he calls “The Multicultural Reading Room” in the 90’s. He asked 30 artists from all over the States to present two or three books that had made a difference in their lives in terms of how they thought about multiculturalism and what influenced how issues were formed for them. The exhibition traveled to a number of different sites and then was donated to a library as part of its permanent collection. It automatically created a situation in the library where the acquisition pushed past its book collection and expanded the boundaries of what the librarian might have chosen. Another example of creating a situation where more than one voice speaks and where something quite wonderful can happen.

Another 90‘s example. There’s a space in San Francisco called the Galería de la Raza. The curatorial staff was very frustrated with the fact that the projects being proposed for their space were not very interesting. Shows leaped from one fanatic idea to another. So they sat down as a committee and created a whole year of ideas they wanted to address and things they wanted to accomplish for the year. But instead of curating within their own institution, they opened it up for proposals from the field, with the guidelines determining the content of the submissions. What happened is that they were getting a lot of different solutions and ways of looking at the issues they were interested in. The mission of their programming remains consistent, but the way this mission is accomplished has been opened up to some great ideas they never would have thought of themselves, and the issues that are important for them to address as a space are being addressed. There are exhibitions in which the work is changed or altered by the audience. Perhaps the viewer is asked to participate by adding or altering an element to the work, or by moving parts around the space. So who’s the artist?

Another model is the neighborhood committee or project. There were some interesting debates going on in Los Angeles in which a community wanted to do a mural. It was being blocked in every way possible by the powers that be within the city. They were really struggling with the idea that a community or neighborhood can actually choose what they want in their neighborhood. So there is this interesting dilemma that’s going on between who has the power to actually block an artwork supported by the very people who live there. It’s a reversal of the Richard Serra phenomenon. The proposed mural happened to chronicle the history of the Black Panthers.

A curatorial project took place at Exit Art in New York, and it’s called, “How Do You Play the Game.”  They invited five “highfalutin’” curators in New York to create an exhibition within that site. It was a collaborative, conceptual exhibition project which investigated the curatorial process and revealed how curators’ choices reflect their aesthetic and critical values. The show was conceived of as a game in which the participants, five curators of contemporary art, will each take turns selecting and installing works of art chosen in response to the other curator’s selections. In the succeeding weeks, the five curators took turns independently choosing and installing new works. It changed and expanded each week reflecting and reinforcing curatorial dialogue. This model foregrounds curatorial practice within the exhibition itself.

One of the ways in which curators are stepping outside the institution is to involve businesses and other institutions in non art locations. Artists are hooked up with business owners/workers who are non-artists. These are people who have never worked with artists before and they each work on a collaborative page for a publication or installation in their place of business. The curators were interested in alleviating the situation where the artists are separate from everybody else. They presented these collaborations in a publication or newsletter which then was distributed throughout the city. Other projects include showing the work of artists in libraries or other spaces. Interesting locations that have been used include the old Los Angeles Zoo, the New York Times, furniture stores, bookstores, public parks, bodies of water, etc. See the alternative exhibitions list in the chapter of Venues. 

Curating is an ongoing and evolving process. It can be considered as a part of ones art practice, or not. Changes in how curators work is often influenced by how artists have changed curatorial models, or taken risks in new ways of presentation and dialog. Distribution by various means will keep changing, especially as technology changes. The most important factor is how we frame the work we do or how we are framed by things out of our control. Our voices as curators and the voices of the artists we gather are important elements to our culture. Perhaps by being aware of our decisions and the language we use, the way our work is perceived will come closer to our intentions.

link to the full article: https://www.gyst-ink.com/curating