MSRL copy purchased with funds from the S. Dillon Ripley Endowment.
Contents:
Preface / Maja Hoffmann -- The curatorial conundrum : introduction / Paul O'Neill, Mick Wilson, Lucy Steeds -- What to study? -- What is the future of exhibition histories? Or, toward art in terms of its becoming-public / Lucy Steeds -- Obstacles to exhibition history : institutions, curatorship and the undead nation-state / David Teh -- Under the sycamore tree curating as currency : actions that say something, words that do something / Jelena Vesić & Vladimir Jerić -- Black-British artists and problems of systemic invisibility and eradication : creating exhibition histories of that which is not there / Eddie Chambers -- The paradoxes of autonomy : a site of critique / Nikita Yingqian Cai -- Redrawing global aspirations of exhibition-making from a southern perspective : Latin American Biennial of São Paulo (1978) and Coloquio de Arte No-Ojbetual (1981) / Miguel A. López -- On the solo show : from resistance to repression / João Ribas -- On the case of curatorial history / Jeannine Tang -- What to research? -- The source of our nobility and our path to the highest things / Luis Camnitzer -- It is reading that counts / Mélanie Bouteloup -- Collectivity, conflict, imagination, transformation / Galit Eilat -- What do you want to know? / What, How & for Whom/WHW -- The incomplete curator : AKA fighting the delineated field / Liam Gillick -- Curation and futurity / Simon Sheikh -- What to practice? -- An autodidact's practice : investigating the reserves of the curatorial moment / Nancy Adajania -- Strategic regionalism / Tobias Ostrander -- Being Africa : contextual narratives of artistic environments / Koyo Kouoh -- How to put ourselves between the closing door and its frame? / Zasha Cerizza Colah -- Il faut qu'on se bouge! / Sumesh Sharma -- Digging into the past to unearth the future / Hans Ulrich Obrist -- In search of a flashlight : the intimate politics of the curatorial / Vivian Ziherl -- Qalqalah : falling out of memory / Sarah Rifky -- Image index -- Contributors' biographies
Summary:
Today curators are sometimes more famous than the artists whose work they curate, and curatorship involves more than choosing objects for an exhibition. The expansion of the curatorial field in recent decades has raised questions about exhibition-making itself and the politics of production, display, and distribution. The Curatorial Conundrum looks at the burgeoning field of curatorship and tries to imagine its future. Indeed, practitioners and theorists consider a variety of futures: the future of curatorial education; the future of curatorial research; the future of curatorial and artistic practice; and the institutions that will make these other futures possible. The contributors examine the proliferation of graduate programs in curatorial studies over the last twenty years, and consider what can be taught without giving up what is precisely curatorial, within the ever-expanding parameters of curatorial practice in recent times. They discuss curating as collaborative research, asking what happens when exhibition operates as a mode of research in its own right. They explore curatorial practice as an exercise in questioning the world around us; and they speculate about what it will take to build new, innovative, and progressive curatorial research institutions. ContributorsNancy Adajania, Melanie Bouteloup, Nikita Yingqian Cai, Luis Camnitzer, Eddie Chambers, Zasha Cerizza Colah, Galit Eilat, Liam Gillick, Koyo Kouoh, Miguel A. Lopez, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Paul O'Neill, Tobias Ostrander, Joao Ribas, Sarah Rifky, Sumesh Sharma, Simon Sheikh, Lucy Steeds, Jeannine Tang, David The, Jelena Vesic & Vladimir Jeric Vlidi, What, How & for Whom/WHW, Mick Wilson, Vivian Ziherl Copublished with the Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College/Luma Foundation.
