CuratorsinContext.ca

Art Speaking: Towards an Understanding of the Language of Curating

by Melanie O'Brian

Date: 16 July 2005
Event: Banff

Abstract

If art is considered a system, strategy or activity of engagement, curating has become an increasingly integral part of the process. Traditionally, a curator has been defined as the custodian of a museum or other collection - essentially a keeper of things. While the traditional curator maintains a collection of art, artifacts or curios by preserving, exhibiting and studying the objects therein, the contemporary curator need not work with a collection or objects at all, and instead engages with cultural meaning and production, often from a position of development that is shared with the artist.

In recent years, curating has become a discipline in its own right, albeit one that varies widely dependent on institutional, market and intellectual affiliations. This has resulted in the appearance of the verb curate (where it previously existed only as a noun, curator), belying the growth of the discipline and a need to verbalize its new strategies. The verb curate suggests a revisitation of the conception of what a curator does, a change from working at some remove from the processes of art production, to becoming actively involved in its development. This shift in the definition and role of the curator can be seen as a response to the changing meaning and relevance of the art object over the last four decades: dematerialization prompted a redefinition of art to incorporate conceptual, processual and performative strategies, among others. But it also remarks on the economies at work in contemporary art, whether global, institutional or market. It might be assumed that as art practices expand, curating expands to accommodate or reflect them. The recent discussions around the professionalization of contemporary art and the collapsing definitions of curator into artist and vice versa reveal art and curatorial practices to be ever evolving as boundaries are elided. These power shifts demand consistent relational consideration, as well as an examination of the shifting territories of language.

The language of curating is comparable to that of editing. The shared activities of selecting, assembling, arranging and overseeing ideas bring the two roles into close alignment. As the verb curate is a back-formation of the word curator, edit is a back-formation of editor. [1] As editors of ideas, curators bring forward art and cultural practices to make the ideas available to audiences not only through exhibitions, but publications, websites, forums and other events. Implicit in the language is the power of selection (the curator curated the artist), the economy or system of the art world, and a recent curatorial usurpation of attention from artists in a star system. Asking the question of whether or not curatorial practice is contingent on the artist(s) involved reveals an institutional shift where objects and artists are replaced by conceits that might appear to approach global and political issues yet can exist outside of the art practices they are using as reference points. As curators become more participatory in the production of art, the curator's relationship to artists, artworks, exhibitions, texts, education, the market and institutions becomes increasingly complex and prompts further questioning into the curatorial role.

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1. Edit in the sense "to prepare for publication," first recorded in 1793, comes from editor, first recorded in 1712 in the sense of "one who edits."