In July and August, Erin Kissane posted on her website incisive.nu a thought-provoking series about content curation, from the vantage point of a content strategist. [See her concluding post for links to the full set, although she's written since then about the topic as well]. Kissane’s writings illuminated similarities and differences between traditional museum curating and what now falls under the rubric of curating, particularly in terms of digital media. But more importantly, Kissane’s posts provide insights and challenges for anyone in a creative profession that has dual responsibilities of serving both content and users, such as a museum’s collection and its visitors. Rather than summarize her posts (please read them, especially Parts II and III) I’m going to mention below a few observations that build upon some of her ideas.
First, traditional curators and content strategists seem to have significantly different relationships with the content they curate, as evidenced by a few people cited by Kissane who consider a part of their jobs to be sorting through the “glut of content” or “the wasteland of content.” I can’t imagine a traditional curator ever considering their field of specialty a “wasteland of content” be it political campaign memorabilia, fossilized ferns, or American prints from the 1930s. Kissane kindly clarifies, “I think most curators would brindle at the notion that their work centers on the act of culling irrelevant material” [Part II]. That type of function equates more to an exhibition juror than a curator. And Kissane later notes the obvious disparity between the types of content being cared for, i.e. “tangible, authenticated objects with high cultural value” versus “intangible, infinitely reproducible digital files.” [Part IV]
But I would go further to say that a fundamental difference between the kind of curating Kissane so intelligently explores and that of traditional curating is the respect and interest in the origins or creators of content. While Kissane discussed the role of providing context and ongoing stewardship for content — two key responsibilities shared by traditional curators — there was little mention of the importance of the content’s source. And by source, I mean the environment in which the content was found, such as a rain forest or an anthropological site, or the person or people who created it, such as an early American pioneer’s daughter or a contemporary installation artist. Traditional curators study these sources to provide important context for the content, and in many cases they work hard to honor the original intent of the creators. Non-traditional curated projects selectively present content and add context for the information itself, but I don’t yet sense that level of respect or even a need to focus upon sources, such as authors or photographers whose work is being linked to or included. So-called “auto-curating” is perhaps the most egregious case, as I witnessed when recently trying the
Flipboard app for iPad that culls articles on related topics from various sources. The bylines in one of my selections were not of the authors but instead hail the “selector” of each article.
In terms of contemporary art, many curators consider themselves to be in service to the artists they work with, above all others. I recently heard a
podcast in which Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, stated that the community she feels most obligated to serve is that of black artists. She not only exhibits and collects the work of artists of various African descents at her museum but she regularly seeks them out in representation in other museums’ collections and exhibitions, consults with artists she is close to on feedback and ideas on upcoming projects, and constantly considers how to best promote their work, contribute to the scholarship about them, and ensure their place in the art historical canon. While not every curator is so committed to such a definable segment of creators, many are nonetheless devoted to aiding the success and creativity of the artists with whom they work and collaborate.
Ironically, while the online world moves from content creation to curation, some curators are more interested in being considered content makers, primarily in terms of the exhibition itself as content and not simply a context-providing mechanism. I think this idea might be related to the notion of “the curatorial” which Maria Lind wrote about in Artforum and which I keep beating around in my head (see my earlier posts, but I’m not going down that path again). At the extreme, a few curators consider their function to be equivalent to art [see selected entrees in ICI's Words of Wisdom: A Curator's Vade Mecum on Contemporary Art]. This is probably due in part to the conflation of artistic and curatorial practices enacted by artists themselves, particularly in cases of institutional critique. But rather than such an exalted status as art, I would imagine more curators would greater appreciate the idea that their exhibitions are original creations, which Jerry Saltz touches upon when he considers good curating to be an alchemical process. It’s this concept of magic-maker that feeds into the allure of the “super curator” such as Hans-Ulrich Obrist orJens Hoffmann. I find it amusing to think it might be art curators who lead the way out of this trend towards everything-is-curation and back to good, old-fashioned content creation.
Lastly, until reading the incisive.nu posts, I’d assumed the term “curate” had been rapidly adopted by non-traditional users for its many beneficial associations but that little thought had gone into why this was happening. So imagine my pleasure and sincere gratitude in reading this statement from Kissane:
“And one more for content people, specifically; we shouldn’t be jerks to people who do real curating in museums and galleries. Their work isn’t sacred, but neither is it trivial, and using their jargon without understanding where it comes from is a dilettante’s move.” [Part V]
N. Elizabeth Schlatter
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