As many of you may know, I’ve been in Amsterdam for the last couple of months. I’m about half way through my six-month stay here. It’s been amazing, inspiring, thoughtful, exciting and educational every step of the way. I feel I’ve already learn so much at the Stedelijk Museum so I thank everyone there.
But it’s time to start thinking about my next step. I want to have something at least planned by the end of September.
I’m throwing it out there to everyone who reads this: I’m looking for the next opportunity.
If you might have something, email me pete(at)newcurator.com and let’s have a chat. I’ve got quite a range of experience I can bring, a very high academic background and several thousand social network followers who are all amazing and talented.
Marketing, web, curatorial, project management, exhibitions, collections, getting people excited and interesting things that are important. I have a countless number of skills and an endless ability to learn new things.
Now, whilst I would like to stay in the museum world, that doesn’t mean I won’t listen to any other suggestions.
I can dig out a CV at some point as well.
How about it? Who would like newcurator on their team?
Wednesday 1st June marks the start of the Holland Festival and the launch of John Baldessari’s YOUR NAME IN LIGHTS.
But there’s still time! Sign up, tell your friends, add their names and share it over all your social networks. Be part of artwork that gives you 15 Seconds of Fame.
Sign up at http://www.yournameinlights.nl
Or, you can go to the Stedelijk Museum’s Facebook page and sign up through there http://on.fb.me/15secondsfame
The livestream is up and running on these pages. Be sure to check it out tomorrow!
I am not a religious person. For me, religion come from the same root word as legislation, meaning rules, law, a code. I feel I don’t subscribe to a particular religion, but I have my own spirituality. I can’t accept a strictly materialistic world when there is imagination, creativity and a wealth of unknowns. I believe in stories.
I was apprehensive at the thought of the World Press Photo 2011 exhibition at the Oude Kerk. This church is a beautiful building and a wonderful space for exhibitions. Light comes in through quite spectacular stained-glass windows. What I did not know is how I would feel about such a deeply emotional response within a prominently religious site. This is my conflict that I’m not able to accurately articulate. Don’t hold it against me.
Groups of large, high quality images of the photographs hang from lighting rigs. These rigs are arranged in a horseshoe shape, along the south aisle, around the ambulatory and along the north aisle. The first photo you see is the winner of Photo of the Year, Jodi Bieber’s portrait of Bibi Aisha. This girl is beautiful. I struggled to accept just how ugly people can act.
Following from the entrance along the first two-thirds of the exhibition, I felt mentally beat-up facing the captures of the horror of past twelve months. There are images of Haiti’s earthquake, Pakistan’s floods, the Love Parade’s crush, Mexico’s drug wars and the mass cremation of victims of the Chinese earthquake. I don’t know what to make of the photographs of Julian Assange and Kim Jong-Il with his son amidst all this. I guess they are people in the middle of a different kind of mess that was the previous year.
I want to highlight one particular work: Darcy Padilla’s THE JULIE PROJECT, an eighteen-year documentation of Julie Baird.
At this point, I was ready to break down. This is where the setting of a church started to creep into my consciousness. Photojournalism is about the objective recording of reality. Churches are usually centres of discussions into the metaphysical. But it just didn’t feel right to, say, sit within the church and take solace in a religion I was not part of, nor to rage to the sky and blame God for the series of tragedies.
I can’t say if it was intentional for the sports and nature photography to be a palette cleanser, but I thank then for it. Thomas P. Peschak’s photo of a landing gannet is an amazing instance of the beauty of nature. Mike Hutchings’s photo of Demy de Zeeuw getting kicked in the face is… well… amusing, and certainly lighter. Probably not for de Zeeuw, but accidental sport’s injuries can’t compare.
The World Press Photo organisation’s mission is “to encourage high professional standards in photojournalism and to promote a free and unrestricted exchange of information”. These awards are to show those exceptional examples of the craft. If ever I was desensitised to these very same events on television, These photographers are able to capture these real moment and make them more real.
A sign told me that all royalties made from the postcard of Bibi Aisha are donated to a foundation in her name. I bought one as I left.
The World Press Photo 2011 at the Oude Kerk runs until 19th June.
Last Saturday, I went to go to the Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam. I had to take the chance to go see other parts of the Netherlands and the proper public transport system here makes that easy.
They had an opening of the new biennial rotation of their permanent collection. I do enjoy it when museums do this. Such massive collections in storage, I wish more would make the effort to take it all down and start again. I need to point out, Museum Boijmans is not small. 350 paintings were on display.
For the first time, the collection contains loans from other Dutch museums. The Museum Boijman seems to not only increase access to its works, but the works of others. The loans came out of the other museum’s collections that were not on display. These sort of domestic partnerships always instill in me a sense of optimism. It’s such a simple concept with a tricky administrative process. When it happens, the winners are always the museum visitor.
I went backwards around the collection, starting from the contemporary and ending with medieval. The layout of the galleries into two long loops made it interesting to move backwards through art history. To view a painting and then what came before really helped my understanding. I felt I was building layers upon my knowledge instead of starting from a reference point in history that is unknown to me.
Something I noticed about the curatorial decisions; most of the labels where in terms of the museum itself. For example, next to several Picasso print was the explanation that the museum bought a subscription from an aging Picasso, not realising that he would go on to make thousands of them.
The building the Boijmans inhabits was designed by Dutch architect Ad van der Steur. Influenced by the fact that many of the paintings came from private collection, the galleries range from small, intimate, irregular octagons to larger, airy spaces. The octagons make a very flexible space. The two long walls perfectly fit two good-sized paintings. The outside wall often has a high window to gently illuminate the room. The two corners opposite the window have smooth angles. This can “frame” a single hanging painting or frame the paintings hanging on the longer walls. Either side of the window, the corners become entrances. It’s a modular design. Each room a section on a subject and shaped into a plugin. Walking around these smaller rooms means you can envelop a surprisingly large amount of information without the usual fatigue.
Needless to say, the whole experience impressed me.
I did not get to see the whole museum. Who ever does? But I did get to see two other exhibitions.
In the very large hall was Nathalie Djurberg’s and Hans Berg’s (music) installation SNAKES KNOWS IT’S YOGA. Lots of small glass display cases filled with grotesque, ugly, wide-eyed and hairy little figures all in various states of hedonism with large projected screens of short claymation films. They do not seem to twisted or hideous but rather blissful in their base pleasures. One could feel uncomfortable at the at anatomical detail of one long-haired and bearded man, but you have to notice just how damn happy he is swinging from a branch of a beautifully crafted blossom tree.
I was introduced to the other installation with a sign by the main visitor information desk: Pas op: Pindakass!
Watch out: Peanut-Butter!
The Peanut-Butter Platform by Wim T. Schippers is… well… a large room with a large two-inch thick rectangle of peanut butter. The smell in incredible. You understand why the entrance to the room had double doors installed. The floor had written warnings about keeping a safe distance. The museum has the platform guarded to prevent someone from getting any stupid ideas. I admit, when I first it, my first reaction was the desire to make a big peanut butter angel.
In front of the entrance was a display that I took a lot of interest in. High quality stone covers the entire Boijmans floor. Leaving peanut butter on it would surely stain. This display showed the experiments taken of peanut butter on various surfaces to if it could be cleaned and keep its shape. It’s these little details I love. I imagine it would be a question on most visitor’s minds about how they installed the platform but also highlighting the conservation efforts, not just of the art but of the museum itself.
I wish I took more time there. There were a few other exhibitions I didn’t get to see. As I left, I was given an extra treat. A sculpture by one of my favourite artists: Claes Oldenburg’s SCREWARCH.
It’s been ten days since I landed in Amsterdam. I cannot explain how incredible and inspiring the experience has been so far. I’m living in a cool place, I’m working with great people, I’ve seen fascinating things and the weather has been delightful.
Trust a Brit to talk about the weather in a foreign country.
I’m working for the Stedelijk Museum as part of their web team. I’ve been mostly learning the ropes of how their CMS and website and various comms software. I’ve been really happy but how much trust in my ability they have, despite being new. I’m loving the chance to be able to impress.
I’ll be (hopefully) blogging for them. I’ve got a few ideas down and something approaching an editorial. I’ll share some links when they’re up.
I suppose I’ll need to write some kind of disclaimer. This site, newcurator, my twitter or tumblr are by no means the views of the Stedelijk Museum. Anything I write for them will likely go through a vetting/editing process while newcurator will remain my notebook of half-thought ideas and slightly unhinged language.
That being said, I’ve decided to go a slightly different direction whilst I’m in Amsterdam. I’ve tried to cover news, dabbled in being a linkblog, had the most fun with writing longer articles and now I fancy trying travel writing.
I’ve often shied away from “reviewing” exhibitions because… well… I’ve never been comfortable shouting down other people’s work. If I can’t be honest in my opinion, then what’s the point of the criticism? Yet I can’t help feel empathetic towards museum staff who have worked their asses off to make something happen, regardless of my thoughts on quality.
This is why travel writing offers a different approach. I am a foreigner in a different land. This means my experiences can be in terms of Wonders on the New. So, whilst I’m in the Netherlands I plan to get a Museumkaart for about €45. This gives me free access to a bunch of museums. Every week, a new post on newcurator about a Dutch museum. Except the Stedelijk. I’ll write about them on their own website.
First up, I’m going out of town to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
Tot zo.
You are in a room and it is full of Stuff. Piles of it in no discernible order. You are now told that this Room of Stuff is your life.
What to do first? Tidying up wouldn’t be a bad plan.
So you try to bring order to the Stuff. Some Stuff is similar. You put these things together in trying to make a Tidy Room of Stuff. Other Stuff has certain links to other Stuff. Slowly, the Stuff becomes organised to your own taxonomy. The process requires much upkeep to stop it turning back into a pile of Stuff again. You label things. You arrange things on shelves. You can give everything identifying numbers and locations if you so wish. You may even wish to find out more information about your stuff.
You may now take some pride in your Organised Room of Stuff. What next?
What if I was to tell you that through a system surrounded by mystery and more complex than any ritual of the occult, you could make your Stuff… Better?
There are two reactions, either side of a very thin line of definition. The first is, “How can I use this to make the Stuff more interesting, significant and as exciting to others as it to me?”. The other is a variation along the lines of, “How can I use this for myself?”
The difference between the two reactions is slight because someone with the first may very well become famous or well-known just as someone with the second reaction may very well make some interesting connections and get people excited. The two sides of Curatorial Magick can easily spin around or balance or become a perversion or the other.
Not once have I given any name to your Organised Room of Stuff. Many of you will assume it is a museum store. It could easily be a stockroom of shoes or a pile of books.
The first side of Curatorial Magick is old, academic and very hard to master. The second side is relatively new, borrowing meanings from other places. It is quick, easy and “push-button”. The First side could turn the shoes into part of a museum and the books into a library or an archive. The world of Commerce is very interested in this second side, where the shoes are merchandise and the books are in a bookshop window display. It appears to the world of Commerce that all you need to say to steal the gravitas of the first side is “Curated By…”, thus improving potential sales especially if the supposed curator is famous enough. “Every Sports Shoe on sale was are Curated By…”, “This Year’s Summer Book Club is Curated By…” You can tell which form of Curatorial Magick is in play by how keen they are for you to buy something.
Let us not forget that both Culture and Fashion use the word “Collection”.
There are people around the world performing all forms of the Curatorial Magick. Some are true masters in changing the perception of objects and the people who view them. Others are only inspiring people to the hedonism of consumable goods. I will also say there must be practitioners of variable successes and without clearly defined paths as to where they fall. It depends on what they find in their Room of Stuff as well.
Those on the outside will struggle to spot the difference. It is easier to generalise the intellectually impenetrable. Name everyone a Curator and label a mundane collective of tasks “curation”. Choose, select, publish and put your name on it. Voilà, apparently, you’re now a curator. This method requires an increasing force of personality behind it so it can be successful. Renown will influence people to like what you like. Then you’re a marketing executive’s or brand manager’s dream.
Oh, you want to be a master of the first method? The one that inspires cultural enhancement? The money and the fame do not interest you as much as effecting True change? For that, your Curatorial Magick has to be powered by the force of your own Will.
The following is a guest post from Dr. Steve Zucker, co-founder of Smarthistory along with Dr. Beth Harris. He is also chair of History of Art and Design at Pratt Institute. You can follow him on twitter.
Support Open Art History
What will open art history look like? Is it even possible? Can small, nimble organizations begin to invent this future and create a path for museums and universities? How can we best reach and educate future museum-visitors and students who grow up with Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube? After all, the promise of the textbook, to be comprehensive, and to offer students all they need to know about a given subject in order to master it, no longer aligns with the culture of the museum-goer and student we now teach. They know that authority is dispersed and does not speak with a single voice, and that learning is more interesting when it engages opinion, emotion, and discovery.
These are the questions and issues that inspired Smarthistory.org’s creation and development. We publish—online—a Western survey of art history that re-imagines the format of the textbook for AP Art History students, college students, museum visitors and other informal learners. Smarthistory is multimedia, conversational, open and free. We’re not just an online textbook. And we’re not even an online textbook that includes multimedia. We want to rethink the very nature of textbook in a way that responds to the way knowledge is created and disseminated on the web now (in contrast to pdf-based content and other closed and static e-book systems).
Smarthistory is open and increasingly successful. In 2010, Smarthistory.org was visited more than half a million times by visitors from more than 150 countries. Close to one hundred universities, libraries and museums now recommend Smarthistory and instructors are increasingly adopting it in place of the expensive survey textbook.
Support Open Funding
We recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to create 100 more videos (we currently have 300). Patrick Masson, Chief Technology Officer for UMassOnline, recently posted to the Openness listserv at Educause,
Smarthistory…started up a Kickstarter campaign (http://kck.st/hhRyA6)….I like the idea of this approach, which to me resembles a meritocracy…if an open project can mature through the contribution of content, code, intellectual property, etc., why can’t it mature through donations? This allows me, a non-art historian without content to contribute, who does not have the time/skill to support their production, to be a “developer.” I think this is much different than seeking partners and sponsorships, who may direct development away from the interests of the community. Smarthistory adheres to the philosophy that the value/relevance/quality of the project is directly determined by the commitment of the community.
Smarthistory will always remain free and open to its users. That’s a commitment we’ve made; it’s in the DNA of our project. With the help of the community, Smarthistory will just get better—for learners everywhere. Our focus now has to be on meeting our $10,000 goal since Kickstarter is an all or nothing structure. We have had an amazing week and have already raised $4,455 toward our goal, but if we only raise, for example $9,000, the project doesn’t fund and Smarthistory get nothing.
What can you do to help? First, watch our short video, then give whatever you can afford (even ten dollars, we have AMAZING giveaways!). Thank you.
Now is the time. 15% cut to the national museums over the next four years. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s budget reduced from £1.9bn to £1.1bn as well as well as 41% reduction in admin costs on top of council budgets being cut by 28%. The Arts Council of England faces a 30% cut.
The reports say this is a “relief” for the arts. Can I put this into some perspective for you? This Scribd document is a visualisation of the UK Quangos. See those small red circles in the top-middle? See them next in comparison to the other circles? Not very big, are they? There isn’t much to cut in the first place. The arts and culture of the UK are already delicate. Head of the Tate Sir Nicholas Serota called it a blitzkrieg.
You’ll often hear two phrases offered as so-called solution. One is “American-style philanthropy”. I would love my American readers to list off the problems they have had recently. The other is “Big Society”.
Overheard at #cpc: Charity MD: “What’s the big society?” Tory MP: “It’s you.” “Can we have some money then?” “No, that’s the whole point. (via Martin Bright)
So what can we do? Feel “relief” that these cuts aren’t as massive as others? Do we just accept it? Or shall we change our twitter avatars and possibly go wave a banner? What exactly will that do? At best, some column inches.
I’m throwing this idea out there. If someone wants to take it on, please do. If someone wants to talk to me further about it, email pete(at)newcurator.com.
The idea is a true cultural protest. No waving placards or looking disgruntled. The culture sector is supposed to be creative. Here is a creative form of protest. I’m treating this as a disaster and making it clear to the public the disastrous outcomes. All we would need is a group of highly motivated people and some clever funding options.
The idea is straightforward. A large wooden crate that looks like its been dropped from a helicopter. An aid package. Instead of being full of food, water and other humanitarian supplies, it’s a cultural aid package.
Yes, I know what this says. Yes, I realise it’s not comparable (My favourite expression recently has been “first world problems”) but I feel the strength of language involved is the important thing. These crates act like small pop-up cultural institutions. If someone thinks that things are that desperate, maybe they will appreciate the dramatic effect.
Get a number of these crates and put them in the street. Inside, it’s the clever bit. In my mind, I would love to get a number of out-of-work curators or students or any cultural worker to give proposals to fill them. Anything at all as long as it can fit inside. It will be eye-catching, attract people on the street and then, BAM, they see it’s part of a grand narrative. That’s how you make people support the arts. Give people a glimpse of a strange world without any at all.
From there, there are endless opportunities. Connecting the crates to social networks, updates, photos of visitors uploaded to Flickr, foursquare check-ins etc. Hell, give people badges to collect for visiting all the crates. I would also like to think there’s room for small satellite projects.
The important thing is not falling into the Big Society trap. I believe in people doing a good job and getting paid for it. It’s the basis of professionalism. This is an opportunity, not an example of people doing things for free. Hence the funding. I would love this to get some Kickstarter style funding. People getting some real ownership of the project, of THEIR arts, or THEIR culture that’s being cut. I would also like donation drives in the crates as well. Start gaining funding for the *next* set of projects.
A new form of protest along a new future of cultural activity. Take it on tour around the country. If this works and done correctly, it can make an impact that will last in the minds of the public.
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
Part five of a story I wrote called Glyph. It’s rough and unfinished but should be entertaining. You can search for the other parts using the search box in the top right hand corner.
His memory was flawless. Apart from having absolutely nothing from before he was thirteen when he work up alone in a hospital bed with the doctor unable to find any trace of him on any database. Whatever put him there had left his body covered in tiny wounds and a long, thin and perfectly straight scar along the left side of his skull. From that moment onwards, Duncan had been building himself from scratch.
Duncan pushed open the large steel up-and-over door of his single room flat. The dank sunlight filled the single room, barely casting any shadows. It wasn’t sparse. Duncan just didn’t have much stuff. People who lived in what was a stack of converted storage containers didn’t tend to have a lot of possessions. Duncan lived at the very top of seven storeys of concrete. It gave him a great view first thing when he left his flat but was bitterly cold in the Winter. Duncan looked over the favela that this part of the city had become. He took a deep breathe of what would be the last mostly-clean air for a while and made his way down the bolted-on stairwell tower.
“How may I help you?” said the smartly dressed girl behind the front desk.
“I’m here for a 1 o’clock interview. My name is Duncan.”
“Please take a seat. Someone will be with you shortly.”
The girl’s irises were an unnaturally bright green. As Duncan took a step back towards the rigid plastic chair, the green of the girl’s iris looked like it began to bleed into the rest of her eye until two emerald pools stared out from her flawless pale skin. She then raised her hands and her fingernails glowed the same colour. Duncan watched as she moved her fingers in front of her like some kind of elaborate dance of sign language.
“That’s an augment I’ve not seen before,” said Duncan. The girl turned her head towards him and the colour quickly returned to the normal position. She made a small smile.
“It’s new,” she said, “Only got it last month. It’s so much quicker now.” Duncan sat down and let the girl get back to work. He was glad to sit. The nerves were building up inside him. He watched the people in the Central Auditerminal. Some were browsing the variety of shops that went all around the edge. Some were sitting, reading or on talking on phones. A few were taking pictures of the four grand exhibits placed in this room. Most people carried suitcases or bags. Some were passing right on through to check into their flights. A number of people walked past Duncan to climb the marble staircase next to him. They strolled around the mezzanine before disappearing into the exhibition galleries of the museum. After fifteen minutes, a woman came striding across the auditorium with a slightly frantic edge to the way she walked. Her hair was ash blonde with slightly lighter grey strands in it. She wore all black. She gave Duncan a well rehearsed smile of greeting that made fine dignified wrinkles appear. She offered Duncan her hand.
“You must be Duncan. Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Jonquil, the Deputy Curator here.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Duncan said as he shook her hand.
“Come this way, I’ll give you a quick tour first then talk about what you want to do whilst you’re volunteering here. It’s only me giving the interview I’m afraid as our Head Curator is in meetings all day.”
“That’s fine by me.”
“I’m sure you meet him soon.”
Copyright 2010. Pete Newcurator. Newcurator.com
UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt MP has proposed abolishing the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. “Government support for museums, libraries and archives will continue”. The proposed wind-up date is 2012. This news comes soon after the cuts to English Heritage and their resulting recruitment freeze. They have a lot more to look forward as the DCMS is “considering the role and remit”.
So what does this mean? A lot more unemployed in the culture sector for starters as the most likely replacement will be a small team within the Culture department. A lack of a national body to oversea museums probably means that local councils will be able to do what they like. Can we expect a bunch of new job losses in the smaller museums? Or what’s stopping the selling of collections?
Presentism, as this blog often cites, is the short-term decisions of living in the Present over building for a long-term future. Now is important over working out where we are going. I am a firm believer that growth is the way get us out of problems and cuts do not promote growth.
I ask all of you now; with the MLA going soon, will you miss it? How will it affect you? What do you foresee happening? Drop a comment below (it may take some time to approve).
And if anyone in another country wants to see my CV, send me an email.
Guest post from N. Elizabeth Schlatter
What does “the curatorial” mean? I’ve been wrestling with this concept since I first read (and re-read) Maria Lind’s essay for Artforum from October 2009. Lind’s brief article posits the controversial 2008 S?o Paulo Biennial (in which one of four floors in the Pavilion was left empty) as an example of the curatorial. Lind begins her piece with the following:
Is there something we could call the curatorial? A way of linking objects, images, processes, people, locations, histories, and discourses in physical space? An endeavor that encourages you to start from the artwork but not stay there, to think with it but also away from and against it? I believe so…
I’ve since seen the term in several articles, some published prior to Lind’s and learned via this article by artist and e-flux co-founder Anton Vidokle of a recent conference held in Leipzig on this very topic, which is described as “a practice which goes decisively beyond the making of exhibitions.”
I thought I had a grasp on the curatorial until Vidokle very politely asked me to clarify his position as not being critical of the theory at least in principle, after I had suggested the opposite in my earlier NewCurator post about the expanding spectrum of what can be defined as curatorial activity. [See update to previous post, which includes a quote regarding his opinion of the curatorial.]
What is the curatorial then? And why does it seem focused on exhibitions as a starting point (“beyond exhibitions”) when organizing exhibitions is but one albeit highly visible aspect of a curator’s responsibilities? And are curators in disciplines other than modern and contemporary art engaged with the curatorial or is it a theory situated firmly in today’s art?
Why is this concept so elusive? I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a rigorous reader of theory. I’m sure that presents the biggest challenge to grasping this idea, which Lind likens to “Chantal Mouffe’s notion of ‘the political’, an aspect of life that cannot be separated from divergence and dissent, a set of practices that disturbs existing power relations.”
When Jens Hoffmann, director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, declares, “My voice in making an exhibition is equally important as that of the artist,” is that the curatorial in action? Hoffmann’s quote comes from the 2007 publication Ice Cream, and follows this statement, “To make a provocative claim, it’s curators who have contributed to art to effect greater change in the art world than artists (I refer here, of course, to both negative and positive effects.)”
Later on Hoffmann says, “The shift in curatorial practice is a result of the increasingly close relationship between artists and curators and the utilization of artists’ practices by curators.” I imagine that the borrowing of artists’ practices would include institutional critique, which Lind specifies when she says she imagines a mode of curating that operates “like an active catalyst, generating twists, turns, and tensions—owing much to site-specific and context-sensitive practices and even more to various traditions of institutional critique.”
Is the curatorial a further internalization by museum professionals of the re-definition of institutional critique that artist Andrea Fraser articulated in her 2005 Artforum article “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique”? As in, to quote Fraser, “It’s not a question of being against the institution: We are the institution.” She continues, “It’s a question of what kind of institution we are, what kinds of values we institutionalize, what forms of practice we reward, and what kinds of rewards we aspire to.”
Is the curatorial inevitable? Or is it too late and too uninformed to ask that question? Is the curatorial, much like the over-use of the word “curator,” a development already so embraced and enmeshed in practice that there’s no turning back? Everyone seems to be acknowledging changes in the profession of the curator, but is this the actual progression or is it more an affinity being articulated by curators and theorists?
So, let’s talk curatorial-ly. Please. And preferably not steeped too heavily in cultural theory jargon. Did any of you attend the conference in Leipzig? Care to offer any observations on that or other essays, conversations, or ideas you’ve had?
Every Monday, I’ll be posting snippets of a story I wrote called Glyph. It’s rough and unfinished but should be entertaining. Here’s part four.
Chapter Two
Duncan had kept a meticulous record of every job he applied for. Every record included the original posting, the job description, the person specification, a copy of his application including his personal statement. Each record was sorted into date order of application deadlines. Each application was a small improvement on the last. The last item of each record was a rejection letter, or a page with a simple red cross on it if there wasn’t a response. Duncan had kept three hundred and twenty eight records of unsuccessful application for every position he could. Including several letters enquiring about internships or volunteering. He kept copies of the records digitally in several places, keeping them in sync but also had four binders of paper copies on the second-hand desk in his one room flat.
Record number three hundred and twenty nine was opened. Duncan inserted the final item: a letter inviting him to an interview with regards to becoming a volunteer at The Intramunicipal Museum. The letter had been stuck to his concrete wall for a week to remind him and to revel in it a little. It was only volunteering, but Duncan felt he had something to prove. Duncan was bright. Not a high grade student but a solid performer all the way through his educational career. It was down to Duncan never forgetting anything. Everything he heard, saw and read was stored away and instantly recalled. All standards tests said that Duncan wasn’t a savant or even struggled with containing that much information. He could just store it away. It made all of his teachers and lecturers unnerved as he sat there without making any notes. It didn’t make him popular with them either when he pointed out their contradictions.
Copyright 2010. Pete Newcurator. Newcurator.com
- About Dbasr | dbasr
Dbasr is a free, open-source content management system. It’s designed to allow musicians and other rich media artists to build, customize, manage and update their own website and web presence using simple tools. [[Go watch the video and help fund the project at http://www.indiegogo.com/Dbasr - another fundraising tool]] [[via http://coilhouse.net/2010/06/joshua-ellis-presents-dbasr/]]
- To BP or Not to BP? Should Art Museums Accept Polluted Sponsorship? – CultureGrrl
Cultural institutions in Great Britain and the U.S., which had until now relied on BP, the British oil company, as a benevolent, generous patron, are now faced with decisions about how to deal with to the public-relations dilemmas posed by accepting support from a company that has been demonized, due to the horrific Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the company's much criticized handling of the aftermath.
- Content Is No Longer King: Curation Is King
We've arrived in a world where everyone is a content creator. And quality content is determined by context. Finding, Sorting, Endorsing, Sharing – it's the beginning of a new chapter. And not since Gutenberg have we seen such a significant change in who's able to use the tools of content creation to engage in a public dialog.
The emergence of a new King — a Curation King, reflects the rise of the new Aggregation Economy. It is an exciting time to be in content, and the best is yet to come. [[I don't know why I read these things, they only make me angry]]
- Influential Marketing Blog: Manifesto For The Content Curator: The Next Big Social Media Job Of The Future ?
The future of the social web will be driven by these Content Curators, who take it upon themselves to collect and share the best content online for others to consume and take on the role of citizen editors, publishing highly valuable compilations of content created by others. In time, these curators will bring more utility and order to the social web. In doing so, they will help to add a voice and point of view to organizations and companies that can connect them with customers – creating an entirely new dialogue based on valued content rather than just brand created marketing messages. [[There is so much head-slapping moments in this article, I don't know where to begin]]
- Conversation: Internet Of Things & Augmented Reality « Digital*Media*Convergence*Change*Web*2.0*Broadcast*Global
I think I’m going to ban discussions on privacy for future conversations. Not because it doesn’t matter, it does. In fact it matters so much that it tends to overshadow other aspects of the discussion. And you know what? The privacy debate is much the same… it always boils down to a simple trade-off. Privacy is currency… You might argue some of this is not augmented reality. I agree. But a slightly broader definition of what constitutes “augmentation” of reality leads us down very exciting pathways of thought. Architecture itself is a form of augmentation. And layering data, changing the utility of a space, expanding our interaction with a physical object, these are all augmentations of a kind. It was argued that architecure and urban design will change as we move down the path of augmented reality and the IOT.
- Brooklyn Museum shows the possibilities of Foursquare’s API
Their website features a Foursquare Community page that leverages the Foursquare API to highlight their activity and that of their guests in a unique way. The list of Foursquare users who’ve been to museum is highlighted. The tips users have left… are shown as well. This is a nice way to integrate the opinions and suggestions of other users directly into the site. The venue’s current mayor is shown, along with a list of the past mayors of the museum. They also highlight their mayor special at the top of the page, which offers a free 1stfans Membership when their mayor checks in at Target First Saturday events. The museum’s special badge, BK Art Star, is shown, along with all the users who’ve ever earned it. One of the most interesting parts is the list of Foursquare tips the museum’s staff have left on other venues in their Prospect Heights neighborhood. These serve as recommendations for visitors on places to eat or drink when they come to visit the museum.
- Museums Special Section – In Tough Times, Turning to the Web to Raise Funds – NYTimes.com
LAST fall, when the Neversink Valley Area Museum in Cuddebackville, N.Y., set out to raise $11,000 for architectural renderings of a new building, museum officials turned to strangers for fund-raising using the Internet… Through a Web site called Kickstarter.com, the museum met its fund-raising goal in fewer than 90 days with help from 69 donors… The fund-raising process, known as crowd funding, has enabled the museum to move forward with long-term plans for a state-of-the-art center to replace the historic buildings where it currently resides.
- How it works | Sponsume.com
Viral funding describes the contagious process of raising support and funding through social networks and online media.
Sponsume makes viral funding easy by offering a free customisable project page and easy-to-purchase project vouchers that can be shared with your social network.
- HOW TO: Crowdsource Funds for Causes, Creativity and Startups
Now, there are more ways than ever to raise money thanks the to Internet. A huge market of do-it-yourself crowdsourcing websites has made fundraising easier and more effective. The good news is that you don’t have to be a techie to access all of these great resources. Even the most adamant technophobe can get online and start raising money. [[Three links to new fundraising sources]]
A new term came up on my radar; Geofencing.
Location aware software for mobile apps are getting more common and more complex, but still function upon the proximity to single GPS points. The problem mobile-side is the significant drain upon the battery.
(Via ReadWriteWeb) Location Labs has announced the beta for its geofencing library for the new iPhone. This will allow new location aware apps to response to more than a single GPS point. In short, you can define a whole sector of GPS points as a single area, place or building. If Foursquare-type apps are your thing, this would mean people would actually have to enter a place before checking in.
GPS real estate. I wonder about the future lawsuit of owning location data. When geofencing data is claimed by a third party other than the people who own the building. Anyway, I’m thinking out loud. The useful part is that a museum that can plot of every corner of its own floorplan can be involved with the next generation of location aware apps. There’s also the function for automatic “checking-in” (To borrow from Foursquare again) and also automatically saying when you’ve left.
Other uses could be improved Augmented Reality apps that provided information exactly over an object without additional location tags (like QR, bokode etc.). Maybe location-aware WiFi? You can only connect to a network when sitting in a defined area.
Or maybe, tracking where you museum users are walking with handheld tours and working out the most popular objects/exhibits and where people gather. Vitally important metrics for museums.
Every Monday, I’ll be posting snippets of a story I wrote called Glyph. It’s rough and unfinished but should be entertaining. Here’s part three.
Talisman knocked twice on the large door of the meeting room with one of his rocky knuckles. When the door opened he thought that the room was dark. The darkness shifted position and Talisman found himself staring eye-to-chest with an enormous man. Talisman looked up at the chiselled jaw of a harden soldier, but also noticed the immaculately neat hair and designer glasses. What the man was wearing was also a paradox. It had all the fine tailoring of an expensive business suit with what looked like all the protection of military-issue bulletproof body armour. That’s when Talisman noticed the two sleek semi-automatic pistols in tactical thigh holsters made of fine Italian leather to match the briefcase being held in the man’s right hand.
Damn, thought Talisman, a Paladin. This only made things more difficult.
Paladins were originally the name for a royal guard. It then became the term for a warrior priest and in some cases a knight with some magical talents. These Paladins are neither righteous nor magical. They are employees of the Paladin Security International, highly trained bodyguards and security personnel with law degrees from some of the world’s top universities. They can act as a private military and legal representation, often at the same time. They understood all the loopholes of the legal system and often shot you through them. Those they didn’t need to terminate, they buried beneath litigation. No wonder the Portfolio Direktor was so clean if he had Paladins flanking him.
“Welcome Mr. Talisman”, said the Paladin with a deep Oxford accent. “My name is Mr. Barrett and I represent Paladin Security, Political Division. Direktor Kelman will see you now.”
Talisman entered, moving around the impressive frame of Mr Barrett. The door was softly closed behind him.
Copyright 2010. Pete Newcurator. Newcurator.com
Guest post from N. Elizabeth Schlatter. Follow her on twitter.
In preparation for a lecture in early June at the National Museum of Iceland, I had a minor epiphany—that the spectrum of what can be defined as “curatorial activity” is simultaneously being expanded in two diametrically opposed directions. At one end, the word “curate” is being used to describe myriad activities not pertaining to museums or art, while at the opposite end is the increasing specialization of the practice as exemplified by introspective theorizing and institutional criticism as well as proliferating academic programs.
Two recent posts illuminate this dichotomy. “Overwhelmed? Welcome to the Age of Curation” by Eliot Van Buskirk for a Wired magazine blog takes Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps to task for suggesting that Apple “curates” the software allowed on iPhones and iPads. Van Buskirk says that in reality Apple polices the software on these devices. But he admires how Epps cleverly manipulates her point by employing the word “curation” and then goes on to give several examples of how “Curation is already fundamental to the way in which we view the world these days …” listing Facebook, news outlets, and devices like smart-phones as examples.
Meanwhile, in his article “Art without Artists ” for the May 2010 issue of e-flux Journal, the artist and e-flux co-founder Anton Vidokle warns of the tendency towards self-inflation and self-infliction within the curatorial profession. Vidokle criticizes the dangers inherent in the concept of the “curatorial” which according to a recent conference on the topic, is “a practice which goes decisively beyond the making of exhibitions,” and which Marie Lind, director of the graduate program at Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies, has partially described in an Artforum essay as, “an endeavor that encourages you to start from the artwork but not stay there, to think with it but also away from and against it.” According to Vidokle, “Movement in such a direction runs a serious risk of diminishing the space of art by undermining the agency of its producers: artists.”
My intention with this post is not to bolster or argue against either of these permutations of “curator,” which could be oversimplified as the amateur (a Facebook user) versus the academic (an over-educated, overly-theorized professional curator)—hence the title of my post. But I do want to note the concurrent existence and continued escalation of these developments. I can’t effectively argue that there is a causal relationship between the two, but I do think that the increasing use of the word “curate” to describe functions outside of the traditional curatorial profession does enhance the desire for insiders to study what it means to curate to the extent of conceptually formalizing the activity, as in the “curatorial.”
The optimist in me hopes that this increasing spectrum of what can be called curatorial activity ultimately makes our profession more relevant within the art and museum worlds and to society at large. As mentioned in my January 2010 Museum magazine article this trend is already off and running and we might as well embrace it.
My main concern in both these developments is simply that they each move further and further from what was the initial focus of curatorial activity, that being art (or historical objects or natural and physical specimens to make this more applicable to the museum field at large). If either end of the spectrum glorifies the act of curating above and beyond what is being curated—be it paintings, data, or performances—then we move into precipitous territory. I don’t want to halt the process, but rather want to suggest we proceed with “care,” which, as many curators know, is at the very heart of their profession.
UPDATE:
Anton Vidokle has kindly requested I clarify that, unlike suggested in my original post, he is not critical of Lind’s notion of the “curatorial.” He elaborated on this originally in footnote # 2, from his article which I referenced above. The following is the text from the footnote.
“While I agree in principle with the description of “the Curatorial” as it has been articulated by Irit Rogoff and practiced by such figures as Maria Lind—insofar as that curatorial methodology and knowledge is not limited to exhibition-making only, and can be productively applied to many different activities from book publishing to teaching—my concern is with a rather large gap between theory and concrete power relations that exists within the culture industry, and only grows due to misunderstandings.”
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