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?
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.
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.
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]
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.
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 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?
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.”
Kids nowadays. Remember when there was such a thing as standards?
The Internet, all you needed was a standard screen and any browser. Now its all ep-ods and ep-ads and tablets and apps that don’t work with Android. Everything’s behind a password. In my day, we didn’t have to lock our data.
Whyioutta *shakes cane*
Welcome to the Splinternet, where your website might not work and Google can’t search it.
Is the fact that so many fantastic innovative museum things are occurring on an exceptionally expensive pieces of kit a form of social inclusion?
As an Android phone owner, I can’t think of a single museum making apps for it. A quick search on the market brings up a bunch of tourism and picture apps. Not a single official museum app.
Where’s the inclusion? Where has that bastion of museum work “Access” gone? We were doing everything we could to break down the barriers to the museum-loving public and then we go and provide all this innovation to a technological elite. Then this innovation is at the mercy of the sanctioning process of the platform and the limitations of the device.
Just how are museums going to deal with the Splinternet?
I’m wanting to do something of a weekly poll in the vein of my Most Important Function of Museums and Role of the Curator posts from a while back.
This week, something about just how we choose to define the time we’re in now.
What Age of Museums is this?
Use whatever word from whatever terminology you wish. I would say something like this being the Supermodern age of museums, which shouldn’t come as a surprise.
The greatest financial threat to museums and their workers was the global financial meltdown. The shock to the global system sent the museum industries into a freefall regardless of nationality. Museums based on a model of philanthropic support found the rich were giving less. Local government institutions have had budgets slashed. Everyone found their investments suffering. The final outcomes are identical regardless of the route: there’s a lot less money going around and culture is often the first to be cut. I imagine there was a second shock to many museums when they found there was a globalised system that they were just as much a part of as multinational banks.
Whenever I think about new systems of survival within globalisation, I am always lead to John Robb. This time, I’m drawn to his interest in the Resilient Community. The Community is taken as the smallest unit of support as the nation-state fails to do so. This approach will hopefully tackle the problem of the museum industry having very low average wages. This is a revolutionary approach with many high risks and many obstacles that would required much more thought than this blog post. Museums that like their current situation and feel secure need not change and this revolution is not for them. For the sake of this exercise, this is an act against the slow rot and mothballing of museums and hopefully create something sustainable.
The Information Superabundance. It flows all around us and drowns us. It saturates our increasingly mobile computers. It follows us around through our increasingly powerful phones. It engorges our still-infuriating television. It invades more and more space.
It managed to turn the music industry inside out. It turned the film industry into a paranoid delusional inmate. It scares the living daylights out of the newspaper and journalism industry. It has proved the fiction publishing industry to be delightfully stubborn.
In response to the Superabundance, the buzzword has become “curator”. There’s too much stuff and even that stuff is being repeated so how do we get to the good stuff? Well, curators just select stuff, don’t they? We need curators to sort this stuff out for us. The definition of a curator is becoming mutated. So, I’ve come up with the carefully designed test.
Ask yourself: Am I a curator?
The correct answer is: If you had to ask yourself that, you are not a curator.
You are, at best, a filter. You may make a name for yourself by excelling at some kind of selection process, but you are not a curator. “Curator” does not mean “I have good taste”. That just makes you some kind of fleshy gauze for the rest of us. The good come to us whilst all the pus and snot that came through your information media streams stay on your side. You are a makeshift step before a more advanced algorithm is invented.
Also, anyone calling themselves a “curator” when it is clear that they are dealing in merchandise should have their thumbs removed. You are not trying to fool us into believing that your job is anything outside marketing, branding and selling. Be proud of what you do without assigning the make-believe title of “curator” to sound more important. You have not reached some cultural apex through the range of shoes you have on offer. You are not a Connoisseur of a Stock-Take.
You Are Not a Curator. Don’t worry, there’s no shame. Just keep repeating it to yourself. You aren’t an editor of a newspaper by just simply choosing what articles to print. You aren’t an army general by simply shouting, “Charge”. So an inflated sense of worth in your Pick ‘n’ Mix does not a curator make.
I have becoming increasingly frustrated by the nonsense being stuck to the term “Curator” because people struggle to find the word for “Someone (Else) to Sort Through This Rubbish”. I still maintain that a curator, a job with actual skills, is starting to be abused by people from industries notorious for abusing definitions. This is why I sometimes despair at my Museopunk group when they start straying into territory that I covered in the Death of the Curator articles and calling it punk. It’s all well and good to get lots of involvement from your visitors/users/patrons/etc. but if you don’t have it based around an honest-to-God curator, do you know what you end up with?
Reality television. Prove me wrong. Very high participation from an audience who get to crowdsource the answers/outcomes/selections to the most base and voyeuristic products of the underculture.
I believe an antidote to this may well be Nina Simon’s new book, THE PARTICIPATORY MUSEUM. At the very centre of everything Nina says in this book is the curator (or more specifically, museum staff) as facilitator, designer and collaborator. Not just a presenter, as I fear curators will become when someone thinks participation means voting for favourites.
I warn you again; there needs to be a proper handle on curatorship before others start claiming it or misrepresenting it (I’m looking at you, U.S. NEWS). The very notion of a museums is integrated with the action of analytical thought. We go to museums to define ourselves, the world and the civilisation around us. If the curator is devalued cheapened through this woolly thinking then museums could lose all respect as cultural bastions. When I asked what the most important function of curators was, we saw how complex and varied the job was and not a singleperson said “selecting“.
This time last year, I launched newcurator.com. Since then, this site has developed into many different areas, expanded into some very interesting subjects and has had its readership grow beyond all expectations. To mark this occasion of newcurator’s first birthday, I want to thank all the people who commented, followed me on twitter and facebook, submitted guest posts, everyone who kept returning to read and everyone who ever clicked on one of the adverts.
Over the year, I have read and written about many things concerning the Future of Museums through a very particular lens. As is the custom to look back over the previous twelve months and find some kind of conclusion, I wish to start the Newcurator Awards. A very simple affair. Only three categories: Person of the Year, Museum of the Year and Website of the Year. No shortlist, no voting, no judges apart from me, no fancy images/trophies. Three awards to where I just want to hold up in recognition the efforts that have impressed me.
These awards are for those who are equal parts Now and the Future. Now, they are impressive. In the Future, they are going to make a difference. Without further ado, I present the winners.
Person of the Year – Maxwell L. Anderson
You only have to look at the incredible level of work coming from the Indianapolis Museum of Art to understand what Mr Anderson has that is lacking in so many other museums across the world: an entrepreneurial leadership that allows his stars to shine. Think about the marvellous ArtBabble or the great efforts the IMA puts into its social media/networking. Think about the level of transparency the IMA has, such as the deaccesioning database or the statistic generated by the dashboard. Think about free wifi, which is painfully lacking in so many places still. This just scratches the surface of what the team at IMA does.
Think about the aneurysm some museum directors would have at the mere mention of some of these things. Mr. Anderson has often spoken on the metrics to measure the success of the museum, which has put the IMA on an international stage of recognition where it would be so easy for him to say no, to be too cautious, to stick with simple goals. Mr. Anderson thinks big and allows his staff to think big. Whilst the successes of the museum and the online aspects deserve as much recognition as Mr. Anderson, it is the adoption of his management style in other museum would definitely make him part of the Future and the first Newcurator Person of the Year.
Museum of the Year – Brooklyn Museum
One of the major points in remembering the past year is the financial hammering museums took. Brooklyn Museum was no exception, having cutbacks to avoid layoff and a small rise in ticket prices. This didn’t stop them winning three awards at the Museum and the Web Conference, having one of the first museum iPhone apps as well as a mobile guide, leading the way in the Wikipedia Loves Art project, the 1stFans community, releasing a collections API and a great program of exhibitions without excessive use of the “blockbuster”. All this in the face of incredible adversity. Brooklyn Museum is an inspiration and highly deserving of the Newcurator Museum of the Year.
Website of the Year – Museos Unite
There are an incredible amount of amazing museum websites and blogs out there that have been going on for a long time, but I give this award to a blog that has only been going for six months and has totalled just over 30 posts. Why? Because of what it represents. Nothing is more important to the Future of Museum than the development of new museum staff. This blog looks at those trying to gain entry-level positions despite being highly talented and still facing uphill struggles. There is nothing so poignant than reading in the sidebar that of the four contributors, two have moved into other industries, one cannot afford union fees and another has no union to join. “Recession” was probably the most-said word of 2009 and Museos Unite looked to keep the interests of those hardest hit in museums; those at the bottom of the pile. For capturing the zeitgeist of museums in 2009, Museos Unite is the Newcurator Website of the Year.
Congratulations to the winners. Now let’s fire up the engines of 2010 for the upcoming year and keep moving towards that Future.
The Centre for the Future of Musuems made five predictions about the museum of the future. They said Green, Personalised, Comfortable, Interactive and Flexible. Read the article to get the explanation of each one (especially “Interactive”. They means something a bit more advanced. I think a better word would have been something from the Nina Simon lexicon “Participatory”)
I pretty much agree with these predictions, so I would like to offer five of my own.
I predict the museum of the future will be:
1) Closed. As in the doors are shut and the staff laid off. Whilst the financial and business world are slowly recalibrating themselves to try to deal with the new systems in places, I imagine there are a great number of museums that just will not have the ability to adapt for whatever reason, or the reasons will be out of their hands.
2) Enslaved. I think this to be the best antonym for autonomous. What I mean is that there will be ever increasing influences or a museum program from outside the museum. Corporate sponsorship of exhibitions, oppressive criteria for funding, government social engineering agendas and media lynch-mobs of ignorance. The actual museum will be very few decision left to make.
3) 3D digital. A more positive one. It only makes sense that the current digitisation projects will move into the next phase and an extra dimension. Considering there are people doing basic 3D scanning using only a webcam and other people doing amazing handheld highly-detailed scanning, museums are going to have to start soon.
4) Sillier. I agree with the CFM’s statement that future museums will be Flexible, but I feel that’s a statement about requirement rather than actuality. Distributed sites and chameleon spaces are sensible suggestions but urban regeneration through the construction of massive monuments isn’t going to go out of fashion. Well, it’s not as long as our concept of a city doesn’t change too much. As nobody has a set idea about what a museum or art gallery has to look like, they can build ever more bizarre buildings in attempts to be iconic.
5) Curatorless. Celebrity curators (like Shaq rather than Koons) or tyranny-by-majority decision making processes to pick out favourites. I wouldn’t be surprised if the task of curators is outsourced either to voting schemes or freelancers. Those banks sitting on large art collections will probably have more need for curators anyway.
Those are my five. Anyone else want to come up with five of their own?
Here’s the challenge: how can museums (and museos) make money enough to pay salaries while furthering their mission? “If you build it, they will come” is not working. We need to do more. Any ideas on how we can put the profit back in nonprofit?
Mission, as they rightly point out, means you can’t resort to opening cinemas. Getting people through the doors by any means is out of bounds. The museum mission has to be part of it.
If only it was that simple. There are plenty of other unspoken rules. Let’s say you have the opportunity to put on an exhibition that fits your museum’s mission/identity/policy and it has some real star quality to it. Win-win? Nope. You’ll gets all kinds of people crawling over you saying things like “conflict of interest” or “buddy-buddy”. I really feel for the New Museum. They have gone through some real unnecessary treatment. As if a trustee and supporter of a museum would take his resources to some other institution. Why would they want some other organisation to benefit? And why on Earth wouldn’t you want to work with people you’ve worked with before and have a close personal and professional relationship with?
Once upon a time, this kind of action was called an Art Movement
Also, we should be applauding Damien Hirst. I say that whilst not being his biggest fan. He paid money from his own pocket to keep an exhibition free and without having his name plastered next to some corporate logo.
“So museums need to start thinking more like for-profit businesses, right?” says Museo Unite’s Kat Hinkel. Of course there are hints to be taken from the commercial world, but be too much like it and you’ll will have people folding their arms in disgust. Contemporary artists? But they have agents and collectors! Public viewings would raise the prices! Scandal! Scandal!
The philanthropy-grantmaking model was unsustainable, as proved by it didn’t work in an economic meltdown. Well, the other option is go for international megaphilanthropy (via The Art Law Blog), which isn’t always an available option and I don’t know how this exactly fits within a museum’s mission.
We just can’t win, can we? The required sweet-spot between financial stability, museum mission and corporate interest is a tiny speck surrounded by a lot of foot-stamping and indignation. Be aware when trying to answer the question, there’s a lot more to a nonprofit’s status than just the finance.
I often come back to the idea of “slack space”. A term coined by artists in Margate who turned empty commercial properties into art exhibition space. Many other terms have cropped up to describe this process. Many similar projects have appeared. I’m not sure there is a single former-Woolworth’s in the country that hasn’t had this idea associated with it at some point.
Sharing information like this is a good example of Museopunk. Even if it seems to be more art-focused, the information is easily adaptable should anyone want to try.
Well. I admit. I’ll throw my hands up and say I was wrong. Severaltimes I have said David Beckham would be the future of curating through great use of his celebrity and wide appeal of his name.
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