ICI PERSPECTIVES IN CURATING NO. 1
Thinking
Contemporary
Curating
Terry Smith
INDEPENDENT CURATORS INTERNATIONAL
Thinking Contemporary Curating is the first in a new publication series developed by Independent Curators International (ICI) entitled Perspectives in Curating which offers timely reflections by curators, artists, critics, and art historians on emergent debates in curatorial practice around the world.
This publication was made possible, in part, by grants from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation. Additional support for this publication was received from the ICI International Forum Patrons Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy, Haro and Bilge Cumbusyan, Carol and Arthur Goldberg, Belinda Kielland, Patricia and Charles Selden, Younghee Kim-Wait, Georgia Welles, and Elizabeth Erdreich White.
Published by Independent Curators International, New York.
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Copyright ©2012 Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or otherwise transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Texts copyright ©2012 the author.
Series Editor
Kate Fowle
Copyeditor
Audrey Walen
Designer
Scott Ponik
Publication Coordinator
Chelsea Haines
Researcher
Jessica Gogan
eISBN 978-0-916365-87-5
Table of
Contents
ICI Perspectives in Curating Kate Fowle
The Lure 1. What is Contemporary Curatorial Thought? 2. Shifting the Exhibitionary Complex 3. Artists as Curators/Curators as Artists 4. Curating Contemporaneity 5. Curatorial Practice Now The Infrastructural
ICI
Perspectives
in Curating
Kate Fowle
The starting point for Thinking Contemporary Curating occurred on March 11, 2011—day one of The Now Museum conference that Independent Curators International (ICI) produced in collaboration with The Graduate Center, CUNY and the New Museum in New York. Involving artists, art historians, curators, and museum directors in a series of panel discussions and conversations, the three-day event looked at the diversification of the notion of the “museum of contemporary art,” providing intergenerational perspectives on recent developments across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
While topics in the spotlight included the reconsideration of historical narratives (or their abandonment), recent alternative models to traditional museum infrastructures, and burgeoning international collaborations, the subtext to the whole event was a revelation of the various positions the speakers held in relation to the contemporary museum as a place and/or concept. What became evident was a slightly uneasy breakdown in communication among speakers (and at times audience members)—in particular between curators and art historians—who, even when talking about the same thing, frequently could not tell that this was the case, causing a slippage in establishing what was at stake, let alone any cooperative game plan in moving ideas forward.
The breakdown became palpable on the afternoon of the first day, during the discussion “Contemporanizing History/Historicizing the Contemporary,” led by Claire Bishop (Associate Professor, PhD Program in Art History, The Graduate Center, CUNY) with panelists Okwui Enwezor (Director, Haus der Kunst), Annie Fletcher (Curator, Van Abbemuseum), Massimiliano Gioni (Associate Director and Director of Exhibitions, New Museum), and Terry Smith. It continued as a fascinating glitch in the proceedings of the many sessions that followed.
A month or so later, over dinner, I brought up this slippage to Terry Smith, asking him what he thought lay at the root of it. I suggested perhaps it was a difference in style and use of language. Art historians are trained (and expected) to propose a unique observation (no matter how minutely different) on any given topic, outline the facts and problems that pertain to its specificities, and present their solutions before providing a conclusion that proves they are right. Curators, on the other hand, take a far more speculative (and often meandering) approach, outlining the issues at stake from personal experience, describing a project and various artists’ practices that test ways to understand key points, then making an open-ended proposition for consideration with the conclusion that research is ongoing.
Smith did not totally agree with my reasoning, but concurred that there was something in the “glitch,” particularly as a result of the increasingly multifarious production modes of curators. While it is widely accepted that the role has been professionalized and given independence from bureaucratic mandates, with a “coming of age” occurring in the 1990s, we are still fumbling to pinpoint what really constitutes contemporary curating. If the curatorial position remained fixed, as it was historically—behind the scenes, pragmatic, and ostensibly service oriented—this belaboring of specifics and terminologies would be unnecessary, but as the curatorial imperative gains momentum around the world, its form is mutating and becoming untethered from its modern precedent. Furthermore, the notion of a language around curating is still nascent, or at best tentative, as evidenced by the anecdotal fallback position so often used by practitioners. After much back and forth and a few glitches in our own conversation, by the end of the night we were left with yet another question, though one that was pertinent to getting to the bottom of the first: What is distinctive about contemporary curatorial thought?
And so Thinking Contemporary Curating became the first book-length text to lay the groundwork for articulating specificities in this still-forming field. As described in his acknowledgments, Smith has actively (and I would add generously and thoroughly) engaged with numerous exhibitions, conversations, and projects around the world—often as they are occurring—and gained an overview of both emerging and established curator’s ideas, practices, and outcomes, with one pivotal closed-door group discussion between professionals triggering the form of the text in front of us now. Divided into five chapters that loosely define five facets or operatives, Smith considers what contemporaneity means for curating, and examines the curator’s position in relation to the artist,