CartCuratorial Practice I:
Here & Now Instructor: Mohammad Salemy Guests: Julieta Aranda, Suhail Malik, Martha Schwendener, & Charles Stankievich Credit: Module: 1 of 2 Date & Time: October and November 2014
Jens Hoffman: “How, in just a few short years, did we reach this point of self-referential saturation?” /// Elena Filipovic: “Implicit in the question is thus not so much what the meaning of the exhibition is as a category/genre/object, but what it does, which is to say, how exhibitions function and matter, and how they participate in the construction and administration of the experience of the items they present.” /// João Ribas: “Are we perhaps so concerned with the contemporary because we have failed to reconcile with finitude? That is, to conceive of a future beyond ecological disaster, technological singularity, or terror-fueled millenarianism?”
DESCRIPTION: The 20th century, particularly after the Second World War, witnessed the emergence of a new class of cultural producers named curators who worked with with artists, museum officials and private collectors to organize art exhibitions. Through steady self-specialization, curators started to play a decisive role in the production of art and shaping the function of living artist. Over the last two decades, many universities have begun to offer curatorial studies programs, focusing on the development of the curator’s role in constructing associations between art, artists and audiences, as well as elaborating the significance of exhibitions as the key space for approaches to contemporary art and society.
The first in this two-module seminar, “Here & Now” will look critically at the role of curators in the systemization of art practices, as well as the globalized dissemination of contemporary art in the current decades. Throughout the seminar, the students will examine the impact of the growth of interest in contemporary art by different levels of the government and private sector, paying particular attention to the interaction and competition between cultural, political, and financial capital for shaping the future of the art world. In addition, we will engage how the evolving forms of nation-states on a global scale has contributed to the transformation of the idea and practice of curatorship locally. With a focus on both the inside and outside views of today’s curating, the seminar covers texts written by leading contemporary curators as well as contributions by theorists and thinkers who have problematized the practice of making and showing contemporary art. Each session will examine ideas discussed by curators against actual exhibitions and analyze their successes/failures in terms of realizing the curator’s own goals and objectives.
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