AC Discussion Warm Up | From the Margins to the Center: Inclusive Curatorial Practices
Visitors at Amplify’s Generator Space. Photo by Debra Kaplan.
The term “curate” comes from the Latin curare, avere cura, or “to take care.” Its etymological origin underlies the relationship between the art object and the work of a curator. Historically, that work involved developing ontological frameworks through which objects, archives, and collections are assembled, interpreted, evaluated, and remembered. As the field expands outside museum walls to non-collecting institutions, commercial galleries, artist-run spaces, and community-supported nonprofits, the parameters of a curator’s role have expanded as well. Their professional and ethical responsibilities encompass caring for the artists and communities with whom they work--diverse constituencies that also exist outside museum walls. Those responsibilities increasingly necessitate disposing of the superstar curator model, and spectre of singular authority that accompanies it, in favor of inclusive approaches guided by collaboration, knowledge sharing, and community expertise.
In a 2020 interview with Jan Cohen-Cruz for A Blade of Grass, Elvira Dyangani Ose, director of The Showroom, London, shared more about her approach to developing inclusive curatorial models:
“Every activity at The Showroom would aim to generate the formation of a diverse community, bringing together art and non-art audiences, and inviting them to take part in decision-making processes about exhibitions, local initiatives, events, and workshops. The objective is to create close collaboration through institutional partnerships—as it has occurred so far—but also to bring together local expertise and intelligentsia, collective experiences of individuals and groups. To that extent, the program would formulate an “exportable” methodology, a communal knowledge, through the vast range of display and the artistic experiences and encounters it would provide.”
Ose illustrates the importance of organizational leadership in developing inclusive approaches to exhibition making. Curators may have leeway within their respective practices to work closely with diverse constituencies, but also run the risk of burning out quickly, or curbing community-informed initiatives to fit into organizational hierarchies, without institutional support. Standard operating procedure in most museums and large cultural institutions dictates that exhibitions and special projects be organized unencumbered by the “messy” process of seeking community input. I’ll tell you want before asking what you need. Factor in the individual interests of museum donors and board members that sway exhibition programming decisions in favor of artists represented in their own collections (the price of an artist’s work jumps significantly after a reputation-boosting museum exhibition), and a clearer picture of the structural barriers many curators face when pursuing inclusive modes of curating comes into focus.
When important constituencies are ignored or dismissed in exhibition planning and curatorial decision making processes, the likelihood of institutions misinterpreting subject matter that puts forth ethical, social, political, or economic relations which exist beyond the boundaries of the institution’s walls becomes a distinct reality. Take for example the Whitney’s ill-fated Collective Action show, an attempt to situate 2020 calls for racial justice within an institutional context by acquiring and organizing an exhibition of photographic works by See In Black, a Black photographers’ collective that formed after the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, Tony McDade, and others. Members of the collective received emails informing them that their work, originally created for sale to benefit bail funds and mutual aid networks, had been acquired by the Museum. After receiving the email, collective member Giancarlo Valentine wrote took to Twitter in response, writing:
“People DREAM of having their work shown in the Whitney, but the Museum preyed on Black artists in this moment in such a disgusting way. No scruples. An embarrassment. This man [Whitney curator Farris Wahbeh] was following me, not engaging my work, not asking me shit, and ‘acquired’ a print that I did not sign or make, meant to raise money.”
The Whitney cancelled the exhibition within 24 hours of being confronted by See In Black. Its lack of care for the artists and the distinctly anti-institutional context from which their work emerged became even more evident in official statements that made vague promises to “study” and “consider” exhibition organizing strategies in the future. Why wasn’t Collective Action approached more considerately to begin with? How would the outcome have been different if exhibition curators prioritized inclusive organization from the outset, if See In Black had been hired as co-curator, if a paid community advisory board had been assembled to guide the exhibition from start to finish?
Historically, the institutional art world hasn’t been a fair place. It hasn’t been an inclusive place. Instead it’s been a place that privileges the wealthy and patronizes communities on whose backs wealth is built. By adopting more inclusive curatorial practices, arts organizations and cultural institutions have a real opportunity to begin the work of correcting course to adjust for those historic imbalances.
From the Margins to the Center: Inclusive Curatorial Practices is Thursday, August 19th at 7pm. Register HERE to join the virtual discussion with panelists Natalie Bell, Curator at The MIT List Visual Arts Center; Mary Lawson, Artist and Organizer; and Jared Ledesma, Senior Curator at the Akron Art Museum, and moderator moderator Jared Packard, Exhibitions Manager at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art.