Wearing the Curator Pants
What is "curating," anyway?
“But what do you mean when you say curating?” a colleague asked me last fall.
The question took me by surprise, particularly because this colleague works at an art school where he regularly curates exhibitions. But as I paused to think about my answer, I was also grateful for the prompt, which led me to think about what I mean when I use the word, when I do the work, when I start an exhibition project, when I collaborate with artists. It’s a widely-used and decontextualized word—do you remember J. Crew’s curator pants?—apparently we’re all a little confused about what curators do or why they exist.
There are other curators who have written more expansively about this. In particular, the unfathomably prolific curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has published two texts on the question, Ways of Curating (2014) and A Brief History of Curating (2008) that offer resources, historical precedents, and directions. And there are curators whose work you may want to study, for a more specific understanding of how the work might appear. If I were to recommend specific curators, I would say, look up the work of (in no particular order) Okwui Enwezor, Helen Molesworth, Candice Hopkins, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Noah Davis, Walter Hopps, Cuauhtémoc Medina, and Germaine McAgy. If you can (and if they are still curating), go see their shows.
But that’s a particularly subjective list, and there are so many other folks organizing exhibitions who are doing really innovative work, particularly at smaller spaces and community-driven projects. I’m sure you could start your own list. In Houston, I’m inspired by the work Paul Davis is doing as Curator of Collections at the Menil and I admire Kathryn Hall’s generous way of looking carefully, at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Anna Walker, now the director at Lawndale, is another remarkable colleague whose Olga de Amaral show, curated with Laura Mott last summer, just turned up in a top show of 2021 list in Artforum. I love Jessica Kairé and Stefan Benchoam’s curation of NuMu in Guatemala City. There are so many others I could list here…
But a list of curators doesn’t help us answer the question. And even making that list is often tricky: it’s important, I think, to notice that curators’ names are often not included in press releases, on wall texts, or in the exhibitions they make. Part of the museum’s function is to make their expertise feel universal. Or, another way to say that is: the museum stakes its power on making a curator’s work invisible. Because, if it’s not obviously a subjective project by an (inherently flawed, even if brilliant) individual, an exhibition can be part of the larger museum project of canonizing what is deemed culturally (and, by extension, financially) valuable in that moment. Erasing the curatorial ethos behind a show can be tucked into the museum’s constructions of power, using history, aesthetics, and artists as their material. (I often cite a 2015 article in Hyperallergic about the influence of major galleries on museum exhibitions as a helpful guide for thinking through this argument further. And this 2019 study of museum demographics is sobering… TL:DR: 73% of people hired in “intellectual leadership” position at museums between 2015 and 2018 were white.) So, making curatorial work invisible also means making the art world’s biases harder-to-see.
I think you can see the problems with the missing definition, the mirage-like curator.
In later dispatches, I’ll write more about the bits and pieces of making an exhibition—something I’m often asked about and something I love to think about. But for this week, I thought it might be helpful to simply pose the question. What do you mean—what do I mean—what do we mean, when we talk about curating? Why do you work with the curators you do? How do you find the curators you want to work with?
At its linguistic roots, the word curator centers care. “One who has the care or charge of a person or thing,” says the Oxford English Dictionary, or “One who has the cure of souls.” Later, this care becomes about management, oversight, and power: “A person who has charge; a manager, overseer, steward,” or “The officer in charge of a museum, gallery of art, library, or the like; a keeper, custodian.” Here, I love the overlap between the officer in charge and custodian, which reminds me of the Maintenance Art of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who makes visible the custodianship of daily life, from museums to city garbage disposal.
Within these definitions, though, there’s a lot of wiggle room. And, even the word care is particularly wiggly in these pandemic times, bandied about in the arts without much grounding in the daily actions (many uncomfortable, invisible, and tedious) that care actually necessitates.
If I were thinking of a definition for a curator’s work, it begins with the making of exhibitions, but then quickly scatters into more ineffable bits of what that work actually entails: speaking with artists, translating artists’ ideas into written language and into spatial arrangements that invite a viewer’s movements through those ideas, the custodianship of objects from door to door, putting objects in relation to one another, designing spaces and lighting, endless research, connecting to visitors through programs and tours, considering this histories held within the objects and their display, navigating museum administrations, connecting authentically with communities… And yet, this list flattens out the strange creative balancing act of making something with the creative work of others. And then, often (because of museum traditions mentioned above), having to erase one’s presence in that creative act.
It’s complicated.
Or, what I mean is: It’s complicated, because each of those steps requires careful attention to power dynamics, deliberate communication, thinking in space and with objects, and accessibility, while also navigating many forms of bureaucracy, even at the smallest nonprofits. And, because the resources in the art world are so extraordinarily scarce—at least when it comes to supporting artists (not necessarily when it comes to funding particular “orgies of opulence” for collectors and building impressive new buildings for showing art, ahem)—it means that the relationship between an artist and curator is often weighted with uneven power dynamics that are tricky to un-do. You can see this most clearly when you talk to emerging artists who are confused (and rightly so) about how best to meet a curator (maybe hang out at J. Crew?), which curators matter (spoiler, written with an eye roll: the ones who work at big museums), and what a curator wants from you, when they visit your studio. Where are these ghostly creative power brokers even to be found? These bizarre power dynamics are extrinsic to the individuals: they are built into the system, and they are meant to be hard to see.
Recently, I gave a talk about my past curatorial work, which I put on pause after opening two exhibitions in January of 2020. I’m re-dedicating myself to curating this year, returning to this work with the reflections from this pause-time and its particular nature. The care of curating, for example, is something I am thinking particularly and deeply about. The visibility of curatorial thought, the act of visual translations, how we organize ourselves in space. Somehow, I still find this work to be meaningful, as a way of collaborating with artists to see the world more specifically, and to imagine it differently. And, perhaps now more than ever, I think it’s important to define what we’re doing when we curate something.
In that presentation, I did something I’ve never done before: I wrote a curatorial manifesto.
In light of the ambiguity of what it means to curate – in light of my colleague’s question – in light of working with artists who say they’ve never worked with a curator in quite this way – in light of the often-invisibility of the curatorial thinking and power and complexities of exhibition-making, I think the clarity (even strident confidence) of saying out loud why we curate and what it means to do so, is useful. Knowing the stakes of what we do, why we do it, and who we work for matters.
And, because I always want to unsettle the ways institutions frame the dynamics between artists and curators, I write here, specifically, to my artist readers: ask curators what they believe. Ask them often, and ask them to clarify why they do this work, particularly now. Be thoughtful about who you work with. Even though exhibitions seem to be a goal in and of themselves, I want you to push back against that notion of incessant exhibition-driven productivity. Work with curators whose beliefs align with yours. Work with curators who think about exhibition-making as world-making, not in an ego-driven over-important kind of way, but in a wow, let’s get weird with the futures we want kind of way. Work with curators over long spans of time, not just in the immediacy of a quick project for your CV. Be skeptical of curators at big museums. Be skeptical of all curators. Work with curators who are as curious, creative, grounded, and thoughtful as you are. Because, of course, their work with your work is a reflection of what you believe, too.
Here’s my curatorial manifesto for 2022… (though I reserve the right to endlessly revise it, as the world changes). I hope you’ll forgive the me-centeredness of including this manifesto here, but I think it’s worth offering as an example of why I believe the stakes of this work are continuously interesting… I want more curators to write manifestoes! I want their manifestoes to appear beside their exhibitions! Here’s to more curatorial transparency in the year ahead! (the dorkiest 2022 resolution ever, but I’m sticking with it). Anyway, here it is:
I believe curating is a form of cultural translation and a method for crossing borders. Many of the exhibitions I make consider borders as embodied experiences and national ideologies, worth breaking and resisting.
In my exhibitions, I often study issues of community, particularly as it is formed in the wake of trauma, natural disaster, and displacement. I think community is infinitely complex and messy and worth close-looking. I work to build new exhibition methodologies, predicated upon rigorous scholarship and pedagogy, close relationships with artists, care for communities, and empathic listening to communities of which I am sometimes a part and, more often, not a part.
I believe in learning from everyone at and around the table. I am invested in building many forms of diversity into the fabric of art museums, galleries, educational programs, and artist-run spaces. I believe there is always more work to do here, and I learn from others who are leading that work and pushing for change and collective action in the arts.
I think of conversation as a research methodology and working praxis. I consider publications to be an important method for sharing exhibitions and expanding their reach: all of my publications are bi- or multi-lingual and include artists’ writings. I am interested in the intersections between language and making exhibitions: my writing informs my exhibitions, and my exhibitions inform my work as a scholar, art critic, translator, and essayist.
It’s a rough draft, a preliminary answer to my colleague’s confused face, an invocation for my future work, a challenge to my colleagues out there, doing the work. It’s a place to start.
Happy New Year,
Laura
Laura August, PhD is a writer and curator, gardener and novice potter. She has curated more than 20 exhibitions as an independent curator working between the U.S. and Central America. In 2021, she was named an inaugural Mellon Arts + Practitioner Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, and her writing has been recognized with an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Alongside her consulting practice for artists and writers, she teaches a process, practice, and professional strategies class for artists at the Glassell School of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.