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1000 Words

Curator Conversations

#11 Alona Pardo

Alona Pardo is a Curator at Barbican Art Gallery, the Barbican Centre London. She has curated and edited several exhibitions and accompanying publications, including most recently: Masculinities: Liberation through Photography (2020); Trevor Paglen: From Apple to Anomaly (2019); Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing (2018); Vanessa Winship: And Time Folds (2018); Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins (2018) and Richard Mosse: Incoming (2017), among others.

What is it that attracts you to the exhibition form?

The exhibition form has always held a particular attraction for me because of its inherent multiplicity of form. By that I am referring to the often-lengthy process involved in curating an exhibition, which happens over time and is a process that allows for space to reflect, probe and further refine ideas. I love the process of casting the net wide and researching artists and specific works, playing with different permutations and ultimately allowing a narrative and inherent logic to emerge. It’s a like a huge jigsaw puzzle that you lovingly put together. However, without a doubt the most rewarding aspect of exhibition making is working closely with artists and giving them space for their ideas to coalesce through the exhibition form. Often when I’m working with artists I really see myself as an enabler or facilitator, my role is really to guide them through the spatial complexity of working in the Barbican. Equally rewarding is meeting lenders and experts in the field who are often so generous in imparting their knowledge.

On a more serious note, I believe exhibitions play a vital role – above and beyond retinal pleasure – which is to make manifest ideas through the agency of artistic practice and by extension curatorial practice. Ultimately, I believe curatorial practice has a social function and that this collision between artistic and curatorial practices can activate processes and generate structures that facilitate a dialogical space, a space of negotiation between curators, artists and the public, that hopefully allows for knowledge to form in the curated encounter.

Reflecting on my own experience as a curator, I think it is critical to take into account the space in which I curate – not as an architectural paradigm – but the unique characteristics; in my case, of the Barbican as the largest multi-arts cultural centre in Europe. This very particular dimension informs what we show, how we show it, the connections we make and the curatorial decisions we take, even at a subliminal level. I’m convinced that if I curated shows at the Tate or Hayward they would, by default, take radically different forms, creating other connections perhaps on a more formal or aesthetic level. I would also argue, particularly in my role predominantly as a curator of photography and film, that at the Barbican we have consistently demonstrated our desire to address issues that stretch beyond art and aesthetics, to help us, and by extension the viewer, reflect and understand the world from more complex and nuanced perspectives.

What does it mean to be a curator in an age of image and information excess?

I recently came across a quote by James Baldwin where he says that “artists are here to disturb the peace”. So while it is true that we live in an age where there is a glut of images and information, it strikes me that we need artists more than ever to help distil ideas, visually and conceptually, to pierce through conventional ways of looking at the world and offer us new ways of seeing.

In a recent interview in ArtReview with Catherine Opie, whose work is featured in Masculinities: Liberation through Photography that is alas currently closed due to Covid-19, she says: “Everyone’s asking: aren’t there too many images now, Cathy? Well there’s too much of everything, but it’s how you decide to disseminate that information. That’s what’s interesting to me – this idea of criticality.” And so in this ‘post-truth’ era, I think it is incumbent on artists to make work that questions and overturns received truths and in turn curators need to be supporting artists, whether through newly commissioned work or exhibitions, to bring their work and the ideas embedded in the work, to the attention of as wide an audience as possible.

What is the most invaluable skill required for a curator?

Curating is a shared endeavour and so if I had to highlight one quality above all else it would be a spirit of generosity and collaboration with artists, lenders, estates, peers and colleagues. But there are many other qualities that are essential to be a successful curator: conviction in your ideas and clarity of vision, resilience as, no matter what, you are entering into fraught territory by putting forth a particular position or choosing to give weight to one aspect of an individual’s creative life over another; being both a team leader and a team player; communication coupled with honesty and openness and, last but not least, the ability to compromise, be flexible and listen.

What was your route into curating?

My route into curating was fairly conventional. I studied French and Art History at undergraduate level before embarking on an MA in Curating at Goldsmiths College in the early 2000s at a moment when curatorial practice was undergoing seismic changes and a certain professionalisation. I was fortunate to graduate from Goldsmiths at a time of exponential growth in the museum sector, marked I guess by the inauguration of Tate Modern in 2000. Having had the opportunity to curate shows independently at a time when it seemed access to funding was considerably easier, I was lucky enough to land a job as Assistant Curator at the Barbican a few years later where I’ve been for well over a decade.

What is the most memorable exhibition that you’ve visited?

As a child I remember visiting the Saatchi Gallery at its original location on Boundary Road and coming across the work of Jeff Koons. There were numerous pieces by him on display, but I distinctly remember a piece in which 3 vacuum cleaners encased in Perspex boxes were stacked one on top of the other and being utterly perplexed. The work is Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Two Dr J Silver Series, Spalding NBA Tipoff), 1985. I don’t know why this encounter left such an indelible mark on me, but it certainly made an impression and from that moment on, and being a precocious child, I knew I wanted to understand what it meant. I think that experience was incredibly formative.

However, in terms of ambition and scope, Okwui Enwezor’s documenta11, 2002 certainly tops the bill, for me at least, as the most impactful and meaningful exhibition experience. It felt radical in the way it directly addressed socio-political issues of globalisation and advanced a narrative of decolonisation, both artistically and historically, that I feel has genuinely impacted on both artistic and curatorial practice.

What constitutes curatorial responsibility in the context within which you work?

A curator bears a responsibility towards the work they show and the artists they work with, to the institution they work in as well as to the public. It is a complex triangulation!

On a personal level, I believe curators have a responsibility in giving a voice or platform to those who have been marginalised within the art historical canon, be that women artists whose work has been overlooked, such as Dorothea Lange or indeed Vanessa Winship, a British artist who had been overlooked in her home country but equally to artists of colour or queer-identifying artists in order to relocate them in art history. A curatorial platform for advocacy and activism is a great responsibility, and one no curator takes lightly.

What is the one myth that you would like to dispel around being a curator?

“Pity the beleaguered museum curator. Mired in administration, fighting scholarly turf wars, courting egomaniacal benefactors and collectors, and attempting to infuse critical heft into the next blockbuster show, how does she find time to respond to the reconstitution of her profession as an art form open to every gifted flaneur with a knack for designing brochures?” Michael J. Kowalski, The Curatorial Muse (2010). I think that says it all!

What advice would you give to aspiring curators?

To be confident in your opinions, to look critically at the world, visit as many exhibitions as possible, engage with current debates around artistic practice; and, most importantly, to independently curate in all sorts of venues, organise talks or write reviews etc (even if only for your own pleasure). It’s all about gaining experience and confronting new scenarios from which we learn more about ourselves. I have always found the most torturous scenarios the ones from which I learn the most!♦

Further interviews in the Curator Conversations series can be read here.

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Curator Conversations is part of a collaborative set of activities on photography curation and scholarship initiated by Tim Clark (1000 Words and The Institute of Photography, Falmouth University), Christopher Stewart (London College of Communication, University of the Arts London) and Esther Teichmann (Royal College of Art) that has included the symposium, Encounters: Photography and Curation, in 2018 and a ten week course, Photography and Curation, hosted by The Photographers’ Gallery, London in 2018-19.

Images:

1-Alona Pardo

2-Installation view of Masculinities: Liberation through Photography, Barbican Art Gallery, 2020. © Max Colson

3-Installation view of Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins, Barbican Art Gallery, 2018. © Justin Piperger

1000 Words

Curator Conversations

#10 Mariama Attah

Mariama Attah is a photography curator and editor with a particular interest in the power of photography to re-present visual culture. She is Curator of Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool and was previously Assistant Editor of Foam Magazine. Prior to this, Attah was Curator of Photoworks, where she was responsible for developing and curating programmes and events including Brighton Photo Biennial and commissioning and editing Photoworks Annual. She completed her BA Photography at Wolverhampton University and gained an MA in Museum Studies from University of Leicester. Attah has worked with a number of national and international artists and previous other roles include Exhibitions and Events Manager at Iniva and Assistant Officer, Visual Arts at Arts Council England.

What is it that attracts you to the exhibition form?

Storytelling is the element that drew me back to the exhibition form. I love shaping a narrative and space that people can physically experience. Alongside that, I’m interested in working with artists to help them outline a context beyond the frame of the artwork. I see the curatorial process as one where all the references, links, research and ideas that I gather and am inspired by are projected from inside my head to the outside world – they can come alive and be further shaped and enlivened by audiences.

What does it mean to be a curator in an age of image and information excess?

The early role of the curator was that of a guardian of collections and to act as a barrier to access. This slowly adapted into curators acting as channels to serve audiences but still maintained an aspect of authoritarianism on value and taste. Today, the curator is more of a point of introduction and reference. They can guide people towards themes, ideas, practitioners, etc. but they aren’t a single voice or route in determining what is relevant or what should be ignored. That isn’t possible or desirable.

I’m also curious about the idea of an excess of imagery and information. Are we in excess, and is that a new occurrence? How many images are too many? I don’t necessarily believe there is too much information or imagery, instead I think there is an excess of feeling obligated to engage with everything around us. Our worlds have always been filled with imagery and information. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to choose what we look at and how we engage with it.

What is the most invaluable skill required for a curator?

I think more than anything, curiosity, and a drive to share your thoughts and ideas are the most invaluable skills a curator can have. Being curious about your surroundings; about history, visual representation and communication, and wanting other people to engage with that will take you far.

What was your route into curating?

I didn’t know what a curator was until the last few weeks of my photography degree when we were organising our end of year degree show. I decided then that I was more interested in working with photographers than being a photographer. I also realised that I didn’t have the personality or desire to make a living from taking photographs. From there, I was very lucky to get a job curating at a museum while I did a MA in Museum Studies, though it took a few more years before my first role working purely with photography. This isn’t the role that I originally saw for myself but this is absolutely where I want to be.

What is the most memorable exhibition that you’ve visited?

John Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea, which premiered at the 56th Venice Biennale, as part of Okwui Enwezor’s All the World’s Futures exhibition in 2015, is the most vivid and meaningful exhibition I have encountered. The body of work combines found archival footage from the BBC’s Natural History Unit with contemporary images shown on a three channel video installation, referencing Moby Dick and Whale Nation. Vertigo Sea uses the ocean as a metaphor for understanding migration, colonialism, ecological ruin, the movement of people, goods, and people as goods, and the long history of humans endeavouring to prevail over nature. The ocean is presented as a site of transport, industry, beauty, control and disinterested rule. It is indifferent to whether you’re fleeing or sightseeing or being moved against your will, and Akomfrah captures this force in an utterly compelling way.

What constitutes curatorial responsibility in the context within which you work?

My curatorial responsibility is to use my position to advocate for and work with artists, communities and groups of people in helping to spread a shared message. Collaboration and representation are key to me.

What is the one myth that you would like to dispel around being a curator?

Curators are not gatekeepers or all seeing eyes. We can’t make or break a career and we haven’t seen every exhibition, installation or publication. I’m just as eager to learn or be shown something new as anyone else.

What advice would you give to aspiring curators?

I would tell any aspiring curators to visit as many exhibitions as possible to gain an idea of what does and doesn’t interest you about the physical exhibition space. Pay attention to the details that guide people through the space, the design decisions and details that are used in presenting and displaying artworks, the pauses that are built in to prompt visitors to start forming their own opinions and how and where additional information and materials are presented to support this.

Curating isn’t only about the artists you work with, it’s also about the communities and audiences. I would advise aspiring curators to think about who they want to curate for and how they can include the voices of these groups in exhibition making.

I also think that there is an easy affinity between photography and writing and having worked as an editor makes me a more confident curator. Take any opportunity to read and write on subjects you’re moved by and don’t shy away from feedback. Being able to form your ideas on paper will help other people to better understand your vision.

Alongside this, I also think that curators should have a basic understanding of both the private and public art worlds, no matter which sphere you work in, in order to be able to support the careers of the artists you are working with.

Start curating, reading, writing, visiting, learning, and then repeat until the end.♦

Further interviews in the Curator Conversations series can be read here.

Images:

1-Mariama Attah

2-Installation view of Jerwood/Photoworks Awards 2015: Matthew Finn, Joanna Piotrowska, Tereza Zelenkova, Jerwood Space London, 2015.

1000 Words

Curator Conversations

#9 Kathrin Schönegg

Kathrin Schönegg is a photography historian and Curator at C/O Berlin, Germany. She holds a PhD in Art and Media Studies from the University of Konstanz. She worked on exhibitions at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden, Münchner Stadtmuseum in Munich, and the Folkwang Museum in Essen, including (Mis)Understanding Photography: Works and Manifestos (2014). In 2017 she co-curated Farewell Photography: Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie in Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, and Heidelberg. She is the recipient of the Thomas Friedrich Grant in Photography at the Berlinische Galerie (2017), the DGPh History of Photography Research Award of the German Photographic Association (2018) and the Exhibition Research and Production Fellowship by Les Rencontres d’Arles (2019). At C/O Berlin she leads the funding programme for up-and-coming talents, the C/O Berlin Talent Award, and co-develops C/O Berlin’s exhibition programme. Recent curation for C/O Berlin includes Robert Frank: Unseen (2019); Sylvain Couzinet-Jacques: Sub Rosa – C/O Berlin Talent Award (2019); Christopher Williams: MODEL: Kochgeschirre, Kinder, Viet Nam (Angepasst zum Benutzen) (2019); Francesca Woodman: On Being an Angel (2020); and Sophie Thun: Extension (2020). A regular writer on photography, her most recent publications include Heinz von Perckhammer. Eine Fotografenkarriere zwischen Weimarer Republik und Nationalsozialismus (Berlin 2018) and Fotografiegeschichte der Abstraktion (Köln 2019). Schönegg is currently preparing a thematic group show engaging with photography and the cloud.

What is it that attracts you to the exhibition form?

The exhibition is one of various forms that research can take. Not every project is necessarily an exhibit; some function better as a book, a magazine, or an online format. Compared to these forms, I would describe the exhibition as seeing and thinking in space. This also implies that it triggers not only a visual but also a physical experience. Creating narratives that unfold through a combination of images and objects that viewers explore while walking through the space and constantly changing or expanding their perspective is a thrilling and unique activating form of argumentation.

What does it mean to be a curator in an age of image and information excess?

There was a feuilleton discussion in Germany last summer about the status of the curator in the era of social media. It was started by art and media theorist Stefan Heidenreich who polemically claimed that all curators should be done away with, since they represent a nondemocratic, illiberal, corrupt, and obsolete system of power. By contrast he identified social networks as the democratic future for a curational practice by everybody. Just as Joseph Beuys stated decades ago that everyone is an artist (“Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler”), Heidenreich now calls for everyone to be a curator (“Jeder Mensch ist ein Kurator”).

Despite the questionable claim that social media ever was or can be a democratic tool (bear in mind the lack of universal accessibility of digital technologies, the racism underlying our algorithms, or human-content moderation that is executively exercised by leading Internet companies such as Facebook and Google, and the standards and categories they set), I believe that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the tools and tasks of curating in an age of omnipresent images and information. Precisely because we all “curate” our own lives with social media, expert knowledge is needed more than ever to critically mirror those developments inside exhibition halls and elsewhere. As curators of photography we need to shed light on those mechanisms of our everyday use of imagery that are hidden beneath technical infrastructures or intentionally kept invisible to users by capitalist companies.

At C/O Berlin we are collaborating with pictorial specialists to develop an exhibition focusing on our contemporary ways of communicating by means of images (the working title is Send Me an Image: From the Postcard to Social Media, planned for 2021). We aim to explore the utopian dream of global accessibility and, conversely, the boundaries of free image transmission. Being a curator in the age of image and information excess means to deal with this new paradigm of our digitised worlds by, for example, taking it as a topic for an exhibition, working with artists to translate net-based phenomena into the physical space, conquering the institution’s digital space (websites, etc.) with content, and thinking critically about the abundance of images that we are constantly confronted with.

What is the most invaluable skill required for a curator?

The flexibility to be active in various roles and positions at the same time: being a companion for the artist as well as their assistant and adviser, having a curatorial style while being objective and invisible as the selecting subject and author of the show, being an advocate for your medium while also criticising it, being a representative of your institution and also challenging it, being confident and persuasive as an applicant for funding and humble when looking for sponsors, being self-critical of your own role while manoeuvering gingerly through conflicting expectations confronting you every day.

What was your route into curating?

I wrote my dissertation on abstraction in photography, covering a wide historical spectrum from the medium’s early experimental beginnings in the 1830s to contemporary fine-art photography. My sources were scattered all over the globe, and I did a lot of research in museum archives in different countries. This was a starting point, since it gave me an insight to archiving and collecting (and exhibiting) from the user’s perspective. I then switched sides and did several internships, followed by a wonderful scholarship that the Alfried Bohlen von Krupp und Halbach-Foundation runs in Germany. Titled “museum curators for photography,” it teaches photography historians about curating by sending them to various photography collections in Germany and abroad. This experience paved my way into freelance curating, which I did for a couple of years until I joined C/O Berlin as a permanent curator last summer.

What is the most memorable exhibition that you’ve visited?

One that I often think back to is called Großvater: Ein Pionier wie wir (Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us), an exhibition on the famous “exhibition maker” Harald Szeemann in 2018. As part of the acquisition of the Szeemann estate by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 2011, two shows were developed and then sent on tour; one of the venues was Bern, Szeeman’s hometown in Switzerland. Großvater: Ein Pionier wie wir was also the title of Szeemann’s first curated show following the monumental documenta 5. The exhibition, which was held in his own apartment, tells the story of Szeemann’s grandfather, a prominent coiffeur. The show included many physical objects from the family’s private archive. While at the venues in Los Angeles and Düsseldorf Szeemann’s show was reconstructed in a white cube, in Bern the exhibit was shown in exactly the same apartment in which Szeemann had originally installed it in 1974: a private room with vintage furniture. This total simulacrum still sticks with me, since it demonstrates, in a very powerful way, that the circumstances of the presentation fundamentally change the perception of the objects. In the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf it was obvious to visitors that they were being confronted with a reconstruction made for an exhibition hall. In contrast, in Bern it was impossible for visitors to know if they were walking through a contemporary presentation or not. It was quite baffling, like a throwback in time.

What constitutes curatorial responsibility in the context within which you work?

I am currently curating for an exhibition house that functions differently than most other German institutions. The cultural landscape of Germany is mainly built on museums, exhibition halls, and Kunstvereine. C/O Berlin doesn’t fit into any of these categories. As a nonprofit foundation financed through admission fees, book sales, sponsorship, donations, project funding, and contributions from C/O Berlin Friends, it has not received any regular funding over the past twenty years. However, starting in the financial year 2020/21, C/O Berlin will receive support from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Besides balancing finances, visitor numbers, and content more carefully than public-run institutions, it is my responsibility as curator to sharpen my institution’s profile; that is, in comparison to museums. Similar to general exhibition halls, we foster contemporary perspectives and promote a discourse around our medium through talks, panels, and education, that could be adapted by museums. Our content-related orientation, the design of our presentation, and our historical approach to art and photography often differs from this form of institution and I feel we have more freedom to speculate in our exhibition programme. Unlike general exhibition halls, C/O Berlin is dedicated exclusively to photography. This makes us responsible for the medium itself. We do not have our own collection anchoring us in history. Although we regularly present photographers from the canon of the second half of the twentieth century, our focus lies nonetheless on the developments of the last three decades – precisely the period when photography was freed from all restraints. We deal with a medium in transition and we have to constantly ask ourselves what photography was, is, and will be. Today a photograph can be a high-valued vintage print as well as an Instagram snapshot made by a digital device. The medium increasingly disappears somewhere in between the classical museum presentation of the departments of drawing and prints and digitally circulating net art. I believe that our curatorial responsibility toward our medium is to define its future between those two extreme poles. We need to develop a new understanding of the medium and the material we engage with. We need to think about what types of new displays we can develop to mirror photography’s various forms of applications – that have always been diverse and are becoming increasingly so – in order to put us in the position to deal with fine art, science, press, amateurism, social media, and many other aspects.

What is the one myth that you would like to dispel around being a curator?

If there is a myth about being a curator, it is a misunderstanding. The term is used extensively these days for everything connected to combining – from music and food to art. Since the rise of autonomous curators in the 1990s, the term has taken on a notion of glamour and power. However, the reality is quite different. Most curation is done for institutions that involves a lot of bureaucracy: acquiring funding, writing reports, and doing administrative work. It is a hands-on job that has little to do with drinking champagne at nicely made-up representative events and openings.

What advice would you give to aspiring curators?

You should care about and focus on content. Most of the curatorial study programmes that have been popping up in recent years seem to mainly teach the history and theory of curation or they practice display methods. I am convinced that it is more important to know the field and the subject that you aim to work on well. Aspiring curators should be researchers who view the exhibition as one of various forms for conveying content. Don’t curate to curate.♦

Further interviews in the Curator Conversations series can be read here.

Images:

1-Kathrin Schönegg in the exhibition Francesca Woodman: On Being an Angel, C/O Berlin 2020. © Stephanie von Becker.

2-Installation view of Sylvain Couzinet-Jacques: Sub Rosa – C/O Berlin Talent Award 2019, C/O Berlin. © David von Becker.

3-Installation view of How Your Camera Works as part of Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie 2017, Wilhelm Hack Museum Ludwigshafen © Andreas Langfeld.

1000 Words

Curator Conversations

#8 Charlotte Cotton

Charlotte Cotton is a curator, writer and creative consultant who has explored photographic culture for over twenty years. She has held positions including Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Head of Programming at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, and Curator and Head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at LACMA | Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her books include Public, Private, Secret: On Photography and the Configuration of Self (Aperture/International Center of Photography, 2018); Photography is Magic (Aperture, 2015); This Place (MACK, 2014); Words Without Pictures (Aperture, 2010) and The Photograph as Contemporary Art (Thames & Hudson, 2004), which has been published in ten languages and is a key text in charting the rise of photography as an undisputed art form in the 21st century. The fourth edition will be published in September 2020. She is also the co-founder of eitherand.org.

What is it that attracts you to the exhibition form?

For me, it’s the scope of possibilities within the exhibition form that is enticing. I return to exhibition-making when a physical orchestration – a spatially-led staging – is the form that an idea needs to take. I think about where in the body an experience is held – in the gut, the throat, fingertips, or immediately laid out for the mind’s eye. I think about the shift in the tonality of conversations from bedrooms, kitchens, and formal dining rooms and how that translates into exhibition design – the meaning of thresholds, acoustics, vantage points, enclosures, and twists and turns that you build into an exhibition’s narrative, embedded into the architecture of the space. I absolutely love the process of making exhibitions – from the openness of an idea in gestation, the critique and testing of a concept, through to the coming together of the exhibition form. My favourite part is the exhibition installation when all eyes are on the job and everyone is aiming for the same idea of excellence, and responding to the planned and unexpected of giving form.

What does it mean to be a curator in an age of image and information excess?

I don’t think that the vocation of being a curator is fundamentally changed by our present day image environment. Curating remains an act of creating (experiences and exchanges) for other people – of “taking care”. I prefer the verb version of “curate” (and also “photograph”) to their noun definitions – I like both to be acknowledged as metabolic action, and that levelling of the hierarchies of who has claim to what can be done in the name of photography – or its curation – is well overdue and called forth in this age of data excess, fake news, and hyper-surveillance. I don’t confuse curating with image editing or connoisseurship, or with the roles of impresarios, A&R’s, taste-makers, or academics. On a bad day, when I suspect that I’m in a situation where “curator” means something I am not comfortable with, because it’s too elite or co-opted in the given context, I’ll shift to being an interlocutor – “someone who is involved in a conversation”.

What is the most invaluable skill required for a curator?

Rigorous yet open curiosity.

What was your route into curating?

The earliest memories I have from childhood are pretty formative of my chosen path. Through the 1970s, my parents were antique furniture restorers, working with pre-factory production “vernacular” furniture (it was “country” furniture back in the day), from across the British Isles. They supplied antiques dealers, interior designers, and collectors, mainly in London and across the West Coast of America. Container loads of furniture would arrive for restoration and it was a total thrill for me and my sister to touch, open, and choose our favourite pieces, play, and invent stories about where the furniture came from. To watch the furniture transformed with care, and my parents’ subsequent research and writing of the first history of British regional, working class furniture-making – their articulate empathy for where creativity lies – was undoubtedly my curatorial education. We also met amazing, glamorous, charismatic people who would come to do business. Our 1979 family road trip along the Pacific Highway and my first trip to Portobello Road have pretty much defined where and how I like to live and who I am close to. This visceral training is something that I am thinking about during COVID-19 lockdown. You might be able to tell that I’ve returned to the town where I was born! I’m walking in the woods and lanes with my 17-month-old nephew and watching him experience the feel of moss, look up into the tree canopies with amazement, give hugs to beautiful trees, and his sheer joy at aesthetic experience, and it is the best part of my day. When I was a teenager, photography became my passion because of the aesthetic experience it gives me, its embedded-ness in lived experience, and the kindnesses, fellowship and joy of its interlocutors. Which leads me on to your next question.

What is the most memorable exhibition that you’ve visited?

There are many exhibition experiences that I can recall a visual memory of where I was standing, and what I felt. But one of my first memorable experiences was just after I graduated from my BA (Hons) Art History and I went to an exhibition spearheaded by David Elliott at Modern Art Oxford called Photography in Russia: 1840-1940. The constellation of photographs from a century of photographic practice was dense (in a good way), and overwhelming – perhaps some of the characteristics that can still impress me in classic exhibition making. In retrospect, I think I was responding to the way that the exhibition made me move in and out – step back and assess, peer in and engage. There was an autochrome self-portrait by the playwright and novelist Leonid Andreyev from about 1910. I’d never seen an autochrome before, and there was this beautiful man, depicted unexpectedly in colour. I encountered him. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. I adore exhibitions that just glide you into paying attention – especially those where you get to think that it is constructed just for you.

What constitutes curatorial responsibility in the context within which you work?

I’ve never shaken off (nor wanted to) the abbreviated top line of my job descriptions for the twelve years that I worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum – “to increase the physical and intellectual access to photography”. That’s still a divining rod for when I commit to a curatorial project; whether I have faith that the situation and the team perceive that as the ultimate end goal. I feel great responsibility to the artists who participate in the curatorial projects I create and that they feel well-represented and understood, and I go deeply into channelling and animating historical archives and oeuvres in ways that resonate with contemporary viewership. I actively enjoy the responsibility of understanding, nurturing, publicly acknowledging the teams in which I work. On all levels, I recognise that my curatorial life has been supported, encouraged and allowed to roam by others, and being collegiate in a true sense is one of the last vestiges of why I try to not entirely give up on now-historic frameworks for our labour. Like everyone, I am responsible for acknowledging my inner biases and shortcomings and that’s only possible if you invite in wise counsel and fellowship that calls you out and helps you restructure your thinking. And, finally, (this is a long list of responsibilities, you may be able to tell that I started my career as a museum curator in an age when that meant you were a public servant) you have a responsibility to yourself – I respect my craft, my purpose, my processes, the merits of urgent curiosity, shifting my vantage point, and having something to say.

What is the one myth that you would like to dispel around being a curator?

That it’s a solitary form of creativity that merits recognition through single authorship. Curating is relational, situational, and collaborative. That’s the joy of it for me.

What advice would you give to aspiring curators?

Try it! Hold your vision and your ideal viewer in close communion, and you will find that right form. And let me know if I can help.♦

Further interviews in the Curator Conversations series can be read here.

Images:

1-Charlotte Cotton © Christian MacDonald

2-Installation view of Public, Private, Secret, International Center of Photography, New York, 2016-17.

3-Installation view of Public, Private, Secret, International Center of Photography, New York, 2016-17.

1000 Words

Curator Conversations

#7 Christine Eyene

Christine Eyene is an art historian, critic and curator. She is a Research Fellow in Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire where she works on Making Histories Visible, an interdisciplinary visual arts research project led by Professor Lubaina Himid CBE RA (Turner Prize 2017).

Eyene is Artistic Director of the 5^th Biennale Internationale de Casablanca 2021. She was curator of the Summer of Photography 2018 at Bozar, Brussels, with the exhibition RESIST! The 1960s protests, photography and visual legacy. Her previous photography projects include Regards: Photographie Camerounaise, BIC Project Space, Casablanca, 2019; RESIDUAL: Traces of the black body (part of FORMAT International Photography Festival), New Art Exchange, Nottingham, 2015; WHERE WE’RE AT! Other Voices on Gender (part of Summer of Photography), Bozar, Brussels, 2014; Reflections on the Self: Five African Women Photographers, Southbank Centre, London and England (Hayward touring exhibition), 2011-13; 3^rd PHOTOQUAI – Biennial of World Images, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, 2011; Pimp My Combi (GWANZA: Month of Photography), National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, 2011.

What is it that attracts you to the exhibition form?

When I curated my first exhibitions, I was interested in putting my ideas into forms, in a physical space. At the time, my practice was predominantly focused on art writing and a lot of it had to do with the new discourses on contemporary African arts from an African perspective. Because there had been a long-running absence of Africa in contemporary art scenes, to me, physical exhibitions were, and to some extent still are, about reclaiming space for underrepresented art practices.

Now, fifteen years in, I am interested in space as a canvas, and transformation. I love visiting exhibitions and seeing how space metamorphoses. As an independent curator, I develop exhibitions for various venues, rarely in the same venue, although that’s been the case at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (Harare), Bozar (Brussels) and New Art Exchange (Nottingham). But usually it is a one shot. So, once I am commissioned for a project, I try and visit all the exhibitions in that space to see those transformations, and to have a feel of the audience.

That’s also a major difference between writing and exhibiting. One gets to engage with audiences in a more immediate manner. You would get visitors who know about art or are professionals in the field, and people who are not specialist and visit for leisure. Knowing about one’s audience is also a way to address the imbalance that still exists in terms of diversity. This can only be appraised through the tangible form of an exhibition.

What does it mean to be a curator in an age of image and information excess?

Speaking as a curator who is African, black and a woman, when I look at society, I find that there are still too many cases of under-representation or misrepresentation of our communities in the media. We’ve seen how, in recent years, nationalisms and bigotry have spread around the world. What the arts can do is challenge those views by providing visual counter-narratives that can also be disseminated through information channels. Especially now with digital media. In many respects, that is the intent behind my projects with African or Diaspora photographers and my feminist exhibitions.

Maybe I should add that, I do not only curate photography exhibitions. For five years now, I have been developing sound art projects because I am interested in sharing with my audience other forms of sensory experiences. Photography is the starting point of my journey into the arts, but I also want to challenge myself and experiment. For instance, the theme of the next Casablanca Biennale is, for a large part, inspired by my research on the links between image-making processes in the work of South African photographer George Hallett and African literature. This is leading towards text-based practices in which an ‘image’ becomes a metaphor.

What is the most invaluable skill required for a curator?

One skill? I’m sure each curator would give you a different answer. It’s difficult to only give one answer. Curating is a combined set of skills and they depend on each curator’s approach or practice.

It could be the ability to bring together ground-breaking research, knowledge, or sensory experience, with meticulous organisational skills. But I also believe that ethics and values need to be brought into the mix. Because beyond the skill(s), and in fact at the heart of curating, is the notion of care. Caring for the artists, their art, and the audience. And, behind an exhibition is not just the curator. We work with teams and we need to create an environment where everyone feels valued. This means knowing how to delegate and to create a sense of collective ownership.

You also need determination and persuasive skills. Because, every so often, you have to make sure your ideas, or curatorial vision, is respected. Especially when collaborating with institutions that have their own artistic direction, or an agenda that might be informed by the funding streams upon which they depend.

I could say more, but it’s already more than one skill.

What was your route into curating?

The first projects I worked on, I was part of a team at the French Institute in Rabat, Morocco, between 2000 and 2001. The exhibitions were conceived by the Director, French curator Nadine Descendre. I learnt a lot with her. We put on exhibitions by designer Pierre Paulin and artists Christian Boltanski, Kazimir Malevich, Alain Fleisher, Shirin Neshat and Mona Hatoum. This organisational aspect opened up a whole new world for me, beyond art history as an academic practice.

When I came to England at the end of 2001, I focused on writing. I approached French journal Africultures, became visual arts correspondent, and I think the first article I proposed was about the Africa Centre. I went to the Centre, interviewed the staff and they gave me access to their archive of events and exhibitions. At the time, South African artist and scholar Mario Pissarra worked there. We casually talked about South African art. The following day I got a call that they were looking for a bilingual person to write on African artists. While working there, Gus Casely-Hayford (recently announced as Director of the new V&A East) who was Director of Africa 05 festival, and Roger Malbert, then Senior Curator at the Hayward Gallery, visited the Africa Centre to invite us to develop a programme for Africa 05. Gus subsequently invited me to curate a specific project as part of the festival. This gave me the confidence to independently organise the London touring of Design Made in Africa, an exhibition produced by the French Institute, and to curate my first George Hallett project.

I began working internationally after curating Uprooting the Gaze: foreign places – familiar patterns (2010) a group exhibition that included award-winning photographer Zanele Muholi. The exhibition was part of Brighton Photo Fringe then Co-Directed by Helen Cammock (co-winner of the Turner Prize 2019) and Woodrow Kernohan (now Director of John Hansard Gallery). Together we brought a larger presence of African photography to the Brighton Photo Biennial.

What is the most memorable exhibition that you’ve visited?

One of the first exhibitions to have impacted me is probably Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance, co-curated by David A. Bailey and Richard J. Powell. I saw it at the Hayward Gallery in 1997. At the time, I was living in Paris and studying history of art. It was the first time that I was exposed to an exhibition by black artists, articulating a history of Modern art that was different from what we were taught at university. To see this in a major mainstream art gallery, surrounded by black visitors, felt really good. I felt like I belonged. Which was rarely the case in art spaces in Paris in the 1990s. Although, earlier that year, there was an exhibition called Suites Africaines, organised by Revue Noire and co-curated by Simon Njami that was very important to us within the French context.

My first visit to a biennale was also memorable. It was the 2^nd Johannesburg Biennale curated by the late Okwui Enwezor. I immersed myself in all the exhibitions in Johannesburg and Cape Town. To me it was a real discovery of contemporary art on a truly global scale.

More recently: Nick Aikens’ The 80s project at Van Abbemuseum (2016) that led to The Place is Here at Nottingham Contemporary (2017); Soul of A Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power curated by Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley (2017); Streams of Consciousness the Bamako Encounters – African photography biennial in Mali curated by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (2019) and Nirin, the 22^nd Biennale of Sydney that opened in March, curated by Brook Andrew, both were great exhibitions organised under really challenging conditions.

What constitutes curatorial responsibility in the context within which you work?

Working in Africa or in the West are two different contexts. This can sometimes reflect on those responsibilities. Generally speaking, curators have a responsibility towards the artists, the venue and the public. If you invite an artist to be part of an exhibition, you need ensure the conditions are fair and clear. When it comes to presenting the work, you need to respect the integrity of an art work and present it as intended by the artist. This also means working within the technical and financial capacity, or limits, of an institution.

Consideration for the audience begins with selecting the artwork. You need to think about who the exhibition is talking to, who you want to engage, and how you are going to create bridges between the artwork and the public. There are contexts that can be more challenging than others, especially when addressing sensitive issues. Sometimes you need to tread carefully with topics that may attract forms of silencing. Especially if you work outside your usual environment. You need to consider what the audience can take and what is considered crossing the line, and also what the risks are for the artists or the exhibiting institution.

A challenging aspect of being an independent curator is that, even if you are the face of a project, and as such assuming responsibility for it, sometimes there are parameters upon which you have no control due to institutional procedures or opacity. That being said, there has also been occasions where I was able to raise questions about certain situations I observed within institutions. Which is easier for me to do as I come with an outsider fresh outlook.

What is the one myth that you would like to dispel around being a curator?

The idea that being a curator is limited to the creative aspect of developing an exhibition. That is sometimes the case. But generally, behind the scene, there is so much administration that can range from artist liaison at the very least, right to being involved in the fundraising process, especially in contexts where there is no immediate public provision for the arts.

And also, the notion of power that tends to create a top-down hierarchy where the curator is placed at the top and you’re lucky or privileged if you are selected for a project. An exhibition is the physical form of a conversation, of shared ideas. It’s a lateral process. With time, I’ve also grown fascinated by how technicians are geniuses that solve complex installations. A show looks good because of them. Sometimes they are artists themselves. They understand the vision behind an art work.

What advice would you give to aspiring curators?

Curating is a field that is both challenging and competitive. Therefore, it is important to develop original projects that bear your ‘signature’, so to speak. Be aware of what is out there. Not to follow the trends, but to figure out where you are positioning yourself. Start with topics close to your own interests or field of knowledge; subjects that you are passionate about. Try and engage with curators whose practice addresses the same topics as yours. But also, be curious about unfamiliar territories. Be open to dialogue. Treat all the people with whom you work with respect. Not just those at the top. You may find many obstacles along the way. But if curating is really what you want to do: persevere. There is room for a diversity of voices in the arts.♦

Further interviews in the Curator Conversations series can be read here.

Images:

1-Christine Eyene

2-Installation view of Embodied Spaces, Framer Framed, Amsterdam, 2015. © Michiel Landeweerd.

3-Installation view of RESIST! The 1960s Protests, Photography and Visual Legacy, Bozar, Brussels, 2018. © Philippe De Gobert.

1000 Words

Curator Conversations

#6 Yining He

Yining He is curator and writer specialising in photography. Yining’s curatorial projects have taken place in museums, biennales and galleries, as well as in other institutions in China and Europe. Exhibitions include: The Abode of Anamnesis (2019, OCAT Institute, Beijing); Troubled Intention Ahead: Confusing Public and Private at the 3rd Beijing Photo Biennale (2018, CAFA Art Museum); The Port and The Image: Documenting China’s Harbor Cities (2017, China Port Museum, Ningbo); A Fictional Narrative Turn (2016, Jimei Arles International Photo Festival); and 50 Contemporary Photobooks from China 2009-14 (2015, FORMAT International Photo Festival, Derby, UK). In 2014, Yining launched the Go East Project, which aims to promote contemporary Chinese photography in the West through exhibitions and publishing activities.

What is it that attracts you to the exhibition form?

You never know who’s going to walk into the exhibition space, and you never know if this exhibition will affect the viewer as much as the exhibitions that inspired us to pursue a career in the art industry. My love for the exhibition form comes from my own experience as a museum-goer. When I’m able to understand and interpret artworks and create opportunities for such understanding and interpretations through commissioned projects, the exhibition form is a perfect way for me to communicate with new and old audiences.

What does it mean to be a curator in an age of image and information excess?

As an independent curator, I always look at artworks in the context of the evolution of image art. For example, I recently worked with the Guangdong Museum of Art on an upcoming exhibition titled Walking in the Digital Sublime. With the pervading presence of AI technologies in our world today, the mission of this exhibition is to explore the relationship between human beings and images produced with the help of AI technologies from different perspectives – social, cultural, technological, philosophical, etc. – by examining the works of more than 30 artists from around the world that comment on the production, dissemination and storage of digital images.

What is the most invaluable skill required for a curator?

For professional curators, the willingness and ability to keep learning, researching, and renewing one’s skills is essential in addition to having a basic, systematic knowledge of art history and exhibition planning. Of course, curiosity is also very important. When it comes to the actual practice, you learn on the job more than you do from books. Aside from coming up with feasible proposals, the work of a curator also entails a large amount of communication between artists, venues, and other individuals and organisations involved in the process of putting together an exhibition, and there are all kinds of details to attend to. A capable curator should be able to handle all these things effectively.

What was your route into curating?

After completing my first MA in London in 2010, I came back to Beijing and started working as a writer and translator for photography within the art related press. I soon became aware of my lack of professional knowledge, however, so I returned to London and completed the MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London in 2013. I curated my first group exhibition in China the following year. For me, curating is a platform where I can combine my passion for photography alongside research, exhibition planning, and communication.

As my experience grows, I’ve also started thinking about things like the commissioning system of museums, support for independent image artists, knowledge production, and ways to help the audience examine and re-examine the world around them through images. In the process of exhibition planning, my role switches between the researcher, the commissioner, the producer, the collaborator, and the narrator, etc.

What is the most memorable exhibition that you’ve visited?

One of the exhibitions that made a great impression on me recently was 25 Years! Shared Histories, Shared Stories in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Fotomuseum Winterthur (2018-19). The exhibition was curated by the new Director Nadine Wietlisbach and her team. Staff members, artists, and curators from all around Europe were invited to choose their favourite artworks from the museum’s collection, which combined to form connections between the history of the museum, the stories of said artworks, and the future of photography. The exhibition featured the works of more than 50 artists who had influenced the history of contemporary photography, including John Baldessari, Lewis Baltz, Luigi Ghirri, Nan Goldin, Sherrie Levine, Paul Graham, and Bertien van Manen. The exhibition labels not only contained descriptions of the artworks themselves, but also explained how these artworks had influenced their nominators’ knowledge and understanding of photography or inspired them in their own work. This exhibition was an exciting curatorial experiment that encouraged social dialogue and collaboration in the museum environment.

What constitutes curatorial responsibility in the context within which you work?

As a curator based in China, I can’t answer this question without talking about the environment I’m living and working in. If we consider Chinese photography as an ecosystem, it’s easy to see that the different systems revolving around it – including art academies, photography festivals, photography galleries, art fairs, auction houses, publishers, and research oriented institutions – have evolved a lot over the past decade. Chinese photography has its own unique mode of operation. It has certain advantages in the speed of knowledge renewal and the diversity of activities, and there’s a large base of photography enthusiasts and professionals in China, which have both contributed to the vitality of Chinese photography in recent years. It’s my fortune to be part of this process and to produce China-focussed exhibitions with artists, institutions, publishers, and the wider art community.

That said, compared to Europe, America and Japan, for example, where photographic practices are long-established and well-organised, Chinese photography is yet to make a lasting impact in the industry. On one hand, this is a result of practical issues, such as ruptures in history, underdeveloped systems, the relative lack of education, and the shortage of artists and other professionals. On the other hand, language is also a barrier, because most academic writings and art criticism are published and communicated in English. In response to these challenges, I’m currently working to help promote the development and the influence of Chinese photography in the global photography industry with my peers.

What is the one myth that you would like to dispel around being a curator?

“Everybody can be a curator” is a myth that’s quickly turning into reality. Nevertheless more and more young artists today have chosen to curate different types of exhibitions on their own in order to challenge the power and function of the curator in traditional curatorial practices, which has become a trend that cannot be ignored.

What advice would you give to aspiring curators?

It’s crucial to communicate with artists as much as possible in order to understand their practices and career goals in depth. This is the first step of being a curator, and will always be important.♦

Further interviews in the Curator Conversations series can be read here.

Images:

1-Yining He

2-Installation view of The Port and the Image: Documenting China’s Harbor Cities, China Port Museum, Ningbo, 2017.

3-Installation view of The Abode of Anamnesis, OCAT Institute, Beijing, 2019.

1000 Words

Curator Conversations

#5 Roxana Marcoci

Roxana Marcoci is Senior Curator of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. She holds a PhD in Art History, Theory and Criticism from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. The recipient of the Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellowship in 2011, Marcoci chairs the Central and Eastern European group of MoMA’s C-MAP (Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives in a global world). She is the co-founder of MoMA’s Forums on Contemporary Photography, held three times a year since 2010.

Major exhibitions she curated or co-curated include Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW (2017); A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde (2016); Zoe Leonard: Analogue (2015); Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960-1980 (2015); From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires: Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola (2015); Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness (2014); The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook (2012); Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I–XVIII (2012); Sanja Iveković: Sweet Violence (2011); Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960 (2011); Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography (2010); The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today (2010); Take your time: Olafur Eliasson (2008); Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making (2007) and Thomas Demand (2005).

Marcoci is also visiting critic in the graduate programme at Yale University and a contributor to Aperture, Art in America, Art Journal, and Mousse. She has co-edited and authored Photography at MoMA, a three-volume history of the expanded field of photography (2015/17), and is currently at work on a Wolfgang Tillmans retrospective.

What is it that attracts you to the exhibition form?

Exhibitions are grounded in asking questions, and in that sense their initial form is investigatory. But the making of an exhibition is an active statement of positions. Its unfolding entails exchanging ideas with artists, engaging with objects, narratives, and processes, or in conceptual art, non-objects, and introducing creative models for collective or collaborative authorship in ways that unsettle the past and imagine the future. I’m attracted to all these aspects, and also to the fact that an exhibition pays attention to the structure of reception, or spectatorship – the form of address by which art seeks a rapport with its viewers.

What does it mean to be a curator in an age of image and information excess?

It has been suggested that today there are more images of the world than the world itself. Of course none of this is as new as it sounds. As early as 1927, in his essay “Photography” the film theorist Siegfried Kracauer compared the mass-media explosion of photographic and film images to a “blizzard” of images. Then, in 1983, in Towards a Philosophy of Photography, media philosopher Vilém Flusser likened the function of photography to a dam that has absorbed all traditional images. The revolutionary potential and, at the same time, aberration of the technical (photographic) image was its built-in potential to collect all traditional (prephotographic) images. According to Flusser, our collective memory is formed by technical images circling to and fro on their own axes and around us. In the age of Covid-19, we experience much of culture in the form of digital culture. The pandemic crisis and our physically distanced lives are enacted on zoom and social media platforms. This mediated relation to the real has resulted in an excess of images and information. We are seeing digital exhibitions with high-resolution renderings of art works, virtual cultural events, and live streaming studio visits with artists. Much of our curatorial initiatives have moved online: #MuseumFromHome. At MoMA online viewing has far surpassed (by millions) the traffic within the institution’s tangible walls. The museum’s analogue and digital platforms are complementary. Personally, I don’t have an issue with image excess as long as we develop the critical apparatus to interpret visual information – one issue to keep in mind is who is visible, who is invisible, and what vision signifies.

What is the most invaluable skill required for a curator?

More than a skill, I think it’s the desire to create a legacy for what is happening in the now and generate new ideas and scholarship. For me that means connecting photography’s first 180 years to contemporary ideas, to lens-based, time-based, and digital practices, to a larger visual culture that expands photography’s ability to reveal things about the world around us. There is invaluable power inherent in looking at art – and at the world – in a new way. And that is a sine qua non quality for a curator.

What was your route into curating?

Curating means to be engaged in the creation of culture. I always had an interest in the humanities, and I arrived to curatorial work by studying art history, theatre and film criticism, and sociology. And by seeing lots and lots and lots of exhibitions.

What is the most memorable exhibition that you’ve visited?

Feminist, global and multimedia in approach, dOCUMENTA (13), curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, across multiple venues throughout Kassel, Germany and three major outposts in Kabul and Bamiyan, Afghanistan, Cairo, Egypt, and Banff, Canada, remains one of the most memorable exhibitions of the new millennium. Its emphasis on the trauma of war, violence of history, and artistic solidarity is still very present with me. So many of the artists I admire, including Jérôme Bel, Trisha Donnely, Pierre Huyghe, Sanja Iveković, Goshka Macuga, Julie Mehretu, and Zanele Muholi were presented in that exhibition. But, equally important was the work of artists with whom I wasn’t familiar beforehand, such as the 1930s figurative tapestries by self-taught weaver Hannah Ryggen, or the botanist paintings of priest Korbinian Aigner, or the abstractions made since the late 1950s by poet and writer Etel Adnan. This is just to offer a few references since the exhibition featured work by more than 300 artists, writers, and performers as well as research by scientific thinkers in the fields of genetics and quantum physics.

What constitutes curatorial responsibility in the context within which you work?

Curators should advocate for artistic diversity, equity, and inclusion. We have an ethical obligation to take political and social stands on how we present art history – from multiple perspectives, not just the standpoint of dominant Western-centric narratives. At MoMA we have various initiatives, such as C-MAP (Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives in a global world) and the Modern Women’s Group, which consist of curators and affiliated colleagues who think a lot about these questions: How do we go about unsettling established art historical narratives? Activating new readings? Unfixing the canon? Researching counterhistories? Expressing transnational synchronicities? Constructing resistance? Opening alternative models of solidarity? Envisioning oppositional practices? Proposing unexpected linkages? Investigating why  particular lacunae subsist? Critiquing from inside the institutions in which we work? Envisioning the political extent of our scholarly jobs? All this translates in our continuous ability to respond (“response-ability”).

What is the one myth that you would like to dispel around being a curator?

The word “curator” has certainly been abused and misinterpreted, but I like myths. Let them accumulate because they belong to the process of interpretation. Mythology, parables, allegory, reversals of perspectives are entirely necessary.

What advice would you give to aspiring curators?

Make lasting friendships with artists, and don’t be afraid to think large, creatively, outside the box. As Oscar Wilde said, “An idea that isn’t dangerous isn’t worthy of being called an idea at all.”♦

Further interviews in the Curator Conversations series can be read here.

—
Curator Conversations is part of a collaborative set of activities on photography curation and scholarship initiated by Tim Clark (1000 Words and The Institute of Photography, Falmouth University), Christopher Stewart (London College of Communication, University of the Arts London) and Esther Teichmann (Royal College of Art) that has included the symposium Encounters: Photography and Curation in 2018 and a ten week course Photography and Curation hosted by The Photographers’ Gallery, London in 2018-19.

Images:

1-Roxana Marcoci in the exhibition Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017.

2-Installation view of Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2014.

3-Installation view of Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017.

1000 Words

Curator Conversations

#4 Azu Nwagbogu

Azu Nwagbogu is the Founder and Director of African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), a non-profit organisation based in Lagos, Nigeria. Nwagbogu was elected as the Interim Director / Head Curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in South Africa from June 2018 to August 2019. He also serves as Founder and Director of LagosPhoto Festival, an annual international arts festival of photography held in Lagos, and is the creator of Art Base Africa, a virtual space to discover and learn about contemporary African Art. He has served as a juror for the Dutch Doc, POPCAP Photography Awards, the World Press Photo, Prisma Photography Award (2015), Greenpeace Photo Award (2016), New York Times Portfolio Review (2017-18), W. Eugene Smith Award (2018), PHotoESPAÑA (2018), Foam Paul Huf Award (2019), Wellcome Photography Prize (2019) and is a regular juror for organisations such as Lensculture and Magnum.

For the past 20 years, he has curated private collections for various prominent individuals and corporate organisations in Africa. Nwagbogu obtained his MPhil in Public Health from The University of Cambridge. He lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria.

What is it that attracts you to the exhibition form?

The directness and freedom it engenders. The notion of presenting ideas in a visual and experiential format that allows for multiple interpretations but that still involves sensibilities, and a certain order and logic is always exciting. I like to build shows from research in other words, moving between inquiry and imagination as a recursive process. Curating is about hosting these ideas for a wider audience within the format of an exhibition. It offers, in an ambitious sense, a chance to create something that could perhaps fossilise for the future. That is to say, if researchers sometime in the very distant present were to inquire as to how we lived through our time, what would we leave behind for them to analyse? The exhibition, and its audiences, become our emissaries.

What does it mean to be a curator in an age of image and information excess?

In our digital age, we produce and consume more images than at any time since the dawn of humanity. We apparently also live longer. Our epoch is the information age where digital content – produced, transmitted and consumed – is our most important commodity. The curator’s responsibility within this milieu is daunting. It is the responsibility of the curator to help to make sense of what we are feeling, seeing and experiencing. I would add that in an age when opposing ideas rarely engage due to all sorts of algorithms, curatorial practice has to become all the more dialogical.

What is the most invaluable skill required for a curator?

There are two broad notions beyond skill: the intellectual and the ethical. The intellectual involves curiosity, diligence, and self-criticality. And the ethical broaches humility and respect for artistic endeavour.

What was your route into curating?

It’s a long and elaborate journey that started with studies of epidemiology but diffused into art through a family interest in curating.

What is the most memorable exhibition that you’ve visited?

My first Les Rencontres d’Arles in 2014 though I really can’t mention all the fantastic shows that year. Georges Didi-Hubermans’ Uprising was unforgettable. Okwei Enwezor’s 56^th Venice Biennale 2015 and documenta11, 2002 were significant. And even though I was involved in it, I have to mention William Kentridge’s largest ever presentation in South Africa: Why Should I Hesitate: Putting Drawings to Work at Zeitz MOCAA. Then there is The Repatriation of the White Cube directed by Renzo Martens, an exhibition that featured works both by Kader Attia, Marlene Dumas, Carsten Höller, and Luc Tuymans, as well as Congolese artists such as Sammy Baloji and Jean Katambayi, and members of the CATPC in Lusanga.

What constitutes curatorial responsibility in the context within which you work?

The ability to build on knowledge gained. I ignore shows that are weak on research. Shows that purport to be “the first ever so and so”. Stance and humour are vital. With curating there is a process, and respecting this process from conception to execution is often taken for granted.

What is the one myth that you would like to dispel around being a curator?

That it is glamorous and that we know it all.

What advice would you give to aspiring curators?

If all fails, make sure you learn to write.♦

Further interviews in the Curator Conversations series can be read here.

2-View of the exhibition Maïmouna Guerresi: Beyond the Border, Lagos Photo 2019 at African Artists’ Foundation.

3-View of exhibition installation at African Artists’ Foundation.

1000 Words

Curator Conversations

#3 Danaé Panchaud

Danaé Panchaud is a curator and lecturer specialising in photography. Since 2018 Panchaud has been Director / Curator of the Photoforum Pasquart in Biel, Switzerland, one of the principle Swiss institutions dedicated to photography. Her programme focuses mainly on emerging contemporary photography practices as well as the social and vernacular uses of photography.

She trained in photography at the Vevey School of Photography before completing BA Visual Arts with a specialisation in Critical Curatorial and Cybermedia (CCC programme) at Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD) in 2008. In 2017 she obtained her MA Museum Cultures at Birkbeck, University of London. She has held positions in several Swiss institutions in the fields of contemporary art, design and science, including the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, where she was a research associate from 2007-12, the Gallery SAKS in Geneva, and the Mudac in Lausanne, where she was in charge of the public relations. She has curated exhibitions for several Swiss museums and galleries, including the Fondation Verdan in Lausanne, the Fonds d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève, standard-deluxe in Lausanne, the Photoforum Pasquart in Biel, the CEPV/Festival Images in Vevey and the mudac in Lausanne. She was a lecturer at the Vevey School of Photography from 2014-18.

What is it that attracts you to the exhibition form?

To me it’s a medium that offers unique possibilities to connect different elements; to craft a narrative with depth, nuance and complexity, by using and often combining different visual and narrative strategies.

I’m also interested in the fact that it engages the body of the spectator, who chooses the distance they want to watch things from, their duration of looking at a particular image, installation or object. I think that it gives the spectator a form of agency, beyond the binaries of looking/not looking, that keeps you on your toes: you have to work to convince your audience to look closely at this image, to read that text in its entirety, rather than just cast a glance at the whole thing and move on. And this is sometimes you can even play extensively with. I once co-curated an interdisciplinary exhibition that had several hundred objects and where the overabundance of the material meant that the visitor really had to choose where to direct their attention. On the one hand, we had to get our meaning across, counting on the fact that the spectator would look at about 20% of the objects and read 10% of the texts (with everyone looking at and reading a different selection, at least partly), but on the other hand, we could also work with the overall effect of the scenography, the different atmosphere of the different sections, and the visual saturation to convey part of the meaning of the exhibition.

In that sense, exhibitions are a very challenging format, one that demand, to a certain degree, that you reinvent your approach for every project, and which require you to really take into account the spectator, anticipating their response, their interests, as well as the baggage they bring in with them and how that will impact their reception. That is not completely unique to exhibitions, of course, but that is in large part why I like working with them.

Working with photography as a curator is particularly interesting for me because it is a material that retains a certain plasticity: its materiality is not necessarily defined when we start working with the photographer, and this aspect is almost always part of the discussion as well as the challenges of making an exhibition. Photography is also a material that often does not belong to a single field. Of course, some practices fully belong to the contemporary art scene but so much of photography comes from different fields, from journalism to science or vernacular uses. Being the director of an institution specifically dedicated to photography, I can address issues with a single medium (in a broad sense that includes moving images or installations for instance) but from a variety of perspectives thanks to the ubiquity of photography in society.

What does it mean to be a curator in an age of image and information excess?

I think it is an incredible privilege to work in an era of such abundant, accessible and often highly qualitative material. However, it comes with an increased responsibility. For every project, theme or artist we select, there are 2 or 10 or 100 which are equally relevant but that we cannot not choose because of the limitations of our spaces and programmes. On the one hand, I think this overabundance increases our responsibility and on the other, it means the museum is far from the only player in town: there are a lot of other avenues for images, with different purposes and audiences, and thus, different types of persons curating different contents in different contexts. Which is undeniably a good thing, but with the caveat of an increased risk, possibly, of creating more silos and less exchange between different practices and different communities. I feel that, more generally in contemporary society, the role of the editor or curator is more and more important: of people with a knowledge of a particular field (or more), who are able to select and combine contents and contributors, be it in the museum or in journalism for instance.

What is the most invaluable skill required for a curator?

I would say (intellectual) adaptability. A capacity to adapt your approach to the project at hand, to the photographers you are working with and to their vision, to engage with the material and envision different possibilities – without wandering off into gimmicky territory of course – and to adjust your project to the context it will be presented in.

I think it is a very important skill generally, but it is becoming even more crucial nowadays as we also have to think beyond the walls of the exhibition, to think of the different receptions, notably digital, of a body of work or an exhibition. We need to be able, more and more, to translate projects into a diversity of formats, for a diversity of audiences and at different times.

That’s on the intellectual level and then, the reality is also today that there are a number of practical skills are very, very, useful if not indispensable in an age when budget restrictions and micro teams are becoming increasingly the norm: being able to design some elements of your scenography, or to supervise printing processes, or to figure out technical solutions, for instance. It can be pretty much any type of skills involved in the production of an exhibition, but any kind of technical skills will come in handy – or could be a base requirement of a curator’s job.

What was your route into curating?

Photography. I initially trained in photography, enrolling in the Vevey School of Photography when I was 19. I then gradually realised that photography was very much a field I wanted to be involved with professionally, but that being an image-maker, which initially seemed like the obvious choice in a way, was not my main interest. To this day, however, having briefly been a photographer is still an experience and a perspective that informs my practice as a curator, and my way of engaging with the material. I then gradually became more and more interested in museums themselves – as institutions with social roles and implications – when I joined the curatorial programme at Geneva School of Art and Design, which is also to this day an important influence on my work. Almost a decade later, I studied museology at Birkbeck, which gave me additional perspectives on my practice.

What is the most memorable exhibition that you’ve visited?

A tough question, in part because terrible exhibitions are often the most memorable to me! And I have a bad habit of rage-visiting some museums I know I will hate. But I do really think that there is value in seeing bad exhibitions in that they often provide relevant learning opportunities (as well as opportunities to vent and come up with theories on museums and psychosis).

But among the many extraordinary shows that most informed my practice and my thinking about curating, the photography exhibitions at Musée d’Orsay curated by then Conservateur en chef Françoise Heilbrun stand out. Despite the collections covering photography from its inception to 1918, and an extremely classic scenography, each of her exhibitions had a very precise point of view, and were completely contemporary. They really had an impact on me.

What constitutes curatorial responsibility in the context within which you work?

The number of Swiss institutions dedicated to photography, or with a strong focus on photography, is relatively limited, though we do have some excellent institutions. This to me means that I have a responsibility to take this context into account and to contribute to a balanced, institutional scene for photography in Switzerland. Therefore, I do pay a lot of attention to what is being shown at the other institutions, and aim to also provide a platform for what, or who, might be receiving less attention – not because their propositions are less relevant or not as strong but because they do not quite fit into other institutions’ missions and programmes. For instance, this led me to reconsider and expand the definition of ‘emerging’ photography, which is our core focus. Indeed, while there are a number of venues and many awards for emerging photographers (mainly in the sense of young photographers), there are fewer opportunities for mid-career photographers. This is something we are now aiming to mitigate, while of course still presenting many photographers at the beginning of their career.

That is only one example, among many other significant issues, but it certainly is one that impacts my programming. It touches on the broader issue of representation, where I feel we do also have an important responsibility. It is equally a matter of the diversity of the exhibiting photographers, or of the genres of photography that we exhibit, and of who is represented on the walls. We saw it recently with the exhibition on contemporary masculinity, Her Take: Rethinking Masculinity we had an increase in attendance as well as a different public, because some people, who did not necessarily felt concerned by our previous exhibitions, felt represented and came to the museum.

What is the one myth that you would like to dispel around being a curator?

I don’t know that we are such mythical creatures :). But I’d say: a lot – and I mean A Lot – of my time is spent on administrative duties: grant applications, final reports on said grant applications, sponsoring proposals, annual reports for the funding authorities or the board, and so on. And that is only on the curatorial front, without taking into account the other managerial aspects of directing an institution (HR, finances and accounting, etc). It is obviously absolutely not limited to the museum world, nor was it unexpected to me, but there really seems to be across the board a generalised increase in the bureaucratisation of professional activities, be it for nurses, teachers or many other professions. Our field, which is notably reliant on external funding, is far from not immune to it.

What advice would you give to aspiring curators?

I guess this is absolutely banal but go see exhibitions, and not only in the field you want to work in, and not only the ones you expect to be good. The terrible ones will also help shape your point of view and your practice as a curator. Most bad exhibitions are not a waste of your time but instrumental in that sense. And on another level: be prepared that it is a profession that very often involves a lot of management (and not only in the sense of administrative duties, as mentioned above).♦

Further interviews in the Curator Conversations series can be read here.

2-View of the exhibition Sillages at Photoforum Pasquart, 2019.

1000 Words

Curator Conversations

#2 Lisa Sutcliffe

Lisa Sutcliffe is the Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts at the Milwaukee Art Museum. From 2007-12, she served as Assistant Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Among the exhibitions Sutcliffe organised at SFMOMA were Naoya Hatakeyama: Natural Stories (2012), developed in association with the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, and The Provoke Era: Postwar Japanese Photography (2009), the first survey of SFMOMA’s internationally renowned collection of Japanese photography. In her current role she has curated numerous exhibitions including Rineke Dijkstra: Rehearsals (2016); Sara Cwynar: Image Model Muse (2018); The San Quentin Project: Nigel Poor and the Men of San Quentin State Prison (2018); James Benning and Sharon Lockhart: Over Time (2019) and Susan Meiselas: Through a Woman’s Lens (2020). She received an MA in the History of Art from Boston University, where she specialised in the history of photography, and a BA in Art History from Wellesley College.

What is it that attracts you to the exhibition form?

I like making an argument through a sequence of images – telling a story about history and culture through objects. This kind of context is so important – it can transform our understanding of ideas large and small. Walking through an exhibition with the public is so rewarding because you can watch as people learn to see.

What does it mean to be a curator in an age of image and information excess?

We’re experienced sifters of visual information. I immediately think of historical references whenever I see a great picture, and I can sort through “the rest” much more efficiently. I think it is our job to interpret visual language by pointing to historical and cultural context and references.

Our field will undoubtedly be shifting due to the current pandemic and I wonder what it will mean to be a curator in an age of social distancing. I hope we can see this as an opportunity to find new ways to engage the public.

What is the most invaluable skill required for a curator?

I think one of the most invaluable skills is having an excellent visual memory. It’s like being fluent in a language and knowing how to find all the references you need to put together an argument.

What was your route into curating?

My mother was a painter, so art has always been an important part of my life and a tool I use to understand the world. I was always particularly interested in photography, but found that I enjoyed interpreting photographs made by others more than making them myself. So I began interning at galleries and museums when I was in college. Afterwards, I went to graduate school to study art history and continued seeking out internships (at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum). My first position after graduate school was as a curatorial fellow at the deCordova. These kinds of opportunities for emerging curators are so important! From there I became an Assistant Curator in the photography department at SFMOMA, and now I am the Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

What is the most memorable exhibition that you’ve visited?

I’ve seen countless exhibitions that I have liked for various reasons. In terms of what makes something memorable for me, I think it again has to do with context – when an exhibition is site-specific or conceived for a space/time/place, for example.

Sophie Calle’s exhibition at Paris’ Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in 2017 was a wonderful example of an artist inserting her work into a unique collection (of objects and symbols of hunting) in a way that both gave new meaning to her work and transformed our understanding of the collection in which it was shown. How fitting for Calle, whose work examines themes of absence, love, death, often by constructing conceptual games for herself, to interact with a collection dedicated to the hunt. It was playful, vibrant, cerebral, and fresh.

What constitutes curatorial responsibility in the context within which you work?

I think this is a vital question right now. As curators we are responsible for considering equity and inclusion in how we conceive of exhibitions, build collections, and advocate for artists. We have a responsibility to provide a platform for diverse voices and narratives and we must ensure that the institution provides a responsible framework for the conversations we engage in with our public. It is not enough simply to add work to the collection, we must also advocate for artists, which includes providing a platform for their vision and paying them for their time and ideas. W.A.G.E. is a good resource for this in the US.

We must also ask how our institutions are responsible to the communities we represent and serve. When I organised The San Quentin Project: Nigel Poor and the Men of San Quentin State Prison in 2018, I formed partnerships with local and national groups and it was imperative that we didn’t exploit any of these collaborations. One of the most important ways to effect change is to ensure there are diverse voices represented and heard within curatorial/museum staff.

We can’t allow this important work to be sidelined when the economy tightens. The world needs artists and photographers more than ever to make sense of and help us recover from this pandemic.

What is the one myth that you would like to dispel around being a curator?

That curating is something that can be done with recipe lists and the shoes in your closet. Curating is about caring for objects – making sure they are preserved and conserved – and interpreting their cultural and historical narratives.

What advice would you give to aspiring curators?

You have to be a great advocate as well as a mediator (and sometimes a therapist). You have to be willing to fight for your ideas, for funding, for artists’ rights and dozens of other things, and you have to do so without creating any conflict. Collaboration is vital when you work for an institution; it takes an effective team to get projects accomplished. ♦

Further interviews in the Curator Conversations series can be read here.

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Curator Conversations is part of a collaborative set of activities on photography curation and scholarship initiated by Tim Clark (1000 Words and The Institute of Photography, Falmouth University), Christopher Stewart (London College of Communication, University of the Arts London) and Esther Teichmann (Royal College of Art) that has included the symposium, Encounters: Photography and Curation, in 2018 and a ten week course, Photography and Curation, hosted by The Photographers’ Gallery, London in 2018-19.

Images:

1-Lisa Sutcliffe

2-View of the exhibition Penelope Umbrico: Future Perfect at Milwaukee Art Museum, 2016.

3-View of the exhibition The San Quentin Project: Nigel Poor and the Men of San Quentin State Prison at Milwaukee Art Museum, 2018.