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The Complete Curator

Liam Gillick

in Industry and Intelligence: Contemporary Art Since 1820

The ethical demands of the new curator push ahead of contemporary art.

Concerning curatorial practice in ethnological museums: an epistemology of postcolonial debates

Larissa Förster and Friedrich von Bose

in Curatopia: Museums and the future of curatorship

Based on our experience as editors of a debate on ethnographic museums in a German journal, we analyse the conditions and limits of the current debate on the ‘decolonisation’ of ethnographic museums ... More

Based on our experience as editors of a debate on ethnographic museums in a German journal, we analyse the conditions and limits of the current debate on the ‘decolonisation’ of ethnographic museums in the German-speaking context. Strictly speaking, the German debate lags behind a bit in relation to the Anglophone debate, but in the face of the re-organisation of the Berlin ethnographic museum as ‘Humboldt-Forum’ it provides crucial insights into the epistemology of unfolding postcolonial debates. We diagnose certain pitfalls of this discussion, e.g. a tendency towards antagonisms and dichotomisation, an overemphasis on the topic of representation and on deconstructionist approaches, an underestimation of anthropology’s critical and self-reflexive potential and too narrow a focus on ethnographic collections. From our point of view, decolonisation must be a joint effort of all kinds of museum types - ethnographic museums, art museums and (natural) history museums as well as city museums, a museum genre being discussed with increased intensity these days. As a consequence, we suggest a more thorough reflection upon the positionality of speakers, but also upon the format, genre and media that facilitate or impede mutual understanding. Secondly, a multi-disciplinary effort to decolonise museum modes of collecting, ordering, interpreting and displaying is needed, i.e. an effort, which cross-cuts different museum types and genres. Thirdly, curators working towards this direction will inevitably have to deal with the problems of disciplinary boundary work and the underlying institutional and cultural-political logics. They eventually will have to work in cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional ways, in order to reassemble disparate collections and critically interrogate notions of ‘communities’ as entities with clear-cut boundaries. After all, in an environment of debate, an exhibition cannot any longer be understood as a means of conveying and popularising knowledge, but rather as a way of making an argument in 3D.Less

Walking the fine line: From Samoa with Love? at the Museum Fünf Kontinente, Munich

Hilke Thode-Arora

in Curatopia: Museums and the future of curatorship

This chapter explores the conceptual planning, organisation, and reception of the exhibition From Samoa with Love? Samoan Travellers in Germany, 1895-1911 at the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich, ... More

This chapter explores the conceptual planning, organisation, and reception of the exhibition From Samoa with Love? Samoan Travellers in Germany, 1895-1911 at the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich, 2014. It does so by taking into consideration competing obligations among the Samoan descendants and community, the responses of mainstream museum visitors in Munich with no prior knowledge of fa’a Samoa (the Samoan way), and the expectations of the Bavarian Government, who strictly controlled costs but wanted large audiences. Museums are not as free to create, or as powerful, as is often assumed by outsiders and critics. Being the curator responsible for this exhibition meant juggling positions, demands, and interests in a setting affected by Samoan perspectives and claims, German audiences’ pre-knowledge and viewing habits, structural constraints imposed by the Bavarian museum administration system, and even the Foreign Office and diplomatic agendas. For the curator, trying to meet these contradictory demands and reconciling them with her own academic and ethical ideas of curatorship indeed meant walking a fine line.Less

Introduction

Diana Baird N’Diaye, Olivia Cadaval, and Sojin Kim

in Curatorial Conversations: Cultural Representation and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

The volume editors frame and contextualize Smithsonian Folklife Festival history with attention to the role of curatorial practice in mediating and negotiating the concerns and interests of the ... More

The volume editors frame and contextualize Smithsonian Folklife Festival history with attention to the role of curatorial practice in mediating and negotiating the concerns and interests of the event’s varied publics and stakeholders. The editors address how the articles create a step towards systematically examining institutional Festival principles and the particular curatorial process of the Festival, unpacking the challenges, responsibilities, and forms of conversation that cultural representation entails; the ideals upon which the Festival is based; and places of friction and contestation that arise among the many parties involved in producing it.Less

Next Year in Washington: The Jerusalem Program—Postponement and Rebirth

Amy Horowitz

in Curatorial Conversations: Cultural Representation and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

This chapter describes a program initiated in 1992 that brought together Muslim and Jewish researchers to document the cultural assets of their communities in Jerusalem. Though this work did not ... More

This chapter describes a program initiated in 1992 that brought together Muslim and Jewish researchers to document the cultural assets of their communities in Jerusalem. Though this work did not materialize into a Folklife Festival program, it laid the groundwork for several innovative and ongoing projects. The author chronicles the project’s ethnographic phase in the early 1990s, the cancellation of the Festival program in 1994, and the continuation of the project as a university course and study tour. She interrogates the notion of parallel self-determination as a methodology and demonstrates the complexity of curating in zones of conflict.Less