If I could ask Harald Szeemann — one of the most influential curators in recent times — just one question, it might not be this (though that’s not to say I’m not curious). I’m sure Szeemann, as a person of great discerning, didn’t imagine he curated his breakfast. But if he did, would anyone be in a position to argue? The curatorial profession, and the verb “to curate”, has gained unprecedented currency over the last decade, and with this, a dizzying diffusion of meaning. Hipsters running cute street-front boutiques “curate” their wares (when I worked at Herbert Evans as a student we called that “merchandising”). Not so long ago a colleague in arts management told me how she had her interns spend a day at a local Spar “curating” the groceries.
Cited in an article by Alex Williams in the New York Times, linguist John H McWhorter calls this upgrading of fairly mundane tasks “an innocent form of self-inflation … you’re implying that there is some similarity between what you do and what someone with an advanced degree who works at a museum does”. Even supposing our museum curators all had advanced degrees, comparing a hungover 19-year-old store merchandiser with a (not hungover) museum professional seems a stretch.
This all comes down to one question: what exactly does a curator do? I attempted, if a little facetiously, to shed some light on this in a previous post, “Notes from a love motel: curatism”. But don’t take my word on the matter. Rather ask a real curator (and this is where I get to the point). September 1 is the first ever Ask a Curator Day, a day on which curators from renowned museums and art galleries around the world are available to answer questions from members of the public. This one-day event takes place in cyberspace via the social networking platform Twitter. All you need is a Twitter profile and a question. The hashtag #askacurator orders (or curates?) the event by making it easy to find participating curators and to keep track of questions fielded. If all this sounds mysterious to you, don’t worry; it isn’t. The Ask a Curator website spells the project out very straightforwardly and even nudges unhatched eggs towards finding their bird voices, providing a link to a handy Twitter Guidebook from Mashable.
Ask a Curator Day is initiated by Sumo, a UK-based design consultancy working chiefly in the heritage and culture sectors. So far more than 200 museums worldwide have signed up for Ask a Curator day. Sadly, not one of these museums is on African soil. As a matter of fact, I could find only three African museums (all of them in South Africa) which have Twitter accounts. If you know of any others, please do share. The ones I found are Iziko Museums, the Apartheid Museum and, since Monday, the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG). There are rumblings about JAG participating. Hopefully these prove true.
Anyway, I’m dying to ask Britain’s National Wool Museum what makes some wool more museum-worthy than other wool. And I’d love to ask the curators of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art more about their Curatorial and Conservation Clinics, a forum in which curators meet with the public to discuss the proper care of artworks and collections.
For a full score of participating museums click here. To find Ask a Curator on Twitter click here or here.
Some 50 years ago, we simply called the phenomenon “title inflation”. An “office clerk” became a “admin assistant” et all.
Just have a look at the job pages and look for the real job behind the fancy title.
The Curate’s Breakfast -
Bishop: “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones”
Curate: “Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!”
Great piece, Anthea.
Drawing connections between FMCG merchandising and art curating is right on the money: both seem to bear the stench of manipulative commerce.
The notion of ‘best practice’ in industry could be said to have mutated in the art world into one of ‘best presentation’; substance rapidly declines into a series of calculated poses, adopted first by the artist, then by the gallerist, and lastly by the curator in a desperate bid to stay ahead of the credibility curve and keep securing funding.
As with the death of the dj after rave, however, I sense that our collective preoccupation with these gatekeepers, these mediums through which we feel we need to experience culture, is on the decline. Conservative as it may be to say, I can’t wait til the people who make things reassert their significance over the people who merchandise them or deal them.
Thanks, but I spend far too much time on Twitter. I think I’m going to spend the day at the local Spar instead, asking a hungover 19 year old very loud questions about curating.
The Johannesburg Art Gallery is now participating in Ask a Curator Day! Follow JAG on Twitter @artthisway and get your questions ready for September 1!