Week 1: February 21 

Contemporary Curating: Foundational Concepts and Methodologies

The first week asks you to consider what contemporary art is, who might make contemporary art and what contemporary curating looks like. 

Please consider the following questions ahead of our tutorial as you complete the required reading and engage with the additional resources: 

What does the 'contemporary' in contemporary art mean? What does the 'art' in contemporary art mean? What is it about the present - the here-and-now - that so interests us (from Groys)? How is the current contemporary different from the past? How is the contemporary different from the modern? What makes a curatorial practice contemporary, in your opinion?

Required Reading 

Boris Groys, ‘Comrades of Time’, e-flux Journal, Issue 11, December 2009.

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/11/61345/comrades-of-time/                                                        

Maura Reilly. ‘What Is Curatorial Activism’, Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating, Thames & Hudson, 2018, pp17-33.

Additional Reading and Resources

• David Balzer interview (podcast) with London Review of Books: https://player.fm/series/london-review-bookshop-podcasts-1520922/curationism-david-balzer-and-zoe-pilgerLinks to an external site.
• Zdenka Badovinac, Contemporaneity as Points of Connection https://www.e-flux.com/journal/11/61343/contemporaneity-as-points-of-connection/

Note: There are two special issues of e-flux entitled "What is Contemporary Art?". While looking at them you might want to look at other articles in e-flux to get an idea of the breadth of the discussions.

• The A-Z of contemporary art Andrew Frost, The A-Z of contemporary art in the Sydney Morning Herald (3rd of March 2012) https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/the-a-to-z-of-contemporary-art-20120301-1u40k.html
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpYAOx9GvB8
• https://www.macp.sva.edu/renonwnded-art-historian-and-writer-terry-smith-on-mapping-the-global-art-world-and-activism

Further reading

• Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, and Anton Vidokle. What Is Contemporary Art? Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010.
• Zdenka Badovinac, 'Contemporaneity as Points of Connection' e-flux Journal #11 December 2009
• Jörg Heiser. All of a Sudden: Things That Matter in Contemporary Art. New York, NY: Sternberg Press, 2008.
• Kate Fowle. ‘Who Cares? Understanding the Role of the Curator Today’, Cautionary Tales: Critical Curating, edited by Steven Rand and Heather Kouris, apexart, 2007, pp26-35. 
• Anthony Huberman. ‘The Artist’s Institute: Take care’, in Mai Abu El Dahab, Binna Choi and Emily Pethick (eds), Circular Facts, Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2011.
• Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung. Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2005.
• Gillian Perry, Paul Wood, and Open University. Themes in Contemporary Art, Open University Art of the Twentieth Century Series. New Haven, Conn.; London: Yale University Press, 2004.
• Jean Robertson and Craig Mcdaniel. Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art after 1980. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Margriet Schavemaker, Mischa Rakier, and Jennifer Allen. Right About Now: Art & Theory since the 1990s. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2007.
• Terry Smith. What Is Contemporary Art? Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009 and Art to Come: Histories of Contemporary Art, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2019.

 

Week 2: February 28

Space and Spectatorship: The legacy of the White Cube

This week we explore the concept of the white cube, situating this concept in historical context and interrogating its neutrality as well as ubiquity. Please bear the following questions in mind as you complete the readings and refer to your own experiences of museums and galleries. What senses are activated in a white cube gallery space? What happens to a work of art in the white cube? What conceptions of culture, time and history are fostered there? This week also examines counter-movements, counter-histories and counter-aesthetics to the white cube gallery space.

Required Reading
Brian O’Doherty. ‘The Eye and the Spectator’, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, edited by Brian O'Doherty, Expanded edition, University of California Press, 1999, pp35-64.       

Elena Filipovic. ‘The Global White Cube’, The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe, edited by Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic, MIT Press, 2005, pp63-84. 

Also published online in Oncurating, Issue 22, April 2014. https://www.on-curating.org/issue-22-43/the-global-white-cube.html#.Y9czZuxByWA

Further Reading:    

• Tony Bennett. ‘The Exhibitionary Complex’, New Formations, no. 4, Spring 1988, pp73-102. 
• Walter Grasskamp. ‘The White Wall - On the Prehistory of the ‘White Cube’’, On Curating, Curating Critique 9, no. 11 (2011), pp78-90.
• Michel Foucault. ‘Des Espaces Autres’ (Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias), Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité, no. 5, October 1984, pp46-49; translated by Jay Miskowiec in Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp22–27. 
• Thomas McEvilley. ‘Introduction’, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, edited by Brian O’Doherty, Expanded edition, University of California Press, 1999, 7-12. 

Week 3: March 7
Institutional Critique: Curating as an expanded field

This week engages with the pasts and present of Institutional Critique, a movement that challenges art world structures and norms. We will examine key artists and exhibitions associated with Institutional Critique and ask the following questions in our lecture and tutorials: what is the focus of Institutional Critique? What information about contemporary art and the art world is revealed by these projects? What are its implications for the work and role of the curator?

Required Reading                                                                                           

Alexander Alberro. ‘Institutions, critique, and institutional critique’, Institutional Critique: an Anthology of Artists’ Writings, edited by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson, MIT Press, 2009, pp2-19. 

Andrea Fraser. ‘From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique’, Artforum International, vol. 44, no. 1, September 2005, pp278–283.      

Further Reading       

• Benjamin Buchloh. ‘Allegorical Procedures: Appropriation and Montage in Contemporary Art’, Artforum International, Volume 2, Issue 1, 1982, pp43-56.
• Daniel Buren. ‘The Function of the MUseu, Institutional Critique: an Anthology of Artists’ Writings, edited by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson, MIT Press, 2009, pp102-106
• Verónica Tello. ‘What is Contemporary about Institutional Critique? Or, Instituting the Contemporary: A Study of The Silent University’, Third Text, Volume 31, Issue 6, 2020, pp635-648                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Week 4: March 14

Curating Queer pasts, presents and futures

Pre-recorded lecture with Lilian plus Q&A with Pip Wallis, Curator of International Art, NGV

Field trip to Braving Time at the National Art School Galleries

Queer curatorial practices, experiences and histories are the focus of our guest lecture and site visit this week. The exhibition QUEER at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2022 provides a case study of a queer approach to collections curating, while our site visit and recommended readings unpack the implications of a queer approach beyond major museums. How might queer approaches to research and display inform a curatorial project or exhibition?

 

Required Reading

Craig Middleton and Nikki Sullivan. ‘Queering Display’, in Queering the Museum, London: Routledge, 2019, pp43-63

Maura Reilly. ‘Challenging Hetero-centrism and Lesbo-/Homo-phobia: A History of LGBTQ exhibi-tions in the U.S’, Oncurating, Issue 7: Queer Curating, May 2018

 

Further Reading

• Isabel Hufschmidt. ‘The Queer Institutional, Or How to Inspire Queer Curating’, Oncurating, Issue 7: Queer Curating, May 2018
• Getsy David, ed. Queer, London: Whitechapel Gallery and Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2016
• Andrew Gorman-Murray. ‘So, Where Is Queer? A Critical Geography of Queer Exhibitions in Australia’, Where is queer? London: Routledge, 2008, pp67-80

 

Week 5: March 21
Curating in response to site and place

Guest speaker: Sophie O’Brien, Head of Curatorial and Learning at Bundanon.

Our guest speaker will discuss how site and place inform the artistic program at Bundanon. Continuing connections of the Wodi Wodi and Yuin peoples to the South Coast region and the artistic legacy of the Boyd family are at the core of Bundanon’s approach. The tutorial this week reflects more widely on site-specific art, site-specific curating and responding to place. This is also an opportunity to consider: how and in what way does site and place inform the curatorial project you are pitching? 

 

Required Reading

Judith Rugg. ‘Garden’, Exploring site-specific art: issues of space and internationalism, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010, pp71-90

University of Sydney. ‘New artworks illuminate the University's past and reimagine its future’, University of Sydney website, March 4 2019. https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2019/03/04/new-artworks-illuminate-the-university-s-past-and-reimagine-its-.html

 

Further Reading

• Charlotte Gould, ‘Artangel, Producing Art in a Post-Consensus Age’, in Artangel and Financing British Art: Adapting to Social and Economic Change, London: Routledge, 2018, pp37-74
• Nick Kaye, Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation, London: Routledge, 2000
• Miwon Kwon. One place after another: site-specific art and locational identity, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002
• James Nisbet. Second Site, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
• Judith Rugg. ‘Contingent Spaces’ and ‘Demographic Space’, in Exploring site-specific art: issues of space and internationalism, London: I.B. Tauris, 2010, pp71-90

 

Week 6: March 28  

Summary/ Reflection session +

Student Research Project Plans: Pitch your idea to the class #1

 

Week 7: April 4

Student Research Project Plans: Pitch your idea to the class #2 + Foreshadowing session

Mid-Semester Break: 10-14 April 2023

 Week 8: April 18

Curating Performance at the AGNSW

Site visit to Sydney Modern/North Building at AGNSW, plus floortalk with Lisa Catt, Curator of International Art (format TBC)

The opportunities and challenges of curating performance are the subject of our guest lecture and readings this week. In conversation with Lisa Catt, we will explore a range of case studies from AGNSW and reflect on the presentation of performance in the new building. Our readings consider performance art in a wider range of contexts, museums and otherwise, and reflect on the role of the performance curator.

 

Required Reading 

Véronique Hudon. ‘The Curator’s Work: Stories and Experiences from Tino Sehgal’s Events’, in Dena Davida, Marc Pronovost, Véronique Hudon and Jane Gabriels, ed,. Curating Live Arts: Critical Perspectives, Essays, and Conversations on Theory and Practice, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2018, pp263-272

 

Jonah Westerman. ‘Project Overview’, Performance at Tate: Into the space of art, Tate website, accessed January 2023. https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/performance-at-tate/project-overview

 

Further Reading

• Beatrice Von Bismark. ‘Exhibiting Performances: Process and Valorization in When Attitudes Become Forms—Bern 1969 / Venice 2013’, in Dena Davida, Marc Pronovost, Véronique Hudon and Jane Gabriels, ed,. Curating Live Arts: Critical Perspectives, Essays, and Conversations on Theory and Practice, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2018, pp29-37
• Adrian Heathfield and Hugo Glendinning. Art and Performance. New York: Routledge, 2004.
• Kate Lawrence. ‘Who Makes Site-Specific Dance? The Year of the Artist and the Curatorial Matrix’, in Judith Rugg and Michèle Sedgwick, Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance, Bristol: Intellect, 2007, pp163-173
• Tate. ‘An Introduction to Performance’, Tateshots, Tate website, September 22 2017, accessed January 2023.      https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/performance-art/introduction-performance-art                                                                                                         

 

Week 9: April 25

The global and the local in current curatorial practice

This week explores global and local dynamics at work in curating contemporary art biennales. Biennales (and triennials, and Documenta) are a vital platform for contemporary art and, by extension, for contemporary curators. We will engage with debate around the biennale model and globalisation, before considering the ways in which curators are engaging with the local in meaningful ways within globalised settings. 

 

Required Reading

Ana E Bilbao, ‘From the Global to the Local (and Back)’, Third Text, Vol. 33, No. 2, 179-194, 2019.

 

Further Reading

• Elena Filipovic, Marieke van Hal and Solveig Øvstebø, ed., The Biennial Reader, Bergen Kunsthall and Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010
• Charles Green and Anthony Gardner, Biennials, triennials, and Documenta: the exhibitions that created contemporary art, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016
• Fatoş Üstek, ‘The Impact of Context Specificity in Curating amidst the Forces at Play in a Globalized World of Realms’, in Brad Buckley and John Conomos, eds., A Companion to Curation, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2019, pp291-305
• Marcus Verhagen, Flows and counterflows: globalisation in contemporary art, London: Sternberg Press, 2017
• Tim Griffin, ‘Global tendencies: Globalism and the large-scale exhibition’, Artforum International; New York Vol. 42, Iss. 3, (Nov 2003)
• Yaiza Hernández Velázquez, ‘Imagining Curatorial Practice’, Curating After the Global: Roadmaps for the Present, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2019, p.269.
   

Week 10: May 2

Collaborative practices and Indigenous knowledge 

Guest lecture (via zoom): Freja Carmichal, Curator of long water: fibre stories (IMA) and co-curator of The National 4, 2023

Site visit: The National, Carriageworks

 

This week looks to the present and future of collaborative curating through the prism of Indigenous creative practice in the field of fibre arts. Our guest lecturer will discuss her collaborative curatorial projects with fibre artists from Yuwaalaraay (North West NSW), Quandamooka (Moreton Bay), Kuku Yalanji (Far North QLD), Zenadh Kes (Torres Strait Islands, QLD) and Yurruwi (Milingimbi Island, NT) homelands. This week also includes a site visit to The National at Carriageworks where we will engage with this snapshot of contemporary Australian art from around the country and from a variety of homelands. 

 

Required Reading

Catalogue Essay for The National, yet to be published.

Further Reading

• Stephen Gilchrist and Henry Skerritt. ‘Awakening Objects and Indigenizing the Museum: Stephen Gilchrist in Conversation with Henry F. Skerritt’, Contemporaneity, vol. 5, no. 1, 2016, pp108-121
• Stephen Gilchrist. Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia, Harvard Art Museums, 2016.
• Djon Mundine, ‘The Creature from the Id: Adventures in Aboriginal Art Curating’, A Companion to Curation, Brad Buckley and John Conomos, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2019, p.277-290
• Perkins, Hetti. fluent: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Yvonne Koolmatrie, Judy Watson, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1997.
• Smith, Terry. ‘Country, Indigeneity, Sovereignty: Aboriginal Australian Art, Art to Come: Histories of Contemporary Art, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2019, pp156-197
   

Week 11: May 9

The Artist as Curator and Curator as Artist

Many of the curatorial projects and texts we have engaged with on this course present artists and curators in a dynamic relationship. This week examines what happens when the traditional roles of artist and curator are intentionally disrupted. We will explore slippages between artistic and curatorial work in case studies from in and outside the museum. We will also reflect on the opportunities for critique, creativity and risk that such projects afford artists and curators moving forward. This week is also an opportunity to reflect on the relationships between artist, curator and curatorial elements in your own proposals.

Required Reading                                                                                                    

Lilian Cameron. ‘Artists’ Takeover’, Curating Art Now, London: Lund Humphries, 2022

Dorothee Richter. ‘Artists and Curators as Authors - Competitors, Collaborators or Team-Workers?’, On Curating, no. 19, June 2013, pp43-57. 

Further Reading

• Brenda Croft, ‘Say My Name’, The Artist as Curator, Intellect Books Ltd, 2015, p115-130
• Celina Jeffery, ‘Introduction’ The Artist as Curator, Bristol: Intellect Books, 2015, pp7-14
• Elena Filipovic, ed., The Artist as Curator: An Anthology. Milan: Mousse Publishing and Koenig Books, 2017.
• Alison Green, ‘Introduction’ and ‘Museums and Not-Museums’, When Artists Curate: Contemporary Art and The Exhibition as Medium. London: Reaktion Books, 2018. 
• Paul O’Neill, ‘Curating as a Medium of Artistic Practice: The Convergence of Art and Curatorial Practice since the 1990s’, The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Cultures, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, MIT Press, 2012

 

Week 12: May 23 

Digital (R)evolutions: Curating and the digital realm

This week we will examine how digital developments have changed, and continue to change, the practice of curating. We will discuss the prevalence of the screen and social media in our engagements with art and explore how artists and curators have harnessed the digital to cross new frontiers and engage with audiences in different ways. Finally we will reflect on how a critical engagement with the digital offers a framework through which to reconsider the curatorial role.

Required Reading

Morgan Quaintance, ‘Remote Viewing’, Art Monthly 437, June 2020 (accessed January 2023) https://www.artmonthly.co.uk/magazine/site/article/remote-viewing-by-morgan-quaintance-june-2020

Michael Connor, ‘Curating Online Exhibitions’, Rhizome, May 13, 2020 (accessed January 2023) https://rhizome.org/editorial/2020/may/13/curating-online-exhibitions-pt-1/

 

Additional Reading

• Lizzie Muller and Caroline Seck Langill, ed., ‘Troublemakers in the museum: Robots, romance and the performance of liveliness. Anna Davis Interviewed by Lizzie Muller’ in Curating Lively Objects: Exhibitions Beyond Disciplines, London: Routledge, 2021
• Cook, Sarah and Beryl Graham, Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.)
• Annet Decker, Curating digital art: from presenting and collecting digital art to networked co-curation, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021
• David England, Thecla Schiphorst and Nick Bryan-Kinns, Curating the Digital: Space for Art and Interaction, Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016
   

Week 13: May 16

Curatorial Project Plan Feedback Session 

No readings.