Shifting of the Curatorial Paradigm
or about the death of some art professions

The main idea of this proceeding tends to address the current position of the curatorial practice that expresses the situation in which the museum-based concept of curator/ship is shifted into the wider field of non, even, institutionally organised art events (as an extreme example). In recent times, there are more and more courses, summer schools, university curricula and even scholarships for studying this particular discipline. How comes this widen and increased interest?

The term curator itself in some countries and languages is still not officially implemented in the dictionaries of the art professions. There is still confusion about the meaning of the term going on together with the term custodian. But, both of them are still keeping the very same meaning: a keeper of a museum or other collection or a guardian of a minor. Or, at least, they are referring to a description of one profession related to the institution of the museum and its collection.

From here on, the subject of this proceeding is how and why the institution of the museum curator diverse in the past thirty years in the world of art. In fact, what happened is that the recent appearances of the curator/ship abandon the strict field of the profession of the art historian, who was/is responsible for the presentation of the collection of/in one museum. The term from within of the institution of the museum went out and is entering the very same institution from outside. Some other curators are creating now the presentation of the art production in the museums. And not even so: they produce a different interpretation than the historical one. So, in time, the role of the curator had changed. In the very beginning the role of the curator was to deal with the representation of the already created art. Than, in the second half of the 20th century this role had to confront the idea and the structure of the museum as a part of the institutional system in which the art work had to exist and verify itself. Nowadays, the curatorial practice is a matter of negotiation and production: between the artist [as creator and producer], the institutions [from museums to the funding bodies], up to the production of the ideas for/of an exhibition. Therefore, not rarely the curator is denominated as producer [overtaken meaning from the film industry], entrepreneur [market], moderator [management], promoter [entertainment industry], mediator [digital industry], negotiator [politics], etc. Or, the curator is, more or less, all of them in one.


The related issue to this situation is the contemporary art criticism. First of all, the art criticism is in serious crisis. The professional, and by that, ethical standards are so widely enlarged that the meaning of the critique is less and less important. Standing at the point that the critique has to be affirmative only, led to the situation that there is no negative critique at all. By that, a vital dimension and qualification of the art criticism is cut. From here on it lost its meaning for the wider public sphere [to which it is addressed]. The interpretation is weaken due to the lack of deeper researches and analysis, lack of keeping to the structure of the system of knowledge and the professional ethics. And in such condition, the art criticism was damped down, even dulled. The importance of the art criticism was decentred and by that diminished. The centralised power of the museum curator which produces historical values is turned into decentralised producer of instant values of the democratic processes of the equalising neoliberalism. Under the new forms and types of curator, curatorship and curatorial practice a new type of art criticism arise: affirmative.

The second relevant factor is the change of the nature of the art work itself. Or, which is better to say, it's appearance, form and content. It is more than obvious that the art work does not exist anylonger through the 'classical' or the modern notion of definition of it. The art work became demystified, open and processual, interactive and changeable as a consequence of the ideas of and for democratisation: less individual, but more collective result of the process of its appearance. The 'fine-art' became art by involving other media, other art disciplines, other kinds of art. It became more narrative and less depicted. The power of image was accompanied by the power of text - the power of imaginative turned into the power of functionalism [in many different ways]. Such a condition of the art is now more a creation in behalf of something else [often even outside of the field of art at all] more than of the representation of the individual statement incorporated into the pure artistic [formalistic] procedures that have to generate artistic values. Weaker the relation with the modern idea of the art, the stronger influence in the society: less social, more societal.

In general, the new kinds of artistic activities are in need of new kinds of their presentation and interpretation. The domination of the context [or the contextualisation of the art work] replaced the interdisciplinary structure of the art work into itradisciplinary existence of the art work. The more fields [or disciplines] involved, the better the work becomes. Same as the curator became all from everything [producer, entrepreneur, moderator, promoter, mediator, negotiator, etc.].

Through this prism onwards, the curatorial practice [even more - curatorial projects] is changing the whole system of the art world. The curated art exhibitions became a reading of the topic, theme, title of the exhibition posed by the curator himself. They have to provide the contextualisation of the art production more than its historisation. Immediate result for immediate use. As everything today.


Hence, what are the new forms of curator/ship, what is the reason for that change or innovation and what is the meaning of them? First of all, they all derive from the concept of museum curator and diverse in three possible lines [fig. 1].



They are defined as follows:

MUSEUM CURATOR - the original notion of the profession, educationally derived from the field of art history: designated as position of production of power [regarding the artist’s expectations]; the main role of it is production of meaning of the museum's collection.

FREE-LANCE CURATOR - is the practice of [still, but not only] an art historian outside of the museum and its collection, but into the field of the general art production; it appears as new possibility for “employment” in the widen market of labour; the main role of it is production of meaning of the contemporary art production.

ARTIST AS CURATOR - the practice of the artist(s) as overtake of the curator/ship as a tool of her/is conceptual and practical expression, but not artistic expression yet; mostly appears as reaction of the ‘critique in a first person singular’ of the art critics/curators from the early 80s; the main role of it is production of alternative meaning.

GUEST CURATOR - is, so-called, experimental type of curator/ship, done by non-profesiional from the field, such as guests of the museums, writers, architects, art lovers and, even, some casual people; it is an activity besides the legitimacy and responsibilities; the main role of it is production of receptional meaning both of museum’s collection and/or contemporary production.

All of these three positions are deeply questioning the radical base of the idea of the curator/ship. Or, in other words, how happened that the curator/ship turned itself from a position of defined and structured activity in an institution into another possibility to access the widen market of labour, liaison and entertainment? This situation shows the consequences of decentralisation of the institutional power and its dispersion to the less powerful and numerous activities as production of the exhibitions and various art projects. From here on, there is a reflection that the system of promotion, presentation and definition of the work of art [or the collection and groups of them], somehow turned back in the time:

[fig. 2]

Or, FROM THE ANCIENT CRAFTSMAN [ars vulgaris and ars poiesis] - TOWARDS THE MODERN ARTIST [ars modernis] - [BACK] INTO THE PRE-MODERN ENTREPRENEUR [ars 'entrepreneuris']. Two art works can be a appropriate to illustrate this. Two work of the Croatian conceptual artist from the 1970s Mladen Stilinović, “An Artist who cannot speak English is not an Artist" from 1992 (canvas, colour; 140x300 cm) [fig. 3] correspond to the new needs of the artists regarding the new requests and conditions of the system of art. The English language as lingua franca is the tool more of communication of the artist, than a component of the art work itself. A decade later the young Macedonian artist Oliver Musović, referring to the Stilinović's work, created the work “The Artist”, 2003 [fig. 4] (re-designed as artist's pages project in the art magazine Art republika [Skopje] 1 (3) (2005): 48-9) [fig. 5]. There he lists most important things that the artist should know and be able to do, according to his own and other artists' experiences, to enter and build an international career. The highlighted statements [by N.V.] [fig. 6] are very essential for the transformation of the notion of artist: from a modernist creator s/he turned into someone who has to be able and capable to manage different activities, most of them based on the negotiations with the institutions and curators - s/he became an entrepreneur.

Turning back to the definition of the contemporary curator [which is different from the curator of contemporary art], from the other side, in which different descriptions and denominations [producer, entrepreneur, moderator, promoter, mediator, negotiator, etc.] it seems that both of the professions are sharing the same condition: in which the both 'pure' professions [art historian and artist], by this widening (or enriching), but first of all - mingled and melted, are diminished.

By that, as a consequence of the neoliberal notion of decentralisation [of the power], what is happening now is increasing level of shifting of the curatorial paradigm into the democratised [!?], yet numerous, and by that reason - less meaningful type of activities.


Presented at:


CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST. OUTPOSTS 2007
THIRD CEI VENICE FORUM FOR CONTEMPORARY ART CURATORS

Venice, June 7-8, 2007