Curation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Curation - Essay Example The nature of the curator in creating an exhibit is in finding a way to define who, in the artist to curator relationship, designs what the viewer will see. According to Rugg and Sedgwick, the division between the curator and the artist creates a dilemma on how the eventual outcome of the viewing of the art can be determined. They state that â€Å"The heightened preoccupation with the authorial aspect of curating might be seen as a defensive reaction to the shared critical and cultural values and criteria through which the institutional power of curating is mediated and legitimized† (97). In discussing the authority of the act of curating, one is discussing the way in which the position of the curator becomes one of control in determining some of the interpretation of the work of the artist. In developing an exhibit of contemporary art, the nature of the exhibit must engage the viewer in such a way to put them in a space that provides context for the pieces that are shown. The pieces should have a â€Å"passive social and material relationship dominated by the eye and a fashionable sense of order (Harding 39). As the observer moves through the space, the arrangement of the pieces should create a narrative, a sense of theme that pulls the viewer through the exhibit (Burton 112). There has been some movement towards anti-curation, the nature of the anti-art movement spilling over to include the negation of curation as a viable part of the experience of art (O’Neill and Andreasen 60). However, this movement denies the importance of how art is placed, thus denying the viewer of the best possible positioning of art within the space. Within the narrative, the curator is not necessarily intended to create a specific, tangible narration, but the feeling of the space as it relates to the work becomes a moving spectacle of thought. That is the relationship that creates the narration of the space. The work that I will be exhibiting has a narrative that spea ks of a culture and of the changes within that culture. Artefacts have the capacity of creating a narrative about a culture, just like art can create that same type of narrative when focused on aspects of culture (Stokes 67). This is not always true of a space in which contemporary work is exhibited. However, with the story of a culture involved, the narrative takes on a life that exposes the art for the way it will affect the viewer. With a set of work that is in touch with an organic element of a culture, such as my work, the nature of the exhibit should not be to have a linear or boxed in feeling from the way in which the artwork is arranged. The work is about nature, about the curves and nuances of life, thus to have a squared off exhibit or something that was directly linear would ruin the potential experience that the viewer can have as they engage the work. In Mediated Environments, Gleiniger, Hilbeck, and Scott discuss the way in which multiple disciplines can create a feeli ng for certain environments (9). In creating an environment that enhances the subject of the art, the exhibit will reflect the aesthetic that has been attempted in the artwork. The nature of an exhibit that includes something about an