Translated by Ludmila Porto
At first, I must say, in order to situate this text, what bothers me a little bit is the way the term “curatorship” is used in Brazil, and maybe not only in Brazil. My attention is called to the mistaken – when not schizophrenic – way the term has been precariously assimilated and used either in the field of art or in so very different areas such as fashion, literature, gastronomy and passing through football and philately. However, it is also necessary to contextualize it: if the activity of curatorship has reached a status as vague as glamorous, that’s because it has become a practice so spread as well as diffused, but this doesn’t mean that there aren’t any good professionals working here.
In general, it’s not difficult to observe – specially out of the circuit of the “great arts” – the existence of an idea that the presence of an individual who subscribes as a curator is self-sufficient, as if this in itself could instantly aggregate a kind of extra glamour to the product/event, just like a stamp of ineffable quality supported by the presence of the said professional. This movement can only be explained, in my opinion, as an expression of a certain fascination, though somewhat provincial, around a job that people know very little about or that much could be expected of it, but if it is very well diffused and well-respected in the status it has reached, specially abroad, it suddenly becomes “essential”. This helps to establish a situation in which we see more “curatorisms” than curatorship…
Focusing on the field of Art, it’s important to remember that the term “curator” is used for more than one specific professional occupation: it’s necessary to separate the one this text deals with from the institutional curators who are employed in museums, cultural foundations and the like, a person who is seen, primarily, as a specialist. This is the professional who must guide the institution especially in the acquisition and construction of collectibles, in the field they specialize in, among other duties. Great museums have several curators who are named specifically for their expertise areas: archeology, photography, painting, tapestry, design etc.
However, the curatorial practice we focus on here refers to a person who, in the field of visual arts, has an initial idea, subject or theme previously defined – which is not necessarily to make a fetishist use of the theory – to propose an expository situation in which the subject is related to a material presence, traditionally through works of art. Such a job still ideally includes the conception and follow-up of strategies and spacial solutions to the mounting of the works as well as the production of a text.
A job that, we must remember, is not necessarily the same as the job of an art critic or an art historian – despite people often mixing them up – although they don’t exclude one another, each of these activities requires certain specific qualities which can sometimes converge in a single professional. From a more traditional point-of-view, we can assemble that an art critic should not ideally work as a curator, seeing that they can make public what they appreciate and then can “induce” people’s opinions with their own system of opinions. Being reluctant can be ethically recommendable, initially; but a good art critic would not renounce their right of broadcasting their likes and dislikes to the public, specially in a country in which some of our great art critics were formed “in public”, in the press – from Mario Pedrosa to Ronaldo de Brito, among others (this was when there was still a regular place in the press media for art critics to exercise their opinions… But that’s another issue). Considering the search for an equilibrium between a more theoretical basis of action and the pulse to put into practice exhibitions as a consequence more or less natural from this field of action, I can’t see an incompatibility between both activities a priori. And we must pay certain attention to ethics with reference to marketing and commercial interests that are embedded in this situation, which is always something to be considered, in spite of coherence on the art critic theoretical basis – if any – who ventures into curatorial practice.
From Harald Szeemann (curator of the seminal When attitudes become form, 1969, Documenta V and some Venice Biannual, among other magnificent projects) to Jean-Hubert Martin (curator of Les magiciens de la Terre, 1989, as well as exhibitions of Picasso, Warhol and Cy Twombly to the MNAM in Paris), just to give two classic examples of curators who impose themselves as executors of projects, the authorship emerges as something different in the expository conception, although serving very different conceptual pulses. It is the epitome of the curator as an exhibition executor.
Recently, from the 90´s onwards, it´s possible to see how diverse the notion of (the practice of) curatorship has become. People like the Swiss Hans-Ulrich Obrist and the Costa Rican Jens Hoffmann, widened curatorial possibilities and took them to new heights, injecting original doses of originality in the format and at the same time making comments on their own practice. And that includes the spaces for the exhibitions: houses, hotels, libraries and even airplanes can be turned into spaces to exhibit contemporary art. The idea of “limit” can become radical when the exhibitions are made only of texts, for example, inviting the spectators to an original degree of participation or at least being accomplices of the artwork – not always satisfying the expectations, it’s true – not only in understanding the artwork but to its incompleteness, or efficacy of the project. They invest in a key that opens the doors of the meaning to be achieved by the public, which is not uncommon in non-institutional situations.
But let’s get back to the point: the fact is that many cultural segments, we could say, began to franchise the right to have their “curators” in an activity as prolific as well as relative. That’s okay, why not? Either the term “culture” has been so widely used as misunderstood in the last decade… The problem is in what I consider a misconception or lack of attention in the definition of what exactly would be the duties, qualities, responsibilities and competence that configure a curator’s profile. It often occurs to me that the term is merely used as a synonym for “the responsible for the choice”. Thus, events related to contemporary art, but also tapestry, advertising photography, wines, cell phones and even car exhibitions are, suddenly, duly “curated”. As if the role of the curator was restricted to selecting some pieces/objects or works of art. But isn’t this the same as “organization”, “coordination”, or whatever? Just like what the term was named for long before the rising and dissemination of the term “curator” the way it is used today?
I have no intention with this to propose a negative position of attacking curatorship in general, neither could I, seeing that I would almost be a hypocrite, as I myself sometimes work as a curator and I don’t reject future plans related to curatorship. To the contrary: it is because I recognize the importance of the curator’s job that it bothers me to observe how an excessive circulation and visibility around this function of curatorship contributed to vulgarize a general idea of the activity creating shallow stereotypes and, more recently, reactive positions against this personality. Often, these personalities obey arguments of the order that a good part of the sense of diverse artistic propositions could be reduced and adulterated in the process of “illustration” of a concept or curatorial platform. This would be verified in exhibitions in which the artists change from being authors to interpreters, in order to satisfy a theoretical proposal. This is a really difficult question on which I don’t have an absolute answer for. If it’s true that on one hand many works of art are done according to the subject of the conceptual, on the other hand it’s inevitable that authorship emerges in a curatorial project; often it is this aspect which will determine if an exhibition will be defined as such. It doesn’t necessarily matter here if we comment on the quality of the material and of the works exhibited; the aim is to find this delicate point of equilibrium between the autonomy of the pieces, in their particularities, and the dialogues and articulations (formal, symbolical etc.) sought by the curatorial project that will promote them.
As it may be seen, I hope that we can have more experiences of real curatorship and less scam entertainment contrived by “curatorism”.
