VIS1101H F
Instructor(s): TBD
Meeting Section: LEC0101
Tuesday, 2:00pm - 5:00pm

This course examines how the curatorial role is a continually evolving practice affected by paradigms which are central to a curator’s knowledge, and which a curator must also explore, question, and engage with. The course explores how paradigms of curatorial practice are tested, and must be fluid given these following factors: evolving methodologies and practices within museum standards, changing perspectives on the history of art and culture, developments of contemporary art, and global politics as well as climate change. The course will examine particular exhibitions in depth which provide a background to understand the development of global contemporary art exhibitions.

This course will consider the role of the curator, gallery space, and the larger context of particular museums as they change through history, and the role of artists within these institutions. Consequently, the curator, the gallery space and the role of the museum apparatus are historically conditioned, subject to change. The course will research some of the most critical of these moments, those that shifted the conception of curatorial work and its present methodologies. It will ask to what extent these shifts relate to larger economic and cultural factors, and/or to what extent they are the result of curatorial entrepreneurship, for instance. Together, course participants will ask to what extent curators learn from art as well as to what extent curatorial practice is a critical or creative practice, in its circumscribed spheres of contemporary art institutions and their predicaments.

The course will also touch on questions of the meaning and significance of collecting, about the institutional role of curators, independent and artist-curators; about the purpose and contemporary role of exhibitions as well as the changing models of exhibition-production, installation, and design. We'll also examine issues around public and private funding, censorship, and other current and contentious issues.