Synopsis

This dissertation argues the potential of everybody being a curator. ‘To curate’ is to care for the
articulation of ideas, from ‘cultic’ individualism to the ‘exhibition’ of public settings. This essay
references writings of independent curators and critics such as Irit Rogoff, Beatrice von Bismark, Helmut
Draxler and Patricia Falguières in presenting a contemporary review of curation, referencing modern
critique and case studies of art figures and non-art groups from former histories such as the First
Republic, the Catholic Church and the Roman Empire, as means of deciding if people are engaged in
‘the curatorial’ - the ‘exhibition' of articulated ideas constellating together in public settings, over time.
Chapter one reviews this contemporary discourse in analysing and challenging the awareness of context
in curating between independent curators and critics today. Chapter two examines the findings of
modern institutional critique and dimensions of relativity between subjects and their ideas by Seth
Siegelaub, Allan Kaprow and Brian O’Doherty. Chapter three cites former, non-art histories in relation to
these discussions with reference to the Roman Empire, Middle Ages England and the First Republic. The
conclusion of this essay is that everyone curates, but curatorship improves with contextual awareness to
space and time.
 Contents

Introduction 4

Exhibition Knowledge 7

Exhibition Roles and Operations 15

Exhibition Histories 23
 Introduction

“What ontological being is being foregrounded? So for example, what happens when this painting - this
is a small painting by William McKeown - sits on top of wallpaper (…) What happens when this painting
and this wallpaper come into contact with one another? What is it that emerges, what is it that is being
somehow exhibited? I’m multiply arguing that the moment of the exhibition is when the thing we call art
becomes an exhibition, it no longer becomes art, it moves away from its status of being art into being an
exhibition.”1

In writing this essay, I have noticed two activities that exist and are relevant to this argument: language
and action. Language and action give our ideas a means of communication in our most basic activities:
to protect, solve, value and question. We produce these communications around each other, trans-
culturally and trans-nationally, and make our ideas known and cared for in public settings. Language
and action act as fundamental gestures in what we understand as contemporary curation, and ‘to
curate’ is to articulate care for the arrangement of ideas and objects in public settings.

‘Curation’ is defined by modern critics such as Walter Benjamin as being a mediating activity in which a
curator values their ideas in ‘cultic’ and ‘exhibition’ dimensions, to realise ‘entirely new functions’ for
them in public.2 Contemporary curators like Alex Farquharson define a curator as ‘a person who works
at some remove from the processes of artistic production, to one actively engaged in the thick of it’.3 Irit
Rogoff suggests that curating is ‘a professional practice, which involves a whole set of skills and
practices, materials and infrastructural and institutional conditions’.4 By engaging these dimensions,
activity and practice, curators aim to ‘standardise the conditions’5 at the moment ideas are conceived
and are made relative to other ideas in public in new and productive ways. This mediation is the
realisation of those ‘entirely new functions’ in curation. In modern times, Seth Siegelaub defined this
practice of curation as ‘demystification’6 which makes visible the activities of communicating ideas
through language and action with added clarity. This clarity is what contemporary discussions judge by
in describing a curator as being ‘independent’ - a person who is aware of context for the betterment of
expressing ideas.

The ‘exhibition’ activity that Benjamin observed depends on what contemporary curator Paul O’Neill
describes as the exhibition ‘moment’. The exhibition ‘moment’ is the set of conditions ideas take on
when they are articulated and negotiated with by other people and their ideas. This is a ‘constellation’, a
contemporary term that describes ideas, spaces and audiences existing together. Independent curators

1 O’Neill, Paul. Exhibitions as Readymades, Attentiveness and Escape. Transit lecture

2 Benjamin, W. V. pp.12-13
3 Farquharson, A. I Curate, You Curate, We Curate. p.7
4 Rogoff, I. Curating/Curatorial. p.22
5 Siegelaub, S. Seth Siegelaub. pp. 119-120
6 Siegelaub, S. Ibid. pp. 129-130
4
use their skills and awareness of context to articulate this coming together through constellations.
Constellations are measured by temporal and spatial conditions between audiences, spaces and ideas
over time. Basic mutual engagements of ideas by non-independent curators result in constellations too,
which form another contemporary concept: ’the curatorial’. ‘The curatorial’ describes the mediation of
the same existence of ideas but as a diachronic activity which results in ‘transcendent knowledge’
across all engagements of action and language. The curatorial is the accumulative idea of people
constellating larger agendas in the art world and life, in which we all take part in.

My argument ‘is everybody a curator?’ focuses on time and space being the connectors between
everybody’s mediation of their ideas, the mediation of ideas by independent curators and the
dimensions that determine the exhibition ‘moment’ in the curatorial. Time is the medium which
determines how everybody’s ideas are constellated with other actors and spaces and is relative to
‘exhibitions' in how time decides its measure. Time is the ‘antithesis of consensus’7 in which we all
abide by. I argue that everybody is a curator because of time and space, and their conditioning on all
articulated actions of care for arranging ideas and objects in public. However I also argue that there are
varying levels of curatorship that come with an awareness of context to the curating act. Contemporary
discussions and the independent curator position clarify, critique and renegotiate multiple dimensions,
consequences and conditions which help to ‘standardise’ articulating ideas in new publics and modes
of exhibition.

My argument proceeds in comparing, challenging and analysing the contemporary curatorial discourse,
investigating how time affects curation’s roles and positions, authorship, institutional critique, the
relations between curation and ‘the curatorial’ and conditions of time. I look at how the display of ideas
in public adapts under spatial, temporal and relational conditions through voices like Olafur Eliasson,
Beatrice von Bismark, Patricia Falguières and Helmut Draxler, their experiments and observations. I
then look at modern critique through Brian O’Doherty, Allan Kaprow and Seth Siegelaub to compare
these adaptions from the 1960’s onwards in support of my argument. In chapter three I look at case
studies over history in the activities of non-art figures such as the First Republic, the Catholic Church
and the Roman Empire. This argument aims to provide a discursive argument of historical and
contemporary curation in regard to time affecting how everybody articulates care for ideas. Updating
and revising history is necessary in determining these answers.

7 Lind, M. The Curatorial. p. 64

5
 Exhibition Knowledge

The contemporary curatorial debate is vast and complex. In order to unravel the contemporary and
modern debates of what curation means in the 20th and 21st centuries and to apply its knowledge in
identifying historic examples of curation with the intention of summarising the argument, I intend to
consider the question of what it means ‘to curate’ in the current day:

Curation/the Curatorial

Whilst acknowledging the advancements of the last century, curation is defined as the act of caring for
the articulation of ideas and objects in public. Curating is an activity that is presented through
engagements between people and their language and actions towards each other. Language and action
are tools that everyone exercises, and they mediate our ideas in a way which Walter Benjamin described
as our internal, ‘cult’ container to then be presented in the public ‘exhibition’ of our interactions. The
purpose of curation is towards displaying an ‘end product’, in what Irit Rogoff describes as ‘the regime of
representation’.8

An independent curator is an individual who is aware of this process of articulation amongst other
processes. They are aware of the conditions and consequences that affect the display of ideas at the
moment they are shared and negotiated with publicly. Today, independent curators act as stabilisers to
these processes, echoing Seth Siegelaub’s description of the curator’s aim of ‘standardising’ the
conditions of delivery for artistic effect. These processes are discursive and related to socio-economic
systems and institutions trans-nationally and trans-culturally. In discussion with Irit Rogoff at a
conference at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig in 2010, Beatrice von Bismarck elaborates on this
context surrounding the independent curating act

‘Curating has to do with (…) techniques. Curating is a constellational activity. By combining things that
haven’t been connected before - artworks, artefacts, information, people, sites, contexts, resources, etc.
- it is not only aesthetically, but also socially, economically, institutionally and discursively defined. I
understand it less as representation driven than motivated by the need to become public’.9

Bismarck describes curation as an activity that articulates care around different institutions in public.
The curator is aware of contexts that surround ideas and as such, applies techniques in order to
stabilise them for their display. Such contexts are institutions of knowledge, abstract and concrete,
consisting of related ideas but that are unrelated to the idea being articulated. They are ‘defined’ by the
associations and spaces they occupy. The independent curator’s role is to find meaning between such
unconnected groups and to create an ‘event of knowledge’ from their connection.10 Irit Rogoff describes

8 Rogoff, I. Curating/Curatorial. p.23

9 Bismarck, Von B. Ibid. p.24
10 Rogoff, I. Ibid. p.23
6
this ‘event’ as ‘transcendent knowledge’, where context and the idea harmonise together in public. The
act of connecting ideas and their relations to contexts to make new ‘knowledge’ is what is known in
discussions as a ‘constellation’. Constellations are what curators use to produce exhibitions of ideas
that are dynamic, transformative and live within their contexts. The form director of Tate Britain (and now
independent curator) Alex Farquharson describes Maria Lind’s definition of ‘performative curating’ in
relation to this constellating activity in events

‘Maria Lind, director of the Munich Kunstverein, (…) is critical of art institutions limiting their activities to
those of the “showroom” or “archive”. The talk is now of the exhibition and museum as “construction
site”, “laboratory”, “think tank” and “distribution channel”. Lind has offered the term “performative
curating” for a kind of exhibition practice that she and other like-minded curators relate to. (…)
“Performative curating” (…) applies “performativity” to the form of the exhibition itself. This may mean
considering the exhibition, or whatever output one chooses to replace it with, as a live medium, rather
than simply a spacial exercise.’11

To exhibit ideas in public is to expose them to negotiation in reaching general agreement. With their
awareness of context, independent curators connect ideas with constellations to make them fit,
adopting their institutional and infrastructural conditions for display to audiences. The ‘professional’
curating activity is that of connecting the constellation. Depending on the constellation, the idea can
take on new meanings when merged with the definition of a given space as seen in Lind’s example of
the museum being a ‘laboratory’ or a ‘construction site’. Institutions of individuals articulating ideas
together in language and action simultaneously make spaces for ‘live’ and transformative exhibitions to
occur, whilst the curator embeds the idea inside. Contemporary curator Paul O’Neill suggests that this
marks an educational turn, where curating is constantly being re-written and the ‘formats, methods,
programmes, models, terms, processes and procedures’ are becoming ‘pervasive in the praxes of both
curating and the production of contemporary art’12.

Such pervasiveness suggests a return to my question - is everybody a curator? Independent curators

such as Rogoff, O’Neill and Bismarck engage in ‘stabilising’ constellations of contexts in order to attain a
‘transcendent knowledge’ in the wake of new relations, whilst most people articulate their ideas in
public without giving consideration to the dimensions they take on. As referenced in my introduction, this
is what is defined today as ‘the curatorial’. The curatorial is a universal act that describes the trajectory
of daily activities in displaying a larger agenda that is not thematic. Maria Lind describes the curatorial
as a ‘multi-dimensional role that includes critique, editing, education and fundraising’13 , suggesting that
this concerns the individuals basic uses of language and action. Curators assign themselves to ideas as
themes among people, non-curators, and ongoing institutions of knowledge, intricately realising
exhibitions while people provide the tool of ongoing activity, knowledge and space. This is how curating
is measured. Without the processes of daily infrastructure led by people making up the curatorial,

11 Farquharson, A. I Curate, You Curate, We Curate. pp. 7-8

12 O’Neill, P (ed.). Introduction. p.12
13 Lind, M. The Curatorial. p.64
7
independent curators would struggle to exist. This is a paradox within which independent curators and
non-independent curators
co-depend on each other for knowledge.

The basic activities of people within the curatorial are, as O’Neill suggests in describing ‘the curatorial
turn’, constantly being re-negotiated with the activities of the curator as an educational tool. The
purpose of ongoing negotiation is to provide a bridge between institutions and the curating act, in order
minimise the paradox in becoming a constructive exhibition between curators and non-curators.
Beatrice von Bismarck and curator Alexander Koch conceived of their project
‘/D/O/C/K’ in this re-negotiation, which was presented at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig in 2000

‘The /D/O/C/K space (…) was designed as a curricular and discursive space in which students could
work together with different departments within the academy as well as with invited guests [and]
mediators from different professions. We developed a series of project works. Each of them [started]
with questions relating to notions of work and creativity (…) to politics of space; and to the relations
between space, economics and visibility. (…) /D/O/C/K explicitly attempted to address the gap between
context of the institution as well as in a wider social, economic and “aesthetic” context’.14

‘/D/O/C/K’ is one of many contemporary efforts designed to stimulate debate and transform the ‘gap’
that exists between curators and ‘students’/ those engaged in the curatorial. Another example would be
Anton Vidokle’s ‘Unitednationsplaza’ which took place in Mexico city and New York in 2008-09 and
which presented a series of seminars dealing the exhibition as a school due as a result of its similarity
to educational institutions. Such experiments connect ideas in ‘social, economic and aesthetic’ contexts
in making ‘new radically open school’s15 in the form of exhibitions and it is this which relates the
‘curatorial turn’ to the gap between independent curators and the contexts and spaces in which they
articulate their ideas. It is in such conditions that contemporary curators, contexts of institutions and
individuals co-exist.

Institutional Critique/Authorship

In addition to the activities and trajectory of daily life which inform the curatorial, critiques defining
institutions of contemporary art and curation are, like the curatorial debate, constantly being
renegotiated. The activity of the curator, the conditions and constellations they stabilise and in which
they exhibit are replicable in other formats, such as the publication. The publication has a history of the
curating activity over the last century, providing a conceptual format of artworks and a platform for a
unified voice. As with the exhibition, the publication has the potential to constellate ideas in presenting a
larger knowledge and theme made up of different voices. Tim Griffin, editor-in-chief of ‘Artforum’,

14 Bismarck, Von B. Curating/Curatorial. p.25

15 Vidokle, A. Exhibition to School: Unitednationsplaza. p. 152
8
discussed the similarities between curating and editing at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art’s
‘Rotterdam Dialogues’ symposia in 2008

‘You want to have different texts, and different methodologies of writing, addressing varying aspects of
any given subject. It’s actually like curating, with each piece inflecting the others, generating different
meanings, or revealing new blind spots. (…) Even if one thing isn’t overly articulated as having a
relationship to something else in the issue, that relationship is there. And as you read through the
publication, you end up having an experience similar to that of going through a curated show or reading
a poem.’16

In the same way an exhibition is articulated with awareness to context, the ‘relationship’ of how voices
are constellated together are similar in the publication. The ‘orthodoxies’ and ‘frameworks’ depend on
multiple institutions of knowledge in relation to what is being presented.17 The blending of such different
voices is for the benefit of the audience, in order that individuals attain what Rogoff describes as
‘transcendent knowledge’, to gain a better understanding of the topic. Griffin describes this platform as
a ‘site’ where ‘individuals interact and inform each other’.18 This is similar to Farquharson’s description
of the transformative and dynamic nature of exhibitions. As a result of such qualities, the publication is
an exhibition. It is a discursive display of contexts and ideas which have been stabilised by the editor.
Roland Barthes’ modern writing of the power that text conveys in ‘The Death of the Author’ is
comparable to Griffin’s ideas of this similarity

‘A text is not a line of words relating to a single “theological” meaning (…) but as a multi-dimensional
space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of
quotations drawn from innumerable centres of culture (…) A text is made from multiple writings, drawn
from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, constellation (…) [T]he birth
of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author.’19
The dynamic nature of text can also be at odds with the role of the editor. Contemporary discussions
concerning time and the editor’s curation of public conditions suggest that authorship is of
consequence if awareness of stabilising contexts is lost. The text becomes a monologue instead of a
dialogue, not stimulating public interaction. Griffin describes this risk of authorship as an ‘advert’ for
what a publication like Artforum is meant to be, ‘not actually forcing any unpacking of culture, but rather
adhering’ to its ‘orthodoxies and conventions’20 . The publication is bound to the same conditions that
the exhibition is in this way. The container of the publication’s content is unsustainable if its
constellations of knowledge do not ‘blend and clash’. Olafur Eliasson describes this risk as a
development of ‘casual views’ that have developed from the 20th century and have been applied to
21st century spaces. Spaces that act within their own operations are ‘essentially modernistic’ in how

16 Griffin, T. Is There Still Such a Thing as Editorial Authority?. p.14

17 Ibid. p.14
18 Ibid. p.15
19 Barthes, R. The Death of the Author. pp. 147-148
20 Ibid. p.14
9
their mediators connect ‘the right kind of space’ with ‘the good life’ with no further consideration to
context.21

This ‘casual’ mistake of connecting space and ideas without stabilising contexts also affects
contemporary curators. One such example would be Catherine David’s ‘Tracer: Six Curators on Art in
Rotterdam’ programme that took place at the Witte de With in 2006. In exhibiting the theme of ‘Arab
representations, heterogenous approaches to documentary and the socio-political context of the Middle
East’ to publics in a similar gesture to Bismarck’s ‘/D/O/C/K’ or Vidokle’s ‘Unitednationsplaza’
programmes, the curator faced criticism from a disinterested audience, more concerned with
‘alternative methods of art education’.22 On this occasion, David had failed to operate within the
audience’s institutions and activities to display a dialogue with her programme.

Institutional critique and curating between contexts provides an opportunity to return to my presenting
argument. A number of similarities exist between the publication and the exhibition, namely; the
paradox between the curating activity and the curatorial and the operations and conditions between
their displays. The curatorial provides the curator with relationships to institutions and their activities,
and this in turn results in the articulation of the curator’s ideas. The curatorial provides constellations
that are continually different and unconventional for the editor. Therefore, a number of questions may
be posed, do non-curators stabilise conditions in order to articulate the idea of the curator profession?
Also, does this mean that the curatorial is as self-reflexive as the curating activity, and that individuals
adhere to the curator’s dialogue? How does the editor differ from the independent curator, and how
replicable is that idea to similar roles?

This is a topic which is discussed in relation to ‘the globalisation of the art field’ which forms what Elena
Filipovic calls the ‘biennal phenomenon’23. The biennial is today’s largest international format of
exhibition between non-curators and curators in trans-cultural contexts. Examples include Manifesta
(which relocates every two years), Documenta in Kassel, and the Venice Biennale, among other
triennials and generally take place once every few years. The biennial is the new ‘white cube’ of
experimentation in inviting conversation with audiences, having ’reciprocity and dialogue built into its
structure’.24 Dialogue in the biennale appears in projects such as ‘Utopia Station’ from the 50th Venice
Biennale, 2003 by Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Rikrit Tiravinija, which ‘epitomised the notion of
the exhibition’ as a ‘discussion platform’

‘The Utopia Station section of this year’s Venice Biennale represented a virtual inventory of new
curatorial gestures (…) It featured a vast number of artists (…) - many more than one would expect in a

21 Eliasson, O. Experiment Marathon. p.20

22 O’Neill, P. The Co-Dependent Curator. pp. 1-2
23 Filipovic, E. Introduction. p.13
24 Filipovic, E. Mapping International Exhibitions. p.56
10
space this size. (…) Tiravanija’s exhibition architecture contained work by numbers of artists, while its
walls were covered by posters and works on paper by many, many more. (…) The dense intermingling of
works made it hard to discern where one ended and another begun. The sum of parts was subservient
to the whole, which read as the curator’s Gesamkunstwerk.’25

This dialogue, in which ‘the sum of parts’ make the ‘whole’, presents a national effort by governments
and curators to stabilise conditions in new contexts to expand institutional critique, transform public
receptions and bridge the paradox of the curatorial and curating act together. In engaging actors and
audiences in trans-cultural projects, curators constellate ideas in public negotiations to create new
exhibition moments.

Conditions

Curating, the curatorial and institutions of knowledge are all conditioned by time and space in
articulating ideas in public. Time and space, in tandem with our most basic curating activities of
articulating care in language and action, affect how we deliver ideas. As subjects, we act to merge time
and space with contexts in making relationships, and curators adopt these dimensions as tools in
creating exhibition moments. In contemporary discussions, time is unpacked to consist of terms such as
‘processuality’ and ‘performativity’, which modulates the delivery of display. Bismarck elaborates on
these terms in analysing presentation formats

Processuality is a key feature of exhibitions. Various time-based aspects, including forms of progression
and development, timing and dynamics, significantly impact the production, presentation and reception
of exhibitions. The early twenty-first century has seen a clear rise in the number of curatorial approaches
that explicitly address this temporal dimension and take them on as a subject.26

According to Bismarck, all ideas are temporal. ‘Processuality’ affects the articulation of ideas across
‘trans-disciplinary and transcultural’ relations, and independent curators are aware of its effects in
stabilising exhibitions in public settings. Eliasson cites his studio, for example, as a laboratory of
temporal experiments. By making ‘measurable small points’ from the motion of three pendulums
swinging, he measures time and ‘vibrations’ to create a ‘three-dimensional harmonograph’.27 The
‘transcendent knowledge’ of the curatorial that Rogoff describes is modulated in the same way. ‘The
performative element’ of curating ideas, happening ‘just in advance of the event of knowledge, to be
able to keep things going at the level of the event’, combines conditions of time and space with the
interactions of the subject.28 This time condition branches into all activities that consider movement,
such as performing arts, music, theatre and film, based on its relations to the ‘modulation of images,

25 Farquharson, A. Ibid. pp. 7-8

26 Bismarck, Von B. Introduction. p.8
27 Eliasson, O. Your Engagement Has Consequences. p.21
28 Rogoff, I. Ibid. p.24
11
sounds, bodies and objects’ of space.29 Bismarck, Eliasson and Rogoff agree that there is a discursive,
’performative’ exhibition that exists in this dimension that affects the exhibition itself, in ‘live’
processuality.

Along with the temporal, there is also the condition of relativity. Relativity is what connects any curating
activity between individuals, their ideas and interactions with others. It describes the connecting activity
made from various constellations of knowledges and institutions. When combined with the temporal and
the subject, relativity provides the conditions for communication in public spaces. These
communications can be articulated to any measure, within reason - from an ‘event of knowledge’ that
occurs after the performance of discussion involving multiple subjects, to the recording of swinging
pendulums by a curator to observe their ‘vibrations’ and relations to space. Eliasson describes these
interactions of conditions as ‘YES’ (‘Your Engagement Sequence’) in a discussion that took place at his
and Hans Ulrich Obrist’s ‘Experiment Marathon’ event at the Reykjavik Arts Festival, Reykjavik, in 2008

‘The relativity that temporal engagement inevitably introduces should (…) be given a name: I suggest
“YES” (“Your Engagement Sequence”). YES attunes our attention to time, movement and changeability.
It makes relative what is often considered to be true. (…) By regarding YES as a central element of our
perceptions, you can negotiate (…) timelessness and static objecthood.’30

YES is one of many responses by curators in relation to the conditions surrounding subjects and the
manipulation of their ideas in public. O’Neill’s understanding of ‘self-reflexivity’ is comparable to
Eliasson’s YES model this way, in regards to his ‘Coalesce’ project, having several international
exhibitions exploring the ‘foreground, middle ground and background’ of ‘the exhibition form and the
space of production for art’.31 Jens Hoffman’s ‘London in Six Easy Steps’ exhibitions that took place in
London, 2005, had six curators respond to ‘the idea of the world as a stage’, the exhibition presenting
the idea of ‘fluid and temporary, continuously changing’ responses of the individual in the city.32 O’Neill
and Eliasson call this awareness of the relational, temporal and YES conditions ’co-production’. ‘Co-
production’ is the awareness of spaces and conditions that objects, ideas and subjects occupy through
their relationships to one another.

With these negotiations that are possible in time, space and articulating public ideas, curators are also
aware of the consequences that result from not engaging properly with them. Like in the paradox of
curating and the curatorial, conditions are necessary in creating a constellational dialogue between
exhibitions and their actors. Without proper interaction with these conditions, authorship can occur in
the exhibition display. Helmut Draxler suggests that patterns of ‘dominant selection and exclusion’ in
curating can, for example, prevent the ‘critical moment’ of public critique from happening, where the

29 Bismarck, Von B. Ibid. p. 8

30 Eliasson, O. Ibid. p.20
31O’ Neill, P. Co-Productive Exhibition Making and Three Principal Categories of Organisation.
p.35
32 O’Neill, P. The Co-Dependent Curator. pp. 2-3
12
exhibition ‘no longer butts heads’ with operations but are ‘absorbed into them’.33 Griffin similarly
suggests that the publications ‘conventions’ can allow the editor to to operate within its ‘operations and
orthodoxies’ without ‘actually forcing any un-packing of culture’.34 Bismarck calls this risk of authorship
‘temporalisation’, which is a paradox of expecting ‘an event-and-dialogue’ moment to occur in the
exhibition without consulting its ‘social and political’ conditions.

To relate these consequences to the curatorial, the sophistication of stabilising conditions is relative to
everyone’s curating potential in which constellations they choose to interact with. Scientific institutions,
such as chemistry or physics, consider these conditions in laboratory exhibitions among scientists,
similar to a musician curating a performance with other musicians, whereas an accountant or lawyer
may not. We are all generally aware of these conditions when articulating our ideas across public
contexts, but the extent of awareness in our co-production with them depends on how regularly they are
exercised.

33 Draxler, H. Crisis as Form - Curating and the Logic of Mediation. p.55

34 Griffin, T.Ibid. p.14
13
 Exhibition Roles and Operations

In the 20th century, the activity of the curator was to present the processes of the art exhibition.
Responding to contexts surrounding the exhibition moment, the independent curator gave clarity to the
roles and operations of art institutions in trans-cultural contexts. Siegelaub defined this process as
‘demystification’, a way of displaying the ‘dimension behind the public art exhibition and selection
process’ with clarity from a curator.35 Siegelaub subsequently defined the limitations of the functions of
museums (and their authority to ‘distance’ art from audiences) as ‘historicisation’.36 Curators of the
1960s were concerned with the conditions and institution of the art gallery, and how art could be
exhibited in other spaces than ‘the white cube’ to new audiences. 37

In the 1970s-80s, institutional critique and exchanges of roles and positions in museums, books and
institutions were exhibited through ideas of the multiple by Giles Deleuze and his definition of the
‘rhizome’. The ‘rhizome’ is defined as a unique object or idea that is to be subtracted ’from the
multiplicity’ of objects that derive from it.38 The roles and operations that Siegelaub and his
contemporaries exhibited led to multiple new exchanges and relationships between artists and
audiences in new contexts. They displayed the potential for mediation to occur across all public
communications. One multiple from the 1970s - T.J. Clark - demanded for the curating activity to
stabilised in history on account of ‘how the work took on its public form’39, which previously was
embedded in art history. The 1970s-1980s started a platform of dialogue between artists, curators,
institutions and non-curators, in further experimenting with the curating activity and the curatorial in
biennale environments in the 1990s.

Curating today is built on the narratives and perspectives of modern developments that challenge some
of its praxes. The discussion and critic of the curator role and conditions of relativity and display were
rewritten here.

The 90s - Biennales, New Contexts and Responsibilities

As previously mentioned, the 90s saw the global expansion of biennale exhibitions in international
contexts. Biennales and triennials like Documenta, Manifesta, and the Venice Biennale all call upon
dialogue between audiences and the exhibition in their residences. However, a larger platform of display
placed a larger responsibility on the curator. The curator was expected to stabilise the curatorial/

35 Siegelaub, S. Seth Siegelaub. pp.129-130

36 Ibid. p.120
37 Falguiéres, P. Inside the White Cube - In More Senses Than One. p.44
38 Deleuze, G. Introduction. p.5
39 Clark, J.T. The Conditions of Artistic Creation. pp 561-562
14
curating paradox while presenting large exhibition processes to new audiences and new contexts.
Siegelaub argues that the biennale is a ‘blockbuster exhibition’, and a limited platform of display due to
the larger ‘social, economic and political issues’ and ‘municipal tourist policies’ it invites through its
production.40 Vidokle similarly describes the responsibilities of the curator in the biennale as a
balancing act, providing an alternative to the ‘conservatism of art museums’ whilst not becoming
‘elephant type government projects’.41 Farqhuarson suggests there are also consequences to the
display of the roles of curators and artist this format to audiences

‘An exhibition that behaves “rhizomatically”, or one that foregrounds its own sign-structure, risks using
art and artists as so many constituent fibres or pieces of syntax subsumed by the identity of the whole.
Aren’t we more likely to remember who curated “Utopia Station” than which artists took part? Do
exhibitions (…) end up relegating artists to the role of delivering the curator’s conceptual premise, while
the curatorial conceit itself acquires the quasi-artwork?’42

The consequences of the biennale structure is an ongoing discussion. This is because its operations
’drain local budgets for cultural production’, whilst also being a terrain of exchanged roles and positions
that progress the developments of demystification.43 The biennale’s emphasis on time, space and
context mean that providing a discursive platform in large, new contexts also demands and a turn of
profit. The first discussions of roles and infrastructures on this scale have been cited as happening at
Jan Höet’s Documenta 9 in 1991, where he presented 195 artists and used their material to exhibit the
idea of ‘art and life’. Höet’s use of artists began the ‘spectacle of the curator as meta-artist’, as he
exchanged their skills of making and arranging art in presenting his findings to audiences in Kassel. As a
curator-artist, Höet suggested that the ‘power of play comes from’ a ‘power of resistance’44. His
‘resistance’ was to be against preconceived roles, institutions and conditions of the exhibition. Höet
critiqued the biennale institution by experimenting with its roles and processes, whilst also balancing
the exhibition’s presentation to new audiences in new contexts.

The debate in the early 90s was the paradox that occurs with this experimentation. On one hand,
biennale exhibitions were progressive so long as the curator’s idea and skills in applying them were
effective. The trajectory of the curatorial happened within the institution of the biennale as well as in the
context of public audiences. On the other, they caused conflict as Farquharson’s concern surrounding
the ‘quasi-artwork’ suggests. The curator risked becoming an authorial figure that did not progress thirty
years of institutional critique to new audiences. Such experiments and consequences suggest that to be
a curator in the later half of the 20th century was to have awareness of the sophistication of the
biennale structure, presenting a thorough ‘unpacking of culture’ in new contexts. This detracts from the

40 Siegelaub, S. Has the Rise of the Independent Curator Affected Art Practice? pp. 80-81
41 Vidokle, A. Ibid. p.149
42 Farquharson, A. Ibid. pp.9-10
43 Viidokle, A. Ibid. pp.9-10
44 Frieze. Documenta IX, Body Language
15
curating activity that is resembled in the curatorial in contemporary discussions. Even with similar
activities occurring in different formats of exhibitions (such as the publication), the biennial presented
multiple dimensions of response to public contexts that are beyond the mediating activities of non-
curators. Subsequently, the potential for everyone being a curator is diminished due to these
advancements.

The 70s & 80s - Forming new histories and learning new roles

The activities of the 1970s and 1980s determined the revisions and freedoms present to the exhibition
of the 1990s. The activities of artists like Julie Ault, Louise Walker, Fred Wilson and Judith Barry in the
US, and their exchange of positions between artists and curators, restructured the operations of the art
institution. By experimenting with ‘the ruling powers’45 it had, artists and curators prioritised exchange
as the ‘spiritual method’ of dividing the exhibition’s conditions of communication between its actors.46
This was an effort to move away from the institution’s ‘strong principal unity’ displayed prior to the
1960s into becoming a democratic platform for the exhibition display.47

Helmut Draxler suggests that these exchanges represent a form of ‘crisis’ from the 1980s, where ‘a
reverse tendency can be observed in the increasing number of curatorial projects conducted by
artists’.48 This freedom of exchange was an operation that occurs in exhibitions like the biennale today.
O’Neill suggests that such exchanges, in testing roles and authorship, did not address the development
of the exhibition itself beyond the ‘museum exhibition display’, but articulated new ideas in a ‘post-
productive discourse’.49 The ‘post-productive’ discourse defines the transition made from then
autonomous roles and operations in the curated exhibition to later revisions and dialogue between
curators and artists. The 1970s and 1980s were dedicated to developing an art institution that was
‘post-productive’ in its activity. In addition to changes of roles came a demand for documenting the life
of art in the exhibition moment. Prior to the 1970’s, the curating activity was embedded in the writings
of art history. Art history was concerned with its own conditions of production with little regard to the
documenting of operations and activities surrounding the exhibition, subsequently being forgotten. Lucy
Steeds describes this demand for action as an educational turn towards a more productive display,
presented at a conference at LUMA Foundation’s Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College in 2014

It would be flawed, to the point of perversity, to teach contemporary art curators-in-the-making only
about past shows - as nonsensical, in fact, as training artists only in art history. (…) These concerns
apply more generally to the transformation of higher education - that is, to its ceasing to operate as a
pubic sphere, underwritten by open and active debate (…) Through interrogating exhibition histories, art

45 Siegelaub, S. Seth Siegelaub. pp. 120-121

46 Deleuze, G. Ibid. p.4
47 Ibid. p.4
48 Draxler, H. Crisis as Form - Curating and the Logic of Mediation. p.54
49 O’Neill, P. The Curatorial Turn: From Practice to Discourse. p.21
16
students can critically explore how the way in which their work meets its publics determines the way in
which it will be seen and discussed. (…) The public manifestation of their artwork becomes the issue, in
tandem with its production (…).’50

The first developments of a critique of the way works are ‘seen and discussed’ through such
documentation come from T.J Clark and Giles Deleuze. In ‘The Conditions of Artistic Creation’ from
1974, Clark calls for ‘new sets of concepts’ to be built ‘into the method of work’ of the exhibition display,
documenting not only the ‘history of the conditions of artistic production’ but also ‘an account of how
the work took on its public form’.51 By observing the conditions that followed production, Clark
articulated potential for the art institution to become a post-productive space. This post-productive
space stimulated awareness to all the actors of the exhibition: the curator, the artist and the reception
of audiences, with consideration to dimensions of time and space. In ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ from 1980,
Giles Deleuze compared the idea of the multiple as being a similar construct to a rhizome stem - its
‘roots and radicles’ - and curators adopted it as post-productive tool to create a platform of dialogue.52
This suggests that, amongst all contexts, the public exhibition was also a platform where actors could be
‘aided, inspired’ and ‘multiplied’.53 In defining the ‘rhizome’, he conditioned the subject as the principal
to which their ideas were multiplied and constellated with new operations, dimensions and institutions
in pubic. The topics discussed between these authors suggest that the art institution could be temporal
to new actors, new dimensions of its operations, and new contexts of display. The institution was
becoming understood as a public platform amongst other platforms.

In relation to the argument, this platform began to stabilise the art institution and its ideas in relation to
its surroundings. This stability allowed the institution to make connections to the operations of other
institutions, and apply its ideas within their contexts. This informs how the curator role developed in the
1990s with the new biennale format, and how the contemporary concept of the curatorial formed in
engagement to publics. I would argue that, while curating was becoming understood through such
transformations, the 1970s and 1980s did not present the curatorial as a method for everyone
becoming a curator. Rather, to agree with O’Neill, the period simply identified everyone’s mediating
abilities within ‘the white cube’, and chose to divide authority between actors. Deleuze did, however,
articulate early ideas of the curatorial by acknowledging the importance of critiquing the art institution
first

‘Mediators are fundamental. Creation’s all about mediators. Without them, noting happens. They can be
people - for a philosopher, artists or scientists; for a scientist, philosophers or artists - but things too,

50Steeds, L. What is the Future of Exhibition Histories? Or Toward Art in Terms of Its Becoming Public. pp.
17-18
51 Clark, J.T. Ibid. pp. 561-562
52 Deleuze G. Ibid. p.5
53 Ibid. pp. 1-4
17
even plants or animals (…) Whether they are real or imaginary, you have to form your mediators. It's a
series. If you’re not in some series, even a completely imaginary one, you’re lost.’54

Deleuze identifies mediation as an activity that occurs in all contexts. To compare with Bismarck’s
concept of ‘the action perspective’, the ‘white cube’ at this time saw its curators, artists and audiences
‘combine, connect, mix and fuse’ the skills of the curating activity amongst themselves; hence also
‘times and spaces’, ‘time periods, eras and moments’55 . The actors opened a curatorial dimension by
becoming aware of the temporal and spatial dimensions of the institution. To reinstate the argument,
the artists, curators and audiences involved in such exhibitions of the 1970s and 1980s made a
general trajectory towards a curatorial praxis, creating exhibition-moments within the institution.

The 60s - New beginnings

The activities of independent curators and artists of the 1960s initiated a constellation of ideas
surrounding exhibition operations. Being informed by the events of ‘happenings’ and conceptual art in
the US and Europe, the stabilising of such operations by ‘ausstellungmacher’ - exhibition makers, as
they were formally called - prioritised institutional critique, conditions of display and the curating act. In
New York and Bern, the first independent curators - Seth Siegelaub and Harald Szeeman - curated these
operations to become ‘more visible’.56 Having experience of running respective galleries at the
Kunsthalle, Bern, and the Seth Siegelaub Contemporary Art Gallery, New York, their exhibitions critiqued
the ‘heavy administrative structures’ of museum operations, finding new ways to transform ‘both
connoisseurship and the dissemination of pure information’ for the betterment of public display. In
unpacking a discourse that did not consider the dimensions of exhibitions, Siegelaub and Szeeman
were conflicted with museum praxis. Over the decade that had preceded them, there was a division of
roles, structures and exhibition histories between public institutions, who’s operations had yet to be
challenged. In Europe, Michel Foucault expressed frustration towards the exhibition of knowledge
without awareness to other institutions

‘When I was studying in the early 1950s, one of the great problems that arose was that of the political
issues of science and ideological functions which it could serve. (…) If concerning a science like
theoretical physics or organic chemistry, one poses the questions of its relations with the political and
economic structures in society, isn’t one posing an excessively complicated question? (…) But on the
other hand, if one takes a form of knowledge like psychiatry, won’t the question be much easier to
resolve, since the epistemological profile (…) is linked to a whole range of institutions, economic
requirements and political issues of social regulation?’57

54 Deleuze, G. Mediators. p.125

55 Bismarck, Von B. Ibid. p.9
56 Siegelaub, S. Seth Siegelaub. pp. 129-130
57 Foucault, M. Truth and Power. pp. 51-52
18
In tandem with Foucault, Szeeman began critiquing dimensions of the museum ‘stage’, the ‘possession’
of its ideas and the ‘rhythm’ of his role as an organiser, in the ‘Malende Dichter - Dichter Maler’
exhibition that happened at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 1957.58 Among his shows, Szeeman was most
interested in his requirement ‘to improvise’ with the time and spatial dimensions of the museum.59
Siegelaub also considered processes beyond the ‘overheads’ of fixed spaces, in relation to ‘the mobility
of changing situations’ in a new exhibition format. Under similar circumstances, Siegelaub and Szeeman
created ‘January 5-31’ and ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ exhibitions in 1969, to develop a display that
critiqued the museum’s operations and contextualised its activities between its artists and curators for
new audiences. Demonstrating a change in operation, Siegelaub suggested that ‘the catalogue’ for
January 5-31 ‘was the’ form of the ‘exhibition’, instead of the ‘example’ of objects that occupied the
gallery space.60 Szeeman similarly described the process of documenting ‘trips, studio visits’ and ‘the
installation process’ for When Attitudes Become Form as the main exhibited work, with objects by artists
in the museum acting as the succession of its creation. Both curators critiqued the authority of
exhibition operations through manipulations of space, ideas and dialogue with artists to create new,
public exhibition-moments.

Such exhibitions foregrounded the ongoing critique of the museum through a process Siegelaub called
‘demystification’. Demystification is the process of making the exhibition’s roles and operations clear to
audiences. Writer Brian O’Doherty applied demystification in a similar form of exhibition to Siegelaub, in
issues 5+6 of the ASPEN catalogue, from 1967. In collecting texts and artworks from historic and
modern avant-garde artists such as Hans Richter, Naum Gambo, John Cage and Samuel Beckett,
O’Doherty created a ‘white cube’ in the format of a publication which ‘brought together schemas,
diagrams and structural works’, along with histories of living and former artists that would not otherwise
be exhibited.61 This suggests that O’Doherty, like Szeeman and Siegelaub, was interested in the same
conditions of time, space and critique of the exhibition format. These activities curators engaged in the
1960s became ongoing to the discussions of exchanges of roles between curators and artists which
were prioritised in the 1970s and 1980s.

In addition to the criticism of the institution, the curating activity and and conditions of display, came a
criticism of the curator’s actions. The opinions of curators had on positively changing the exhibition
through awareness to public contexts was frowned upon by certain artists. Alan Kaprow suggests that -
through his ‘nonart’ term - curators conformed to the operations of art institutions in which they were
claiming to critique

58 Szeeman, H. Harald Szeeman. pp. 80-81

59 Ibid. pp. 81-82
60 Siegelaub, S. Has the Rise of the Independent Curator Affected Art Practice?. pp 78-79
61 Falguières, P. Ibid. pp. 44-45
19
‘Nonart’s advocates (…) have chosen to operate outside the pale of art establishments - that is, in their
heads or in the daily or natural domain. At all times, however, they have informed the art establishments
of their activities, to set into motion the uncertainties without which their acts would have no meaning
(…) Among this group are (…) concept makers such as George Brecht, Ben Vautier, and Joseph
Kosuth’.62

Some artists believed that the independent curator’s critique was pointless to stabilising museum
exhibitions, and nothing more than a simple mediating or association activity. A frustrated Kaprow
suggested that ‘a cubist portrait in 1910, before it was labelled a mental aberration, was self-evidently a
painting’, implying that the curator and former exhibition-maker figure was unnecessarily discursive to
the face value of artworks.63 Lawrence Weiner, who took part in Siegelaub’s ‘Xerox book’ exhibition, also
believes that the curator’s institutional critique is unnecessary and nothing more than extensions to pre-
existing structures, which he discussed with the former director of Kunsthalle Zurich Beatrix Ruf and
curator/artist Liam Gillick in New York, 2005

‘[Liam Gillick]: My work lends itself to ongoing relationships (…) because it is not very closed, so there’s
room to come in closer and repeatedly.
[Cristina Bechtler]: So the platforms are also spaces for unforeseeable encounters. They create the
structure, but not the use.
[Lawrence Weiner]: There might be a fault in that structure because you are can only relate to already
existing structures. You are never making something that’s spitting in the wind. And I think art has a lot
to do with spitting in the wind.’64

This dialogue is another ongoing discussion in contemporary curation which resorts from post-
productive dialogues of the 1960s. Such developments of the curator’s function in institutional critique
began a critique of the curator’s role by artists. Weiner believes that curator is a ‘mediator’, which, when
considering Deleuze’s understanding of mediators being fundamental to all creation, is a subject that
‘needs a metaphor to be able to explain’ their function in the exhibition process.65 In his critique of the
role, the dialogue between artists and curators provided another critique in the relative dimensions
between their activities. Contemporary curators Søren Andreasen and Lars Bang Larsen suggest that
the artist failed to understand the curator because ‘the curator’ was ‘not something’ identified as a
productive subject. Instead, the curator ‘does something’, in acting as a provider of extensive structures
and debate.66 The 1960s saw a constellation of critiques concerning the institution and its actors, which
established the independent curator figure and their discursive relationships to artists and conditions of
display.

62 Kaprow, A. Education of the Un-Artist (Part I). pp 98-99

63 Ibid. p.98
64 Weiner, L. Again the Metaphor Problem and Other Critical Discourses About Art. p.22
65 Ibid. p.15
66 Andreason, S. The Middleman: Beginning to Talk About Mediation. p.28
20
 Exhibition-Histories

In observing contemporary and modern discussions of the curatorial, the curating activity and the
progression of awareness to public exhibition displays, there is now potential to observe the curating
activity from former exhibition histories. Prior to the 20th century, curators were assigned roles in
societies such as the Roman Empire, and conditioned to act under its operations and changing
conditions. The curatorial was manifest in ongoing activities by non-curators, between monks and
priests in Middle Ages England, and their roles in service of the Catholic Church. The First Republic
curated the ‘first fully public exhibition’ in dialogue with its revolutionaries during the French
Revolution.67 Such as in modern and contemporary discussions, the curating act and the curatorial are
in co-production with each other in these studies, providing curating roles to address larger agendas.
These case studies demonstrate curator and non-curator subjects responding to public contexts in
stabilising exhibitions.

In this chapter, I outline and compare exhibition histories in relation to the curatorial activity of the 20th
and 21st centuries, to argue everyone’s potential of being a curator.

The Roman Empire - Curatore

At the time of the Roman Empire in 191 B.C., curators acted in the operations of the Lex Plaetoria. The
Lex Plateoria was a law that was introduced to Rome that governed the activities of its citizens. It was
introduced by order of the Twelve Tables as a legislation that derived from the praxes of Roman society
dating back to 449 BC. Within the law and its operations, curators acted as paralegals, advisors, taxmen
and pastors. They provided an advisory service to multiple citizens resorting from their ‘cura’ role -
‘meaning care’68 . Contemporary editor of Canadian Art, David Balzer, elaborates on their roles within
different public institutions of Roman society

The use of “curator” can be traced back to the Roman Empire, in which “curatores” were bureaucrats
made responsible for various departments pertaining to public works. (Curatores viraum, for instance,
were responsible for overseeing roads.) The root of the word is the Latin ‘cura’, meaning ‘care’; ‘curatore’
means, essentially, ‘caretaker’ (...) Curators could also be named as caretakers-cum-advisors for those
classified as “prodigus” or prodigal (i.e. proven to be squandering their estate or inheritance), and as
lunatics. One should also not neglect the Roman ‘procurator’, most often a member of the equestrian
class, and appointed to supervise outlying provinces.69

The curator’s activities in society suggest that the traditional exhibition occurred between the
engagements of public contexts and the operations of the law. The curator was aware of how public
‘departments’ and ‘works’ functioned, which allowed them to communicate the ideas of the Twelve

67 Vidokle, A. Ibid. p.150

68 Balzer, D. Value. p.24
69 Ibid. p.24
21
Tables within their contexts. Curators also had the ability to change roles depending on the condition of
their clients - subjects classed as ‘prodigus’ - or their extent of wealth (the ‘equestrian’ class). As an
advisor, the curator was extensive to all public institutions and ongoing activities. Comparisons can be
made to the contemporary curator in how they applied ‘a whole set of skills and practices, materials,
institutional and infrastructural conditions’ within their role. The ’thematic’ of the Lex Plaetoria was
made from identifying and stabilising public ‘works’ in its delivery, similar to Rogoff’s understanding of
how ideas are exhibited by independent curators.70 The curator’s stabilising of ‘works’ is also similar to
Lind’s concept of the curatorial, through their ‘multi-dimensional’ activities within the trajectory of
Roman society.71 As the Lex Plaetoria was voted in by the ‘comitia’ of Roman society, there was a co-
dependency between the curating activity and the curatorial of public institutions of knowledge.

The contexts and conditions that curators exhibited the Lex Plaetoria in were extensive still, when
considering more applications of the word ‘cura’, as William Smith’s ‘Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiques’, 1842, outlines

‘The word cura has other legal applications - Cura bonorum, in the case of the goods of a debtor, which
are secured for the benefit of his creditors (…) Cura bonorum et ventris, in the case of a woman being
pregnant at the time of the death of her husband. (…) Cura herditatis, in case of a dispute as to who is
the heres of a person, when his supposed child is under age. (…) Cura herdiatis jacentis, in case of a
property, when the heres had not yet declared whether or not he would accept the inheritance. (…) Cura
bonorum absentis, in case of property of an absent person who had appointed no manager of it.’72

Smith suggests that there were also exchanges between curators and other actors within the Twelve
Tables. In stabilising operations in public institutions, the ‘legal’ applications of ‘cura’ were adopted by
tutors with added power and division to the curator. The curator ‘differed from the tutor’ in their
possession over the objects of a minor, only being able to manage the subject’s ‘property’ on
appointment. The tutor ‘had the care of all property of the pupillus’ prior to appointment in education
contexts. The ‘praetor’ (a Roman magistrate) decided that the ‘tutor was his curator’ if the minor was ‘of
unsound mind’, whereas the curator was only able to apply their skills to conditions of ‘cura bonorum’,
‘cura herditatis’, etc.73 These decisions of roles and exhibitions of ‘cura’ demonstrate a ‘strong principle
unity’ in the institution of the Twelve Tables. The praetor ‘rhizomatically’ decided how the curator or tutor
would respond to conditions of time, space and relativity in Roman society.74 Such unity is similar to
Deleuze’s modern concept of the ‘rhizome’, in how praetors represented the unique policy of Lex
Plaetoria which was later divided ‘from the multiplicity’ of its curator and tutor actors in Roman society.75

70 Rogoff, I. Ibid. p. 22
71 13. Lind, M. p. 64
72 Smith, W. Curator. p.376
73 Ibid. p.376
74 38. Farquharson, A. pp.9-10
75 35. Deleuze, G. p.5
22
Such institutional critique and division of roles provides a return to the argument. The critique of the Lex
Plaetoria divided curation in its operations, between tutors, curators and praetors. These operations
embedded curation in Roman society; and such actors were aware of the legal conditions that needed
stabilising in delivering ‘cura’. To this extent, other actors of the Lex Plaetoria were capable of curation
alongside the curator subject. Such operations of the Twelve Tables also relate to modern systems, as
Foucault suggests in describing the ‘ideological functions’ of science in ‘the political and economic
structures of society’. There are similarities to contemporary biennales, as Farquharson describes
artists, curators and editors as ‘constituent fibres’ to ‘the whole’ exhibition.76 The history of stabilising
conditions in institutional operations suggest that curation is a transferrable activity between its actors.


The Middle Ages - Holy Orders

During the Middle Ages in England, Roman catholic society was divided by the Sacrament of Holy Orders
into two careers in the church and the monastery. Decided by the church, the holy orders allowed
citizens to attain roles in its institution as deacons, priests or bishops, through operations of being
baptised and accepting levels of holy orders. Those that did not accept such orders were monks who
resided in monasteries, adopting ‘three vows of absolute poverty, voluntary celibacy’ and ‘implicit
obedience’ to the covent.77 Priests adopted the ‘constitutional rule of the bishop’ in obedience to the
‘spiritual’ within their parish institutions. Within the activities of monks and priests was a critique of their
respective institutions. Both public groups disagreed that the other’s parish or monastery was
appropriate in reflecting the Catholic faith. Curate and antiquarian Edward Lewis Cutts wrote about the
critique between the groups

‘There was a direct rivalry and great deal of bitter feeling. The friars accused the parish priests of
neglect of duty and ignorance in spiritual things and wordiness of life, and came into their parishes
whenever they pleased, preaching and visiting from house to house, hearing confessions and
prescribing penances and carrying away the offering of the people. The parish priests looked down upon
the friars as intruders of their parishes, and accused them of setting their people against them by
undermining their spiritual influence, of corrupting discipline (…).’78

Unlike the former Roman Empire, the church and the monastery did not engage their institutions with
each other to create an exhibition moment with citizens. They did not provide a unified service that was
formerly related to the curator role. Instead, they prioritised their own independent roles and operations
under the conditions of the overarching Catholic Church. The independence that came from the
institutional critique of parishes and monasteries is similar to the activities of ‘post-production’ from the
1980s, with monks and priests starting dialogue surrounding their practices and challenging the
operations of their respective institutions. Cutts' suggestion that priests ‘long resisted the rules of

76 38. Farquharson, A. pp.9-10

77 Cutts, L.E. The Parish Priest. p.202
78 Ibid. p.202
23
celibacy’ in favour of the ‘spiritual rules in their own practices’79 reflects Draxler’s crisis of independent
curators being criticised as ’grand artists who used other artists as their material’.80 The two groups
articulated their ideas of the Catholic Church through such institutional critique.

In addition to critique occurring between churches and monasteries comes into question the activities of
celibacy and spirituality themselves. In their practice, monks applied ‘aestheticism’ to stabilise their
ongoing obedience to the church, whilst priests facilitated ‘private property’ to stabilise ‘spiritual
influence’ over their followers.81 As professional roles, both had principles relatable to Rogoff’s
definitions of curating and the curatorial. Monks and priests applied a ‘whole set of skills and practices,
materials and infrastructural and institutional conditions’ to benefit their displays of faith.82 Both actors
stabilised public contexts in delivering their exhibitions; their ongoing operations ‘to minister’ ‘holy
things’ and endure ‘poverty’ displaying ‘a set of possibilities for much larger agendas’ of their faith.83

In this study, the curating activity is present again in the relations between Roman catholic monks and
priests. The practices both figures exhibited displayed a post-productive dialogue against the former
curator subject, who provided a service in public contexts. Monks and priests acted only within their own
institutions in evaluating their roles, whilst critiquing their respective institution in their authority, either
in ‘poverty’ or ‘corrupting’ spiritual ‘discipline’. Such figures also exhibited awareness to the operations
of competitors, and applied skills to stabilise their own operations, similar to contemporary curators.
Finally, these operations were ongoing - particularly with monks - which reflects the curatorial in
addressing the larger agenda of the Catholic Church that encompassed them. With consideration to
such conditions, monks and priests presented the same activities that are practiced by contemporary
curators.

The First Republic - The First Exhibition

Following the period of 1772 - 1793, the Palais du Louvre in Paris had undergone historic changes in its
operations and structure, following the events of the French Revolution. The French Revolution displayed
the exchange of operations between two institutions. The Louvre, that was operated under the regime of
King Louise XVI, was taken over by the the First Republic following the fall of Bastille in 1789. The fall of
Bastille was a conflict that overruled the oppression of King Louise XVI’s regime and established the
First Republic’s neglect of his monarchy. Such activities had an impact on the Louvre museum under the
‘Revolutionary Order’. The Salon Carré in operation of the monarchy had been transformed into a public

79 Ibid. p.202
80 Draxler, H. Ibid. p.54
81 Cutts, L.E. Ibid. p.202
82 Rogoff, I. Ibid. p.22
83 Ibid. p.22
24
‘admiration’ of ‘the most powerful illustrations’ of knowledge by the First Republic. Contemporary art
historian Andrew McLellan discusses the early history of the Louvre

‘Critics believed the proper home for the king’s collection was the Palais du Louvre. An architectural
monument in its own right and set of the various royal academies, (…) the Louvre offered a setting for a
public art museum that was at once accessible, dignified and pedagogically relevant. (…) the Chevalier
Louis de Jaucourt (…) had visions of the Louvre becoming a vast hub of learning, uniting artists,
scholars, and myriad collections to form a modern version of the Mousein of ancient Alexandria, the
fabled intellectual centre that had drawn the learned from distant shores of universal knowledge.’84

The suggestion of the Louvre becoming ‘a vast hub of learning’ that united ‘artists’ and ‘scholars’ during
King Louis XVI’s reign is similar to modern and contemporary exhibition experiments and institutional
critique. From his writings in the ‘great’ Encyclopédie, Louis de Jaucourt’s idea of constructing an
‘intellectual centre’ from a constellation of public knowledges is relative to the ideas of a creating a ‘new
exhibition style’ or ‘laboratory’ in museums by independent curators such as Szeeman or Siegelaub.85
Similarly, the dialogue that would have resulted from such ‘universal knowledge’ echoes the
‘transcendent knowledge’ of the curatorial, and projects by contemporary curators such as Bismarck
and her ‘/D/O/C/K’ project, with invited ‘mediators from different professions’ making ‘art public’ in ‘a
wider social, economic and aesthetic context’.86

The centre Jaucourt describes would have been in the king’s palace within the Louvre, the Salon Carré,
if he was not ‘executed along with his Queen’ by the First Republic.87 McLellan continues in describing
the events following the French Revolution

‘The Grand Gallery project ground to a halt with the rise of financial and political troubles in the late
1780s. (…) Revolutionaries chose not to acknowledge all that d’Angiviller had done, and claimed the
museum as their own. The virtues of the new Revolutionary order would be on display as much as the
works of art. In the words of (…) Jacques Louis-David: “The national museum will embrace knowledge in
all its manifold beauty and will be the admiration of the universe. By embodying these grand ideas, (…)
the museum (…) will become the among the most powerful illustrations of the French Republic.’88

Continuing the institutional critique, the Louvre’s second transformation under the ‘Revolutionary order’
exhibited a platform of the united voices of ‘revolutionaries’. Comparisons can again be made to the
curatorial, in its production of an ‘event of knowledge’ through the Republic’s dialogue. Similarly, the
Revolutionary order is relative to the ‘comitia’ of the Lex Plaetoria, in providing such a curatorial platform.
The combination of the ‘new Revolutionary order’ and ‘the works of art’ in the gallery draw comparisons
to modern and contemporary conditions of display, particularly relating to ‘demystification’ in making

84 McLellan, A. Englightenment Ideals and the Beginnings of the Louvre. p.237

85 Szeeman, H. Ibid. pp.85-86
86 Bismarck, Von B. Ibid. p.25
87 Vidokle, A. Ibid. p.150
88 McLellan, A. Ibid. p.244
25
‘the public art exhibition and selection process more visible’.89 The conditions surrounding the First
Republic’s Louvre acted as a ‘radically open school’, similar to Vidokle’s ‘Unitednationsplaza’, in its
combination of ‘experimental’ critique and ‘temporary’ existence.90

However, the transformative conditions of temporality and activity from the Republic’s Louvre also
interrupted its later development. The relation the Louvre had to the dynamic overthrow of King Louise
XVI’s regime made it difficult to stabilise its ‘virtues’ to revolutionaries. McLellan describes the critique it
received following its exhibition moment

‘Shortly after the museum opened to the Revolutionary fanfare in August 1793, it closed again, for just
over a year, to allow for building improvements and a more carefully considered installation. The 1793
display (…) needed to be reworked for two reasons. First, the paintings on view had been chosen in
haste and arranged without method. (…) A second reason (…) was that the rich assortment of fine
decorative arts (…) was deemed inappropriate for a public museum sponsored by a progressive
republic.’91

In contrast to the ‘virtues’ that should have been displayed with the arrangement of ‘paintings’, the
Louvre had become caught in its own ambitions. The exhibition moment that had occurred from public
interaction and an awareness of context had subsided. The Louvre’s platform and unified voice was
temporary to the dynamic of the Revolution, restricting its actual articulation of that voice in the gallery,
later - it stopped being ‘public’. The Louvre’s ‘inappropriate’ public display is relative to contemporary
consequences of such exhibitions - in not maintaining the ‘critical’ moment that ‘butts heads’ with its
structures, as Draxler’s ‘crisis’ suggests.92 Its display also recalls Griffin’s description of an ‘advert’ for
what the gallery was meant to resemble, in responding only ‘to its own conventions’.93 Like today, the
First Republic had to sustain a dialogue with its revolutionaries in order to continue exhibiting its public
gallery.

The institutional critique, curation and curatorial activity that are present in this study provide an
opportunity to return to the argument. There are noticeable similarities of institutional critique in the
Louvre between the exchanges of King Louise XIV’s monarch, the First Republic and modern and
contemporary museums. The Louvre’s ambition of uniting ‘artists’ and ‘scholars’ within an educational
‘hub’ is similar to today's exhibitions curated by curators such as Bismarck or Vidokle, similarly bringing
together ‘schemas’ and ‘diagrams’ from modern exhibitions.94 The diachronic activity of the
‘Revolutionary order’ engaged multiple citizens and contexts in making a unified Republic, similar to the

89 Siegelaub, S. Seth Siegelaub. pp.129-130

90 Vidokle, A. Ibid. p.152
91 McLellan, A. Ibid. p.246
92 30. Draxler, H. p.55
93 17. Griffin, T. p.14
94 52. Falguières, P. pp.44-45
26
curatorial in forming the ‘first real “public”’ exhibition.95 Finally, in transforming the Louvre,
revolutionaries stabilised public contexts to articulate their ‘virtues’ in the Salon Carré, in the same way
independent curators stabilise contexts to deliver exhibitions.

In conclusion, the curatorial exhibited across exhibition-histories, modern variations of roles and the
contemporary curatorial discourse, demonstrate everyone’s potential in being a curator. Through its
constellation of ideas, roles, operations and conditions in public contexts, the curatorial creates
exhibition-moments through ‘the event of knowledge’ across time and space.96 Over history, the curator
figure has stabilised constellations in creating platforms for ideas to be negotiated and re-negotiated by
citizen subjects, with the First Republic’s revisions of the Louvre and divisions between monks and
priests exhibiting institutional critique. The curating activity, as demonstrated in the Roman Empire, has
also been exchanged with non-curator figures in similar roles, utilising basic communications of
language and action, and relating to modern and contemporary exchanges between artists and curators.
Although similarities exist between contemporary projects such as ‘/D/O/C/K’, ‘Unitednationsplaza’ and
‘Coalesce’ with these case studies and their ambitions to make a discursive ‘hub’, independent curators
exhibit an extensive awareness to the spatial, temporal and relative conditions of display in new
contexts.97 Curators such as Rogoff, Bismarck and O’Neil utilise this awareness in their exhibitions to
mitigate the paradox between curators and the curatorial. It is because of this awareness and
application of skill that levels of curatorship exist, and that, while everyone has the ability to curate their
ideas, the extent of curation depends on how visible its operations are in public settings.

95 Vidokle, A. Ibid. p.150

96 10. Rogoff, I. p.23
97 81. McLellan, A. p.237
27
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