Cura 200

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3. The critical – term 2

"Connected to the curatorial is no doubt the critical, in the sense of being able to make distinctions in the quality of art and display of art and self-evaluation. The critical is therefore not necessary negative but can be connected to a heightened awareness. We will research the world of the art review, critically “review a review”, look at art documentaries."

-http://moodle.plymouthart.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=1624

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2. Seeing – term 1

"When curating your work or that of others it is crucial to be aware of all elements in the space where this takes place. We therefore will work with John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’ series from 1972, forty years old but still very accurate, in order to train our seeing of details. We will also undertake a series of observation practices. A different way of looking at the world was earlier advocated by Charles & Ray Eames. The documentary ‘Eames – The Architect and the Painter’ (2011) will be the starting point for a discussion of their approach. During term 1 you will also be introduced to the making of exhibitions yourself with a presentation in the Lift Gallery in week 15 and 16 as well as presentations in the Foyer of Studio 11."

-http://moodle.plymouthart.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=1624

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Image Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573

On: Duchamp's Fountain and the First Papers Of Surrealism: 

"Fountain is one of Duchamp's most famous works and is widely seen as an icon of twentieth-century art. The original, which is now lost, consisted of a standard urinal, laid flat on its back rather than upright in its usual position, and signed 'R. Mutt 1917'. The Tate's work is a 1964 replica and is made from glazed earthenware painted to resemble the original porcelain. The signature is reproduced in black paint. Fountain is an example of what Duchamp called a 'readymade', an ordinary manufactured object designated by the artist as a work of art. It epitomises the assault on convention and good taste for which he and the Dada movement are best known." - http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573

"The First Papers of Surrealism exhibition, which opened on October 14, 1942 at the Whitelaw Reid Mansion in midtown Manhattan, was both historic and peculiar. As heralded by Newsweek magazine, First Papers of Surrealism was the “biggest all-surrealist show ever seen in the United States.”(1) It announced the arrival of Surrealism’s most celebrated artists, many of whom had recently left Europe to avoid the war." - http://www.toutfait.com/online_journal_details.php?postid=47245

"But First Papers of Surrealism was an equally whimsical affair, a playful reordering of the gallery experience. At the show’s opening, as children ran around and played catch, several hundred feet of twine, hung by Marcel Duchamp, festooned the primary exhibition space.(3) This installation—hereafter referred to as his twine, the original title given by the First Papers of Surrealism catalogue (Fig. 1)—acted as something of a veil.(4) It partially masked the room’s ornate Gilded Age architecture, as well as some of the paintings on display." - http://www.toutfait.com/online_journal_details.php?postid=47245

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Image 1 - Image Source: http://institutfrancais.pl/culture/pl/2011/06/09/spotkania-z-filozofem-georges-didi-hubermanen/ - Georges Didi-Huberman (photo: Jean-Luc Bertini). Image 2 - Image Source: http://www.afterall.org/online/atlashow-to-carry-the-world-on-one-s-back. Image 3- Image Source:http://www.museoreinasofia.es/exposiciones/2011/atlas_en.html

On: Atlas:How To Carry The World On One's Back

"Curated by French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman, ‘Atlas: How to Carry the World on One’s Back’, explored and paid homage to the intellectual and aesthetic legacies of German art historian Aby Warburg" - http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/atlas-how-to-carry-the-world-on-ones-back/

"The ATLAS exhibition was not conceived to bring together beautiful artifacts, but rather to understand how certain artists work – beyond the question of any masterpieces – and how this work can be considered from the perspective of an authentic method, and, even, a non-standard transverse knowledge of our world. You will not see, therefore, Paul Klee’s beautiful watercolours, but instead his modest herbarium and the graphic or theoretical ideas which came of it; you will not see Josef Albers’ modern squares, but instead his photographic album devoted to pre-Columbian architecture; you will not see Robert Rauschenberg’s immense tableaux, but instead a series of photographs uniting objects both modest and heterogeneous; you will not see the coloured splendours of Gerhard Richter, but a section of montages created for his ongoing Atlas; you will not see Sol LeWitt’s cubic structures, but instead his photographs of the walls of New York." - http://www.museoreinasofia.es/exposiciones/2011/atlas_en.html

"When we arrange different images or different objects — playing cards, for example — on a table, we are free to modify constantly their configuration. We can make piles or constellations. We can discover new analogies, new trajectories of thought. By modifying the order, we can arrange things so that images take positions."  -http://www.museoreinasofia.es/exposiciones/2011/atlas_en.html

"To make an atlas is to reconfigure space, to redistribute it, in short, to redirect it: to dismantle it where we thought it was continuous; to reunite it where we thought there were boundaries. Arthur Rimbaud once cut up a geographical atlas in order to record, on the pieces obtained, his personal iconography. Later, Marcel Broodthaers, On Kawara and Guy Debord invented several forms of alternative geographies. Warburg, for his part, had already understood that every image – every production of culture in general – is the crossing of numerous migrations: it is to Baghdad, for example, that he went to find unperceived meanings of certain frescoes of the Italian Renaissance." - http://www.museoreinasofia.es/exposiciones/2011/atlas_en.html

Further reading I have done: 

http://www.necsus-ejms.org/atlas-how-to-carry-the-world-on-ones-back/

http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/atlas-how-to-carry-the-world-on-ones-back/

http://www.afterall.org/online/atlas-how-to-carry-the-world-on-one-s-back

http://www.museoreinasofia.es/exposiciones/2011/atlas_en.html

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The Origin Of Curating: Notes and further research

Where would we place the origin of curating?

Robert Hooke

The 18th Century prince in Germany who placed his paintings in a separate building to show them off - Pommersfelden Palace 

1925 - archaeologist discovers labeled organised objects whilst excavating a Babylonian palace.

Cabinet Of Curiosities/ Cabinet Of Wonder/ Kunstkammer (translates to art-room)/ Wunderkammer (translates to wonder-room) - A collection on objects that's boundary of definition was yet to be defined, so were placed together in a room. - Putting the un-orderable together. - precursor to the museum. - Related sites: http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2008/wunderkammer/flashsite/

Museum Wormianum - Ole Worm ( 1588- 1654) displayed his collections through etchings of them displayed.

Ferrante Imperato (1550-1625) published Dell'Historia Naturale (Translates to On Natural History). It depicts his cabinet of curiosities.

Mark Dion (born 1961) - Cabinet Of Curiosities (2001) at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis - re-display of their collection. 

Malevich - Black Square 1915  - "For an unrealized production of Pobeda nad solntsem in 1915, Malevich proposed a black square as a backdrop. At the exhibition 0.10, the Black Square (1915; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.), painted on a square canvas surrounded by a margin of white, was hung across the corner of the separate room where works by Malevich and his followers were displayed; it was announced as the essential Suprematist work. On the one hand it was radically nihilistic and could be interpreted as a gesture of rejection, providing no narrative, theme, composition or picture space, apparently rejecting all pictorial conventions and offering a canvas of unprecedented blankness; on the other hand suspension across the corner of a room was a common way to display domestic icons, and by referring to this tradition its rejection of convention was not total." - http://www.moma.org/collection/theme.php?theme_id=10202

Sistine Chapel -1486 - http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html

Aby Warburg (1866-1929) - http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/home/

Georges Didi-Huberman (Born 1953) - Atlas:How To Carry The World On Ones Back

Dada Messe,Berlin, the first was put on in 1920 - Dada exhibitions: http://www.dada-companion.com/dada-messe/ - Hugo Ball

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917 - First Papers Of Surrealism, 1942

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Image Source:http://www.educ.fc.ul.pt/hyper/resources/mbruhn/

Aby Warburg (1866-1929)

Kultur-wissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg was set up by Aby Warburg. It served as a private collection and as an institution for public education, containing as many as 60,000 books. 

"Warburg’s dissertation could be read as the mission statement of the library and its future structure; the study on Botticelli synthesized philology, style analysis, iconography, and other fields in order to produce a more comprehensive picture of the artistic process." - http://www.educ.fc.ul.pt/hyper/resources/mbruhn/

"Warburg always moved the books and re-classified them according to his personal assumptions and spontaenous ideas, for the significance of every book depended on its context within the library, its neighborhood on the shelf. In this respect, the entire library was moving most of the time during its setting up in Hamburg." - http://www.educ.fc.ul.pt/hyper/resources/mbruhn/

"Warburg did not describe the development of the arts or the history of Western culture; he was looking for the meaning and the functions of art for different societies, their role for different social classes and the energy of cultural memory they preserve."- http://www.educ.fc.ul.pt/hyper/resources/mbruhn/

The Mnemosyne Atlas

"Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas brought together graphical materials from his research and lectures in a series of large-format plates on various topics that demonstrated the legacy of antiquity in the imagery of later epochs, from the Renaissance and the Baroque to the early 20th century." - http://osaarchivum.org/galeria/catalogue/2008/warburg/index.html

"Warburg formulated the idea of producing a systematic Bilderatlas, based on suggestions made by his assistants, making his lectures and small exhibitions a “spin-off” of this larger project in which he sought to present his scientific work, old and new, methods and results, in a coherent and novel way." -http://www.educ.fc.ul.pt/hyper/resources/mbruhn/

"From the beginning, the logic of the Bilderatlas was problematic, as the different screens had to mediate between problems on different levels: Were they to show chronologically, the tradition of forms and gestures; or were they to make invisible things, like the function of a given work of art, visible by relating it to similar or different objects? And how can the relation of Pathosformel and Astrology be shown in a single exhibition concept?" - http://www.educ.fc.ul.pt/hyper/resources/mbruhn/

"In a sense, the Mnemosyne Atlas has never really existed, at least not in the form Warburg envisaged. At the time of his death it comprised 79 wooden panels, covered with black fabric, on which were pinned some 2,000 photographs from Warburg’s collection. The project was never completed, and only ever constituted a provisional version of its eventual incarnation in book form." - http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/collected_works/

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Image Source: http://www.nndb.com/people/356/000087095/

Robert Hooke (1635 - 1703)

Robert Hooke was the Curator of Experiments at The Royal Society from 1662. The Royal Society is an academy of science, created in 1660. 

The Royal Society: http://royalsociety.org/

"Robert Hooke, the Royal Society’s first Curator of Experiments, was an investigator of insatiable curiosity. His 1665 book Micrographia contained many novel observations on “minute bodies” made by microscope, expressed as fine illustrations (including this compound insect eye study) which were sensational to his contemporaries. It was in this book that the term “cell” was first used to describe biological structures." -http://royalsociety.org/library/moments/drone-fly/

The term 'curator' here is used to describe someone who is in charge of experiments and scientific observations and how they are displayed. This is seen in the book referenced above and in his recreation of experiments with air pumps (http://trailblazing.royalsociety.org/commentary.aspx?action=printCommentary&eventId=83)

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1. Historical – term 1

"The word curator comes from the Latin ‘curare’, meaning take care. It was initially used in the sense of caretaker and in this module we are going to restore it back to this meaning. Also interesting is the fact that one of the first official curators was Robert Hooke (1635-1703), curator of experiments in the new Royal Society. These days there is a lot of talk about the cross- and trans-disciplinary connections between art and science. We will look at the practice of curation as the one that enables exactly this crossover between various disciplines. In a series of lectures we will look at the origin of the art curator by subjects like the collector, Aby Warburg, Duchamp and his wheel, the artist as curator and the rise of the star curator." - http://moodle.plymouthart.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=1624

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Recommended texts:

"The series Documents of Contemporary Art, Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press, overview on: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/browse/browse.asp?btype=6&serid=159

Art magazines:

Art Monthly

Art Review

Cabinet

Frieze 

Websites:

www.e-flux.com"

- http://moodle.plymouthart.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2988

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Core reading/resources: (strike through,once read)

"Barker, E. (1999)  Contemporary Cultures of Display (Art & Its Histories) New Haven: Yale University Press

Bishop, C. (2006) Participation (Documents of Contemporary Art) London: Whitechapel Art Gallery

Bourriaud, N. (2002) Relational aesthetics Dijon: Les Presses du réel, 2002

Corsane, G. (2004) Heritage, Museums and Galleries: An Introductory Reader. London: Routledge.

O’Doherty, B. (2000) Inside the White Cube: the ideology of the gallery space. London: University of California Press.

Doherty, C (2004) Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation London: Black Dog Publishing Ltd

Kester, G (2004) Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art Berkeley: University of California Press

Kwon, M (2004) One Place After Another: Site-specific Art and Locational Identity Cambridge: MIT Press

Schubert, K. (2000) The Curator’s Egg: the evolution of the museum concept from the French Revolution to the present. London: One Off Press.

Townsend, M. (2003) Beyond the Box: Diverging Curatorial Practices UK: Banff Centre Press"

-http://moodle.plymouthart.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2988

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Summer term: Thursday 13th June 2013, 4 pm*

"Task 2: Curatorial practices folder/blog:

-hand-in of an edited version with a minimum expectation of 2,000 and maximum 8,000 words). Develop and maintain an illustrated research journal, in the form of a research journal or blog throughout the year and present an edited version of this for your hand-in. The journal is used throughout the year during taught sessions, self-study and in tutorials as part of your ongoing formative assessment. This folder should also include the proposal for an exhibition. (Summative assessment task)

You must reference all sources used and include a full bibliography using the Harvard style. 

*Please note: Any work not receipted at this point is late and may result in a 0% being recorded against this module at the Awards Assessment Board. Please see your program handbook regarding submission regulations."

-http://moodle.plymouthart.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2988

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Spring Term:

"Task 1: Group research presentation (formative assessment task) - Monday 11 February

During this assessment you will present your research so far based on the lectures series in the autumn and early spring term. For this you will choose a specific subject from strand 1 or 2. You will present your research to your peers and tutors in an illustrated group seminar/presentation.The aim of these micro research presentations is that they are efficient in the use of time and that they evidence critical thinking (5-10 minutes per person max). Your presentation should make clear your reasons for selecting the particular subject. Your tutors will be looking for evidence of teamwork, research skills and planning. This task is peer/tutor ‘assessed’."

-http://moodle.plymouthart.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2988

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Assessment tasks:

"Task 1 – Group presentation (formative – wk 29 before reading week term 2)

Task 2 – Record of curatorial practice folder/blog (summative assessment – wk 46, term 3)

You should complete all tasks, participate fully in all activities, including lectures, seminars, group and individual tutorials, and submit ALL elements required for the summative assessment on the dates indicated and have submitted all elements required for assessment by Monday 10th June 2013, 4 pm the module deadline. 

Record of contextual practice:

You are required to keep a research journal or Blog, which documents your learning journey, and should include your lecture/seminar notes and critical reflections, and importantly ALL sources of information and references. Your journal is used throughout the academic year to support ongoing dialogue as part of your formative assessment but it is also a record of your work towards this module and effectively shows ‘your workings’. Your tutors may request sight of your journals etc., at tutorials and during formative and summative assessment, or during visits from the External Examiner."

-http://moodle.plymouthart.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2988

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Brief: - Curator – curare – take care

"You will attend various sessions that will introduce you to the curatorial and creative strand in the course, which will prepare you for the pathway at the end of year 2.

This level five module explores curatorial practice in both historical and contemporary contexts. You will look at a range of curatorial practices, including collecting, archiving, exhibiting and emerging modes. In order to develop your knowledge of the critical thinking around these subjects, this module also questions the social and ethical implications of the roles of curator or artist/curator and encourages you to become critically astute practitioners.  It will be delivered in a series of lectures and visits of exhibitions.

The module is divided in four different but interconnected strands:

1. Historical – term 1

2. Seeing – term 1

3. The critical – term 2

4. The actual – term 2 and 3"

-http://moodle.plymouthart.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2988

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Assignment aims/Introduction

"This level five module enables you to explore contemporary curatorial roles and contexts through visits to and from a range of art-world professionals, and attendance at lectures and seminars on the practicalities of exhibition making. The module encourages you to develop a curatorial position through practice and testing out ideas. The module also requires you to demonstrate critical and reflective thinking, planning, problem-solving and task management. Taking up a position within discourse on the basis of relevant knowledge and being prepared to defend that position while acknowledging the potential need to change that position." 

-http://moodle.plymouthart.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2988

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Module Aims:

"To develop a deeper understanding of the professional contexts of curatorial practice

To develop a deeper understanding of the relationships between theory, practice and dissemination

To develop a position within discourse and be able to defend it in an objective manner

To encourage creative and critical approaches to curation in a range of settings

To develop advanced problem-solving and task management strategies in relation to curatorial practice"

-http://moodle.plymouthart.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2988

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Learning Outcomes:

"LO1: Begin to evaluate contemporary curatorial practices including their own.

LO2: Evidence an understanding of the breadth of practices that contemporary curation incorporates.

LO3: Demonstrate critical approaches to working in a curatorial context.

LO4: Articulate the changing nature of the relationships between art, artist and audience."

-http://moodle.plymouthart.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2988