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Recent Discussions |
Curators and their audienceSeptember 2014Pauline Hadaway, Sarah Perks, and Wendy Earle helped unpick the changing role of curators and how we could save them from becoming museum pieces
While many criticize the new museum’s assimilation of quasi commercial, marketing, tourism and branding strategies, often in competition with rival tourist entertainments, only a brave few defend the museum's role as custodian of centuries of human culture, and the role and responsibility of curators for sharing their knowledge with the wider community. Besides some lingering nostalgia for the patrician style of ‘retro’ art historians like Kenneth Clarke, faith in people’s desire for knowledge, understanding and enlightenment through art has become literally ‘so last century’. When a major, much loved art institution like Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum subjects its public to the ‘therapeutic interventions’ of de Botton and Armstrong, shouldn't we be campaigning for the belief in the transcendent quality of art rather than this ubiquitous banality of relevance?
In the face of a relentless and instrumentalist culture of accountability, employability, social impact and relevance, the role of the curator as a public intellectual engaging audiences with artists continues to be diminished. This retreat of the curator throws questions of judgment onto visitors who often feel unequipped for the task. Denied access to the curator's knowledge which could deepen our understanding and enjoyment of the art on show, are our experiences as visitors being diminished? Most of us respect, appreciate and want to share in the curators’ authoritative knowledge which is no more elitist than being an authority on engineering or medicine, so why have so many museums and galleries – with some honorable exceptions - become so defensive about their role? How can we reconnect and rebuild trust between curators and audiences?
Some background readings and viewingsThe Art of With, by Charles Leadbeater, Cornerhouse March 2009 If the Museum is the Gateway, who is the Gatekeeper? by Bernadette Lynch, extract from Inclusion under Pressure, Winter 2011 A perverted view of art, Tiffany Jenkins, spiked 10 April 2013 Let's stop being defensive about the value of arts degrees, by Wendy Earle, The Guardian 29 May 2014 David on whether London is overrated as a place for artists, by Dave Bowden, IdeasTap 2 April 2014 Art Is Therapy review – de Botton as doorstepping self-help evangelist, by Adrian Searle, The Guardian 25 April 2014 Audience ejects crowd-surfer from classical concert, by Miranda Prynne, The Telegraph 20 June 2014 Pubic hair – now officially offensive, Ivor Jones, spiked 15 July 2014 Exhibit B: a guilty pleasure, by Tiffany Jenkins, spiked 2 September 2014
Watch video of the speaker and audience comments below. Thanks to Dan Clayton the documentary filmmaker from Leeds for this.Discussion Partners
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