Thinking Contemporary Curating (October 6 2012) Thinking Contemporary Curating (October 6 2012)

Terence Edwin Smith the 68 year old Australian art historian, art critic and artist renowned for his ability “to write criticism at once alert to the forces that contextualize art and sensitive to the elements and qualities that inhere to the works of art themselves”, has been interviewed by Orit Gat. In the interview Smith states “To give something back to curators. We all owe them a huge debt. When you’re an art historian, you tend to search museum installations and exhibitions for fresh art historical facts, for something that will help you interpret more deeply, or at least differently, a school of art or the work of an artist over a whole career. If you’re an art critic, you try to write about your response to the works in the exhibition, one by one or one compared to others, with a focus on the artist or a kind of art. But art critics, art historians, the general public, and even artists don’t pay sufficient attention to the curatorial thought behind exhibitions. …[curators] have become more active, more public thinkers…and call themselves “exhibition makers.” They overtly engage viewers with their thinking about art, and particularly about how art relates to the world—which is something that art itself has done much more since the 1960s and 1970s. Also, curators have become more like artists in the ways they present an exhibition–it then becomes, in a sense, an artwork. At the same time, certain artists are making works of art that are more like exhibitions, and more and more are taking control of exhibiting their own art…”

 

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