Critical Management in Curating – Handout (original) (raw)
Related papers
2022
On the occasion of the 20-year anniversary of the /ecm Master Program in Exhibition Theory and Practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna Thursday, May 5, 2022, 10am–9pm The museum is dead. Long live the museum. This, or something similar, could be the brief summary of numerous conferences, debates, and publications in the field of curating and museum studies over the past 20 years. The critique of the museum has been widely discussed. We have heard a lot about crisis and departure, we have heard about “tired museums” and the “end of the museum,” only to debate in that same breath untapped possibilities for thinking about the museum in new and different ways – as a space of assembly and as a contact zone, as a place of criticism, polyphony, and negotiation. Something seems to be on the move, and so it is not surprising that talk of the “museum of the future” is booming. Claims of diversification, digitalization, and democratization have become ubiquitous, while at the same time institutions are more than ever focused on privatization, economization, competition, and precarization. How can we as critical curators and museologists think and act within these contradictions? And how can critical theory become critical practice?
Drucksache Spring 03, 2003
Within the framework of their historical development, the form and practice of an institution are transparent and understandable. In their continuation beyond this traditional context, however, their significance has to be conveyed anew. This means that forms and practices can be confronted with new models, and the idea that steers the institution's activities can be tested by experiments. The goal of Totally Motivated – A Socio-Cultural Manoeuvre was an approach to the concept of action embodied in the practice of the culture shops.In this the project followed the assumption that existing patterns of work and communication in the socio-cultural area and the alternative culture of city neighbourhoods can often be constructively confronted with the same problems and questions, which are posed in the fine arts – for example, questions about the concept of the public. Kunstverein München, 2003.
Museums: the collapse of the “Welfare-State” and the emergence of strategic philanthropy
The way museums present themselves to society nowadays does not match the definitions which have been ascribed to them. The majority of museums has adopted, even if automatically, a business-like behavior, in order to cope with the State’s economic and financial constraints. This has led them to create a new acting paradigm. With the collapse of the Welfare-State, also reflected in the lack of support to culture, those in charge of the cultural heritage were forced to innovate and to adapt themselves to different management models. A new concept of museum was created. We are now witnessing a new age in museology. As a result of these transformations, museums have become closer to local communities and more attentive to stakeholders, the interested parties. From this connection, emerged natural partnership and collaboration bonds, which can be referred to as strategic philanthropy or causes’ marketing. With this study we aim at showing how financial crisis is related to “cultural innovation”
Curating as Governmental Practices Post-Exhibitionary Practices under Translocal Conditions in Governmental Constellations, 2024
The PhD study, completed in 2024, focuses on the understanding of art as governmental practices. It researches global and postcolonial – translocal & transcultural – contexts of contemporary artistic and curatorial practices, theoretically and through an in-depth analysis of two case studies: Philadelphia Assembled demonstrates the complicated power dynamics within collaborative artistic practices, while documenta fifteen highlights the many complex challenges that the commons approach, and thus more horizontal forms of knowledge production, bring to the art field. Reassessing the curatorial discourse of the “New Museology” since the 1990s (Bennett et al.) and incorporating feminist-influenced critiques of representation (Spivak, Haraway) and the concept of governmentality (Foucault), this dissertation introduces the concept of the “post-exhibitionary complex.” Here, exhibitions become active social spaces and contact zones that promote participatory aesthetic formations that stay with (self)critical theory practices. This approach promotes nuanced, networked forms of knowledge production and dissemination grounded in feminist materialism (“Situated Knowledges”). An analytical toolkit is introduced as a non-comprehensive manual to evaluate exhibitionary projects and their institutional frameworks, focusing on the relationships between art, institutions, and audiences in their governmental and economic contexts. Overall, the study aims to offer an in-depth analysis of the changing landscape of art and curatorial practices in response to global political and economic shifts, highlighting the importance of transversal and post-exhibitionary approaches. Ronald Kolb (Stuttgart/Zurich) works as a researcher, designer and curator and is Co-Head of the Postgraduate Program in Curating at the Zurich University of the Arts as well as editor tof the web journal On-Curating.org.
Museum and Society, 2020
This paper presents research into exhibition-production practices at five national museums of four Baltic Sea region countries. The focus is the changes wrought by the expansion of exhibition teams, and how researchers in the curatorial role perceive their position, especially in relation to designers and project leaders. The analysis of semi-structured interviews with museum professionals showed exhibition production at museums comprise two models: A) curator-driven, and B) manager-driven. In Model A, the curator’s knowledge of museum collections is dominant. The curator creates the concept, and subsequently leads the exhibition project. The curator is the decision maker. In Model B, the field of communication is dominant. Managers are in charge of the design concept and fulfilling the exhibition. Managers are the decision makers. Curators feel their credibility as experts suffers and their competencies are underexploited, as they no longer have either authorship or leadership resp...