Last Gasp Attempts: Don't Believe the Hype, Don't Drink the Kool-Aide

Curatorial work has increasingly transcended the confines of traditional cultural institutions, intervening in diverse urban contexts, from prominent public squares to marginal and disused sites. This article positions ‘the curatorial’ as a form of critical spatial agency, interrogating how curatorial thinking and practice mediate public interests, contest institutional power, and reimagine civic life. Drawing on foundational and contemporary scholarship—including Lefebvre’s production of space, Rendell’s site-writing, Awan, Schneider, and Till’s spatial agency, Miessen’s antagonistic participation, and Krasny’s ethics of care—this paper synthesises critical theory with a systematic literature review from the past decade. It identifies four recurring modalities of curatorial practice in urban settings: (1) temporary activations that enable alternative uses of public space; (2) collaborative platforms fostering situated co-production; (3) narrative interventions engaging with collective memory and identity; and (4) critical curating which challenges institutional power and the status quo. The analysis demonstrates that curatorial practices have tangible spatial, socio-political and economic effects, shaping urban imaginaries, public discourse, and the material conditions of city life. By critically examining the overlap between curatorial practice and spatial agency, this paper argues that curatorial interventions are not merely symbolic or aesthetic, but embedded within the complex dynamics of urban governance, cultural economies, and struggles over space. This paper's central aim is to map the spectrums of curatorial action that emerge when practice engages with these complex urban dynamics. These actions can range from gestures focused on artistic practice or engaging a specialised audience, to more locally-situated interventions whose explicit intent is to address structural urban challenges, such as spatial justice, contested memory, or public access to power. It calls for a more rigorous and situated understanding of curatorial processes in the urban realm, attentive to local contexts, sustainability, and power asymmetries, in order to better address the entanglements of cultural production and urban transformation.

What is the future of curatorial practice? How can the relationships between Indigenous people in the Pacific, collections in Euro-American institutions, and curatorial knowledge in museums globally be (re)conceptualised in reciprocal and symmetrical ways? Is there an ideal model, a ‘curatopia,’ whether in the form of a utopia or dystopia, which can enable the reinvention of ethnographic museums and address their difficult colonial legacies? This volume addresses these questions by considering the current state of the play in curatorial practice, reviewing the different models and approaches operating in different museums, galleries and cultural organisations around the world, and debating the emerging concerns, challenges, and opportunities. The subject areas range over native and tribal cultures, anthropology, art, history, migration and settler culture, among others. Topics covered include: contemporary curatorial theory, new museum trends, models and paradigms, the state of research and scholarship, the impact of new media, and current issues such as curatorial leadership, collecting and collection access and use, exhibition development, and community engagement. The volume is international in scope and covers three broad regions—Europe, North America and the Pacific. The contributors are leading and emerging scholars and practitioners in their respective fields, all of whom have worked in and with universities and museums, and are therefore perfectly placed to reshape the dialogue between academia and the professional museum world.

This article examines and contrast the fashion collections at three of Montreal's cultural institutions, the Musée McCord, an urban and historical museum that houses over 18,000 pieces of costume and textile artifacts; the Musée du Costume et du Textile du Québec, which owns and exhibits a collection of 8,000 items worn, collected, and donated by Quebecers and contemporary fashion by Montreal-based designers; and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, whose director Nathalie Bondil has made locally produced international fashion exhibitions one of the key points of its curatorial practice since 2008.Our goal is to show that even though Montreal is not considered a global fashion center like Paris, London, or New York, its fashion history and practices are inevitably tied to its urbanity, rapid modernization, its turbulent history, its vibrant culture, and its unique status as the largest French-speaking and bilingual city in North America. As such, the city fits in well with the other Urban Chic studies, that focus on Berlin and Vienna.The fashion collections at these institutions reveal insights into the city's cultural history and cosmopolitan trendiness as well. These collections reflect and support Montreal's identity as a cultural center—as the city of jazz, disco, Cirque du Soleil, festivals, etc. The collections reflect the city's social and political history, for example the labor conditions of the manufacturing industries. Finally, these collections tell us what role fashion plays in the everyday lives of people who live and work in this city, and what role fashion dialogues play in the urban imaginary of Montreal.This article is based on a chapter from our forthcoming book, Montréal Chic: A Locational History of Montreal Fashion (Intellect). Following the models of Berliner Chic: A Locational History of Berlin Fashion and Wiener Chic: A Locational History of Vienna Fashion, Montréal Chic approaches fashion as a lens through which urban culture, institutions, scenes, and subcultures can be analyzed and connected.

This This article delves into the intriguing world of curatorial practices within the realm of art history. Curators, often regarded as the unsung heroes of the art world, play a crucial role in shaping the way we perceive and understand art through their meticulous selection, arrangement, and presentation of artworks. The article explores how curatorial decisions influence the narratives, meanings, and dialogues that artworks generate within the contexts of museums, galleries, and exhibitions. By analyzing historical and contemporary examples, the article highlights the dynamic interplay between curators, artists, audiences, and cultural institutions, shedding light on how curatorial choices can transcend time and geographical boundaries, fostering a deeper appreciation of art across generations.

Tate Modern: Pushing the limits of regeneration

Cultural institutions increasingly see the need to play an important role in the lifelong learning of citizens. Recent trends, particularly in science museums, have been toward supporting visitors to actively learn rather than passively receive information. We propose how narrative can be used within the design of new technologies to support lifelong learning in a cultural setting. Narratives can be used to construct explanations and make sense of the world. Narrative is also central to collaboration and the building of community identity. Heritage collections, whether held privately or curated by a cultural institution convey narratives. Our conceptualisation of narrative, learning theory and curatorial practice indicates that new technology in the cultural domain should: support active interpretation; help reveal the context and process underpinning cultural artefacts; support learning and creativity; and address the challenge to provide an experience that is both entertaining and educational.

Although museum and galleries are under increasing pressure to refect and explore culture diversity in their collections and public programming, this has largely been interpreted in terms of ethnicity. Issues of sexual orientation are largely ignored by these cultural institutions. This article explores both some of constraints facing museums and the strategies, ethical considerations and curatorial practices they might explore and adopt to refect and document our rich LGBT histories and heritage in their collections, and to highlight these histories in mainstream and special exhibitions and public programming such as events, talks and conferences hosted by museums. This work should be guided by close partnerships with the LGBT communities such as advisory groups. These changes will not be achieved overnight, but if museums have the leadership of their institutional management and the support of their colleagues, a change agenda can be implemented progressively.

The latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed the establishment of prehistoric archaeology as a scientific discipline in Italy, as well as the founding of the Italian nation state. Evolutionism, positivism, and a sense of national identity informed prehistoric research and the activities of individuals, such as Strobel, Pigorini, and Chierici, who are regarded today as the founding fathers of Italian prehistory. It is in this dynamic cultural and political climate that the civic museums of Reggio Emilia, Modena, and Bologna were created, both as a response to intense local archaeological activity and in reaction to the centralizing structure of the newly formed kingdom of Italy. These civic museums were among the first museums of prehistory in Italy and the products of the cultural and political climate of late nineteenth-century Europe. This article explores the circumstances surrounding the foundation of these museums and considers how the work of the first prehistorians and the museums' own histories, as civic and cultural institutions, continues to affect their role and management in the present.

This study aims to provide a window into current developments in curatorial practice and museum studies regarding a multicultural topic within China. Our case concerns a new kind of collection of musical instruments and its unique context in a leading archaeological and cultural heritage institution. It consists of 203 traditional musical instruments, primarily of more recent origin, from all around the world with a primary focus on Eurasia. It is the only collection of this scope and theme in China. It was assembled over decades by the renowned Chinese scholar Ziye Fan and curated by the authors at the Yungang Academy in Datong, China, in 2024. The Yungang Academy is situated at the Yungang Grottoes, a 5th-century Buddhist UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is also known for its music-related, multicultural Silk Road iconography. The study begins by analyzing this context, followed by an introduction to the collection. It then proceeds with a critical reflection on the curation process regarding preservation, documentation, classification, organological analysis, and the creation of a new Chinese musical instrument nomenclature. Within the Chinese museum landscape, this project can be characterized as a pioneering undertaking. The ethical provenance and unique placement context of the collection, which resonates with the collection’s topic, invite new research perspectives. The study investigates whether the collection can serve as a pioneering postcolonial model for curating world heritage in a Chinese context. We discuss the collection’s acquisition history and the symbolic value of its placement. As a result, the collection is established as an example of a novel postcolonial approach in China, bearing great symbolic significance for equal cultural exchanges and dialogue.

The documentation of archival workflows plays an important role in digital curation practice. Capturing the various steps, tools, people, and software involved at different stages, workflow documentation visually represents complex activities, and at times, invisible labor. In this article, we reflect on findings from the OSSArcFlow project, a three-year, grant-funded initiative to investigate and document workflow activities of 12 cultural heritage institutions using three open-source software systems. Building on previously published research on documentation of current digital curation practices, this article reflects on the challenges the project team encountered in modeling archivists’ aspirations for their workflows. While current practices could be accurately represented in linear process models, archivists’ aspirations for how they might advance digital curation practices extended beyond adding or changing discrete workflow steps and often involved sociotechnical factors that could not be easily mapped. This article presents a taxonomy of archivists’ aspirations for their born-digital archives, grouping these goals together around major themes that emerged throughout the research. Our findings show that workflow documentation is an essential artifact in helping archivists to understand gaps and challenges in their current workflows and to imagine the further development of digital curation tools, systems, and practices. Project participants especially benefited from engaging in this reflection on workflow documentation as part of a community of practitioners, with the opportunity to compare across institutional contexts.

Artificial intelligence has recently captured the attention of museums and galleries, being increasingly integrated across their activities, including curating. As many artists adopt AI, particularly machine learning, as both a creative tool and subject matter, institutions have had to adapt their curatorial practices to support machine learning projects and present AI-based work to their audiences. But how is AI art reshaping the art ecosystem? Which organisations are leading their curation? And to what extent is it driving organisational change? This article explores these questions through findings from the Curatorial Strand of the AHRC-funded project Creative AI: Machine Learning as a Medium in Artistic and Curatorial Practice (2020–2022), focusing on the Euro-American context. Drawing on 'think aloud' workshops and semi-structured interviews with curators working with AI art/ists, we examine how they navigate the challenges and opportunities posed by this emerging field. We show that the AI art ‘movement’ is transforming the art ecosystem, placing new demands on curatorial processes and prompting museums and galleries to embrace organisational change. These institutions are increasingly working in experimental, transdisciplinary and collaborative ways — reshaping not only how art is curated, but how cultural organisations operate.

This paper delves into the project SILVER RIGHTS (2020-2022), initiated by Italian artist Elena Mazzi in dialogue with Mapuche spiritual leader and silversmith Mauro Millán and Argentinian artist Eduardo Molinari, and supported by ar/ge kunst. As cultural operators, a visual artist and a curator, we felt the importance of sharing this project we have been working on for several years, unpacking complexities and difficulties we encountered along the way. SILVER RIGHTS unfolds around the role that silver jewelry plays in the social, spiritual and political life of The Mapuche, the Indigenous people inhabiting lands across Chile and Argentina. Accordingly, the central nucleus of the project consists of a series of six silver jewellery pieces crafted by Mauro Millán and designed in dialogue with Elena Mazzi following workshops on symbologies and current struggles, held with numerous members of the Mapuche community. Furthermore, the project confronts the Museum Leleque in Patagonia, established by Italian company Benetton; a museum that dismisses the Mapuche people as an extinct culture ‘museumizing’ their memory and material culture. The jewels, alongside a complex installation display with documentary and research materials, have been exhibited at ar/ge kunst, Italy, and other international venues. Drawing on anthropologist Viveiros de Castro’s (2007) writings, the paper reads the dialogue between Mauro Millán and Elena Mazzi, as practice towards inventing of culture and inter-ethnic politics. More generally, through the work of Azoulay (2019), Acosta (2013) and Esposito Yussif (2019) the paper addresses how contemporary cultural institutions preserve separative and neo-extractivist practices. Ultimately, it aims to propose ways in which exhibition-making and display politics can activate mediation, recomposition, and healing as countermeasures against the perpetuation of colonial narratives.

This paper examines how curatorial practice can function as a form of institutional branding, using the exhibition Cipta! Kapita Selekta Cikini Raya 73 as a case study. Situated within the revitalized Taman Ismail Marzuki arts complex, the exhibition foregrounded archival materials, canonical artworks, and diverse artistic voices to narrate the institution’s historical and cultural significance. Drawing from practice-based research and curatorial reflection, this study analyzes curatorial choices including thematic grouping, exhibition texts, and spatial design through a branding framework that identifies symbolic codes such as memory, representation, heritage, and participation. The findings demonstrate that curatorial strategies extend beyond aesthetic presentation to construct institutional narratives, reinforce symbolic authority, and shape public perception. By mapping curatorial strategies to branding codes, this paper argues that exhibitions can operate as a soft branding mechanism, positioning cultural institutions as key agents in defining cultural identity and meaning.

Noting the conceptual malleability and the historically opposed political uses of victimhood, this article analyses the strategies deployed to navigate the “victimhood paradox” in two cases of memory activism in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It examines an annual grassroots commemoration in Prijedor for local children killed in the 1992–1995 war and the curatorial practice and educational work of the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo as a socially active cultural institution. It argues that the activists' focus on the symbol of the child as an “ideal” victim, combined with their adoption of different but complementary forms of public action across ethnic and generational boundaries, has shaped an inclusive counter-memory of the war and underpinned resistance against dominant ethnonationalist narratives in the country.

The text aims to explore the political, cultural and artistic implications of LGBTQ+ art and curatorial practices in Central Eastern Europe in the 21st century. Currently, queer exhibitions, are on the rise in post-communist Europe, especially those held in contemporary art centres and museums. They cast light on new queer art and activism and the volatile sexual politics in the region because of the significant increase in the number of artists working with LGBTQ themes and the topical political background of this movement and its impact on cultural debates. Curators are developing innovative perspectives on sexual, social and artistic dimensions of queer exhibitions in this geographic context still seriously affected by homophobic state policy. The objective is to feature three art shows of major queer artists which have been organised in Hungary, Poland and Estonia in the last decade. The exhibitions are: The Survivor’s Shade: The Life and Work of El Kazovsky at the Museum of Fine Art- Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest in 2015/16; Daniel Rycharski: Fears at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw in 2019 and Jaanus Samma. Not Suitable for Work. A Chairman’s Tale, Museum of Occupations and Freedom, Tallinn in 2016. The three artists and their exhibitions have been selected because they were organised by major cultural institutions in the capitals, they have achieved a significant social impact and huge audience and the artists have played an important role in the contemporary art scene in each country. Their work is a current manifestation of the queer artistic and intellectual culture that has been developing slowly in the region since the 1980s and has come to play an increasingly important role in recent years. The exhibitions and art of the three artists are a starting point for a broader outline of the themes and important figures in recent queer art in Central Eastern Europe (CEE). Moreover, in each case, they appear in a complex and difficult political context related to the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. Hence, I would like to propose a thesis about the dissident power and status of queer art and curating in CEE.