Curatorial Concept Research Articles

Innovative Presentation of Song Dynasty Painting Art in Contemporary Curatorial Exhibitions

Song Dynasty paintings have occupied an important position in the history of Chinese and even world art with their unique artistic language, profound cultural connotation, and excellent skills. With the growing maturity and diversification of contemporary curatorial concepts and the development of culture + technology, the way of displaying Song Dynasty paintings is also changing. This study focuses on how Song Dynasty paintings are innovatively presented in contemporary curatorial practice, aiming to explore the reasons behind this innovation, the content of the practice, and the far-reaching impact of this exploration on the inheritance and development of Song Dynasty paintings, as well as on their dissemination, through literature analysis, case studies, and field visits. It is found that contemporary curation, through the use of digital technology, interactive experience, and other innovative means, has successfully presented the art of Song Dynasty paintings to the audience in a more vivid and intuitive way, which greatly enhances the audience's viewing experience and depth of understanding. This exploration not only enriches the form and connotation of art display, but also provides new ideas and paths for the inheritance and development of traditional culture, which is of great significance to the promotion of the international dissemination and protection of Song Dynasty painting art.

Unorchestrated Symphony: documenta fifteen as a Site of Resistance

documenta fifteen (d15) was held in Kassel, Germany from June to September 2022, and sparked heated media attention and critical discussions before, during, and after the exhibition. With the indigenous curatorial concept of lumbung, the artistic directors, ruangrupa, a Jakarta-based artist collective, brought a new corpus of artists, artist collectives, artistic projects, and cosmologies largely from the global south to d15. Notwithstanding its decentralised curatorial method and rhizomatic exhibition structure, many critiques of d15 continue to take a top-down approach, focusing on its overarching structure, curatorial discourse, the curators’ trajectory, collective methodology, and the context of international mega-exhibitions. With a bottom-up approach and a lumbung community perspective, this essay examines some of the lumbung practices, including but not limited to social gatherings with feasts and festivals, struggles for land and natural resources, and women and queer groups’ practices. The essay argues that, in spite of challenges and limitations, the lumbung community have enabled d15 to become a site of resistance to colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy, a proposition that aligns with the initial vision for d15.

Centrum Nauki: to będzie laboratorium dla wszystkich

In this paper, the author takes the concept of space and exhibitions in a science centre as an “accessible laboratory”. By analysing the curatorial concept of the largest institution of this kind in Poland — Warsaw’s Copernicus Science Centre — she reconstructs the model of this new type of exhibition institution. The author interprets this model as an effort to break the pattern of symbolic violence, which — deliberately or not — is reproduced in exhibition spaces and educational institutions. The crisis of public confidence in science constitutes the context of the analyses presented here.

Picasso without Guernica: Mexico, 1944

The analysis of a temporary exhibition allows us to study how a particular project is inflected by cultural ideas (in this case also aesthetic ideas) and, above all, by cultural policies, i.e. museum practices and the socio-cultural and diplomatic contexts that explain the realization and morphology of a curatorial concept. In order to bring about an individual exhibition of exclusive works by Pablo Picasso in Mexico in 1944 a Society of Modern Art was founded, a private organization that copied the U.S. model of cultural mediation. This foundation was a product of bilateral financing by two powerful institutions, the Galería de Arte Mexicano owned by Inés Amor, and the MoMA, directed by Alfred H. Barr. Because of the political situation during the Second World War, the alliances between Mexico and the U.S. played a significant role. Based on a review of archival documentation and press articles of this period I attempt a reconstruction of the historical process of managing this temporary exhibition, understood as a spatial construction of political power in the collective imagination. This Mexican exhibition of works by an outstanding global artist has not been studied in terms of the messages and intentions conveyed by an ephemeral collection of objects that was deprived of its political anti-fascist dimension due to the exclusion of Guernica, which reduced it to an exhibition of avant-garde art. Guernica was not shown in Mexico for reasons that include U.S. anti-communism, Barr's desire to attract reflection towards the plastic values of Picasso's work and neutralize its potential for political resistance, and external conditions driven by internal struggles among Spanish Republicans.

SupaVenezia From SupaStore: Between Art, Commerce, and Spatial Dynamics

This exhibition review reflects on the spatial and curatorial concepts, interior spatial qualities, and precedent design processes of SupaVenezia, which was held at the A plus A Gallery in Venice from 31 August to 25 September 2022. It examines the design of the display system at the exhibition while addressing issues pertaining to domestic, participatory, and white-cube settings. The review explores the intersection of art, commerce, spatial, and displays design dynamics in relation to the manifestation of the SupaStore’s initial curatorial philosophy. Additionally, it reflects on the variety of spatial experiences provided and the manner in which a small-scale local gallery behaves and survives in the shadows of a monumental event—the 59th International Art Exhibition of Biennale Arte 2022, curated by Cecilia Alemani and produced by La Biennale di Venezia 2022—while drawing comparative reflections with similar scenarios such as Berlin Biennale and Documenta in Kassel.

The Polyphony of Migrant Archives: The Curating and Art-making of “Our Journeys, Our Stories” (2022)

The article takes the exhibition “Our Journeys, Our Stories” as an example to investigate to which extent the curatorial and art practices can produce a synergy in reconfiguring migrant archives. Focusing on the exhibition’s critical engagement with official and counter archives, I analyze how it unveils the making of a racialized Chinese migrant history and retraces migrant resistance. On this basis, I turn to two commissioned artworks by Guan Wei (b. 1957) and Lindy Lee (b. 1954) to examine their dialogic relationship with the curatorial narrative. While the artworks are based on the same document on display, the former deconstructs the racializing mechanism embedded in the White Australian archiving system and the latter revitalizes migrant resilience. I claim that Guan adds institutional critique to the exhibition and Lee uses family history to enrich the curatorial concept of micro-history. The artists and curators stimulate the polyphony of migrant archives, which challenges the monolithic historiography of Chinese migration and enables a self-reflexive paradigm in curating archives and archive art.

Study the Cognition and Logic of Curation from 'Design-Ah' Exhibition.

In order to spread curation better, it is an important prerequisite to deeply study the cognition and logic of curation. At present, in the related research of curation, there is still a lack of combing the relationship between artistry and internal structure. Therefore, this paper systematically discusses the relationship by studying the exhibition 'Design-Ah'. The exhibition 'Design-Ah' presents the occurrence and process of design through three aspects: observation, thinking and creation, and through the display mode of space and images, so that the interest of design penetrates into people's five senses and conveys the necessary observation and thinking methods of design. Starting from the cognition of curation, this paper expounds the elements of curatorial concept and its application in exhibitions, and takes 'Design-Ah' exhibition as an example to construct the logic of artistic quality and internal structure of curation.

Curating Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries

The curators of Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries reflect on their experiences of creating these significant new displays at the Science Museum in London. After summarising the historical medical displays at this museum, they outline the curatorial concepts behind their respective new galleries to explore the display strategies and processes behind the development of the new exhibits and highlight the significance of some of the objects that visitors can encounter today.

The 21st-century Museum - in Search of a Space for the Integration of Image and Word

Contemporary museums are institutions in which the word "integration" is embodied in a multitude of ways, and this concept is realised through various exhibitions and educational initiatives. The multitude of tools, solutions and curatorial concepts related to the presentation of both ancient and contemporary art can thus lead to the question: Is today's museum a space which allows the viewer to have comprehensive, independent and unconstrained contact with a work of art, or rather a place which distracts and disintegrates the viewer's experience and aesthetic experience? This multiple-aspect problem has been discussed mainly within the context of linguistic messages accompanying objects and exhibitions on display in a museum. By analysing the results of a survey conducted among visitors to the Museum of the City of Łódź, various strategies of constructing texts on display at the museum's exhibitions were described in detail, along with an assessment of their suitability with regard to the preferences and needs of contemporary recipients.

Tutuku: Telling the stories of the Māori Showband world through digital innovation

In this article I will discuss the development and creation of the Tutuku digital archive. Tutuku is the name of the digital archive I have created as my nominated creative component for my PhD. Tutuku is coupled with my thesis “He Kohinga Kōrero: A selected group of Māori musicians and performers’ experiences of the 1960s through the Māori Showband movement”.
 Tutuku contains people’s narratives and experiences, which in turn each have their own mauri or life principle (objectspace, 2020). The narratives could also be described as mana taonga. Mana taonga is a specific Māori curatorial concept that taonga have their own status and power which must be managed and cared for in a culturally appropriate way (Mccarthy, Dorfman, Hakiwai, and Āwhina, 2013, 7). The concept of mana taonga creates the space for indigenous voices to be self-determining in history retelling.
 Tutuku creates pathways for expanding knowledge on many other subjects. Tutuku is available as an IOS App and web application located at Www.tutuku.co.nz. The second version will be available exclusively for Android devices in the Future. Tutuku will continue on into the future, to be a safe digital space for the sharing of indigenous experiences, culture and histories.

Conceptualizing Made in China for a Museum Exhibition

The Wereldmuseum Rotterdam is planning to hold an exhibition on China in 2023 in which fashion and design are one of the exhibiting categories. In preparation for the event, the museum is proposing to use the cliché Made in China as a provocative title for the exhibition. A workshop with the museum curators was held in 2021 to question the materiality central to the stereotypes associated with the proposed phrase to inform the curatorial direction of the forthcoming exhibition. As a workshop contributor invited to address the inquiry, I have, in this article, examined the phrase itself and China as a place, heritage and concept. The country-of-origin effect of the “made in” label was taken to analyze the phrase. While the negative connotations of Made in China in the exhibition title might have an impact on the perception of the exhibition, two interlocking components—transcultural dynamics and a site of friction—arising from the labeling system constitute a curatorial concept within which Chineseness embedded in the museum fashion and design artifacts are the offspring of the typified multifaceted “China” exchange, connection, and transformation.

Public Libraries as Agonistic Spaces

The paper deals with the possibilities of engaged interdisciplinary activity implemented at the crossroads of librarianship and contemporary art practices. By relying on the theoretical concepts on which critical librarianship is based on the one hand, and contemporary art on the other hand, a possibility is shown of their interference with the aim to introduce a critical perspective within librarianship through art and to establish a new methodology at the crossroads of the two disciplines. The aforementioned is demonstrated in the paper through the coexistence and activity of S. S. Kranjčević Library and Prozori Gallery (Zagreb City Libraries), the programmatic and curatorial concept of which deals with the questions of the manner in which the theoretical positions of contemporary art and their practical and discursive analysis can contribute to the visibility, importance, and cultural capital of the library, the library profession, and the encouragement of critical attitude within the framework of information and communication sciences, the branch of which being librarianship, with emphasis on the project Uncertain Interventions: LGBTIQ Users in Public Libraries as a case study. Finally, the paper introduces the concept of libraries as agonistic public spaces.

The World from The Art Biennale Perspectives and Through The Optics of The Venice Film Festival

The Ukrainian project of the Open Group «The Shadow of Dream (Mriya) cast upon Giardini della Biennale» is researchedin the fairway of Ralph Rugoff’s curatorial concept «May You Live in Interesting Times» of the 58th Venice Biennale 2019 and the themesdeveloped in the other projects, taking into account the projection of these issues on the Ukrainian and world contexts are analyzed. Thecontexts with which the project works in Ukraine and in the world are compared. The issues addressed within the Venice Biennale onglobal environmental challenges, extensive growth, war and peace, ongoing confrontation of democratic and totalitarian worlds, migration crisis are studied. The process of revealing by artistic means how political manipulation works is revealed with a critical commentaryon the reality marked by economic and social inequality that provokes indignation, and as a result — populism. The mechanism of workwith trauma on the territory of art is determined. The multi-vector projects and different types of connection with reality are identified demonstrating the productive artistic strategies.The themes and artistic features of the films presented at the 2019 Venice Film Festival and its winners are analyzed and compared.The features of the Ukrainian film-winner of the Venice Film Festival 2019 «Atlantis» by Valentyn Vasyanovych are described. The chronology of the development of Valentin Vasyanovich’s film achievements is tracked.The main trend topics characteristic of the Venice Forums of 2019 are identified, such as the threats of the Anthropocene and the ecological crisis, anti-globalism in its economic, social and national aspects, and the orientation on the human values in the post-truth era.The influence of intellectual practice in the formation of meanings for dialogue with society challenging for the art world is determined.The role and place of Ukrainian contemporary art and cinema on the international stage are revealed. The problems and peculiaritiesof the cultural policy of Ukraine and the necessity of its reforme in order to support the development of contemporary art are outlined.

THE WONDER FOOD MUSEUM STORY: CELEBRATING MALAYSIA’S FOOD CULTURE AND CULINARY HERITAGE

Although thematic museums centered around food culture and culinary heritage have beenaround for decades, the concept of food museum is still fairly new in Southeast Asia. Only in2015, the first food-oriented museum – “Wonder Food Museum” was established in Penang,Malaysia. Since its establishment, the museum has received positive feedback from bothlocal and international visitors. From 2017 to 2019, the museum has been selected as therecipient of the Certificate of Excellence by international well renowned Travel organization -TripAdvisor Inc. Meanwhile, the museum’s contribution to the state’s cultural and tourismdevelopment has also been recognized by the state authority. In 2017 and 2019, the museumwas awarded the ‘Top Museum Award (Unique Concept)’, and ‘Best Tourism(Museum)Award’ by the INPenang International Awards respectively. By and large, WonderFood Museum is currently one of the most outstanding museums in Malaysia and a wellknownattraction in Penang. In this paper, to response on the research scholarly interest inmuseum tourism in Southeast Asia, the researcher has made an attempt to document thedevelopment of Wonder Food Museum from 2015 to 2019. The museum’s curatorial concept,exhibits production, exhibition planning and its overall management will be discussed andanalyzed. As the aforementioned this paper will provide insights into an understanding of foodmuseum’s development in Malaysia.
 Keywords: Food museum, food culture, culinary heritage, Malaysia’s museum, museumtourism, interactive museum

Urban regeneration with the intervention of industrial transformation and curatorial ideas ‐ A Case Study of Dafen Village, Shenzhen

As a by-product of China's rapid urbanization, the number of "villages in cities” is also significantly increasing, stalling further urban development. China has many mature experiences in transforming villages in cities, but few cases are based on cultural industries. Dafen Village in Shenzhen, a young city committed to transforming itself into an international art district through culture-orientated urban regeneration, is an exception. The transformation of villages in cities usually involves the reconstruction of old cities, the re-planning of urban landscapes and their architectural functions, to whose designs curatorial concepts and practices are indispensable. This dissertation adopts empirical analyses to examine the feasibility problems that Dafen Village has encountered in its transformation and conducts a comparative study of similar cases in China and other countries to explore transferable experience and solutions. Discussions focus on the profound role of curatorial ideas on the artistic and cultural innovations and operations in the transformation. The study concludes with an optimistic forecast of Dafen Village's new urban form after its urban regeneration.

From social art practice to environmental aesthetic awakening and civil engagement: The case study of Cijin Kitchen

This article focuses on the nature of socially engaged art as environmental aesthetics in a particular project that has spanned several years from 2014 onwards: the ‘Cijin Kitchen’ project initiated and curated by artist, curator, art educator and activist Wu Mali (b. 1957). The project is set in an underdeveloped seaside community on the outskirts of Kaohsiung with a sizeable population of fishermen, labour workers and diverse immigrants. Importantly, the place has a historical significance due to its rich maritime memories. The Cijin Kitchen project has involved various artists, designers, urban planners, scholars as well as local communities and it has allowed such a marginalized area to be empowered and renewed for its future development. The communities at stake have, indeed, developed an awareness of their cultural uniqueness, their local colours and flavours. The transformative power of art no longer solely lies in its ability to be displayed in museums or alternative spaces within the confines of the ‘art world’. Its power extends to the ‘real world’ whereby artistic or curatorial concepts become genuine platforms for urban change and community reconstruction.

From the Shore to the Coast: Curating the Front Line of Climate Change

Ephemeral Coast (2015–present; ephemeralcoast.com) is a curatorial research initiative by the author that identifies the coastline as a site and indicator of the radical shifts in geography that are literally taking place in the ocean as a result of the Anthropocene. This article discusses how exhibitions and events associated with the project have considered ephemerality as a poignant curatorial concept within and through which to consider the vanishing of healthy coastal regions. In creating a comparison with other exhibitions that address the climate crisis and related environmental devastation, it argues that the kinds of local, place-based and interdisciplinary curatorial research involved in this project allow for a reconsideration of the Anthropocene epoch as more of a ‘boundary’ event, which necessitates crossing disciplinary divides and questioning the development of new models of understanding and counteraction based upon curatorial engagement with ephemerality.

An unfinished task: Viewing the legitimization of contemporary Chinese art from the Third Shanghai Biennale

The Shanghai Biennale, initiated in 1996, was launched by the Shanghai Art Museum under the background of the proliferation and expansion of the biennial/triennial exhibition system outside Europe and the United States in the last decade of the twentieth century. Based on the investigations of the themes and tasks of the First and Second Shanghai Biennales, this article focuses on the Third Shanghai Biennale opened in 2000, which has made remarkable breakthroughs in its curatorial strategy. By including international curators and artists in the exhibition, the Shanghai municipal government and the Shanghai Art Museum were committed to establishing an international profile of the Shanghai Biennale and further making it an integral part of its namesake city’s cultural branding in the era of globalization. Soon after the opening of the Shanghai Biennale, it was prevalently regarded as a significant landmark of legitimization in many discourses, which was hard fought for by Chinese practitioners after 1989. By analysing the background, curatorial concepts and impacts of the Third Shanghai Biennale and Fuck Off, this research deciphers the connotation of legitimization advocated by contemporary Chinese art circle, as well as the complex relationship with both conflict and cooperation between the official and unofficial arts. Did the task of legitimizing contemporary Chinese art fully accomplished? In this process, what sort of effects did China’s governmental manipulation have on the legitimization of contemporary Chinese art at home and its value output on the international arena? The above lines of inquiry offer a new perspective on contemporary Chinese art, especially with regard to further media experimentations, curatorial practice and value assessment in art practice after 2000.

Werner Haftmann as the Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (1967–1974): Survey of the Curatorial Concept in the West German National Modern Art Gallery during the Cold War

Werner Haftmann as the Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (1967–1974): Survey of the Curatorial Concept in the West German National Modern Art Gallery during the Cold War

Remembering the Pass - Exploring curatorial reenactment in PASS-AGES: References & Footnotes

The exhibition, PASS-AGES: References & Footnotes (2010), curated by Gabi Ngcobo, was site-specific and took place at the former Pass Office in Johannesburg, a space not officially acknowledged as a struggle site. Ngcobo, recognising the potential for using dynamic display formats to mobilise a curatorial concept, brought memory to the fore by installing artworks at the Pass Office as reenactments of evidence. I argue that PASS-AGES invokes traumatic memory through curatorial reenactment, and indicates the potentials for reenactment to explore repressed histories that still hold presence in a contemporary moment. Memory is thus invoked as an additional "text" to mobilise the conceptual framework, akin to how remembrance is often used in the continuous struggle for justice. Employing an autoethnographic methodology, which describes an analytical approach used to critically examine the researcher's own experiences as a means to access greater understanding of cultural experience, I allow the reader to experience the exhibition through my own account. I argue that, as a nomadic curator, Ngcobo was freed from contextual, spatial, or methodological limitations traditionally bound to a colonial logic of curatorial practice. I convey that a nomadic curatorial approach can be adopted to critique traditional or institutional curatorial paradigms. To this end, I argue that Ngcobo was able to engage care in her practice by using reenactment to interrogate memory in a manner that may otherwise have been subdued within an institutional context.