As our Art in Mind exhibition has formally been launched, we are now nearing the end of our Guided Research Project, which has given me much room for reflection.
Overall, I think that our exhibition project has been a great success. We were assigned with exploring how the Centre for Research Collections might deepen engagement with their collections through online exhibitions and programmes, and I think we did that through our co-curatorial model, which was a very different and new approach for the University. Through meeting our co-curators, it was clear to me that people were particularly interested in pieces that were relevant to their own lives. For example, one co-curator chose a meteorite as their favourite object because they had been given a small piece of meteorite as a present from their dad when they were growing up, while another co-curator chose an illustration of a chameleon because it reminded them of seeing chameleons when they carried out geological fieldwork. Our exhibition therefore used the University’s art collections in an innovative and be appealing way that could attract new audiences, while also highlighting the need for the CRC to promote and expand its collections on topics that their visitors may relate to.
There were certainly things I would like to change if we were to go back and do this project again – for one, I would love to have had even more co-curators who come from a wider range of backgrounds. It is important to note that this exhibition was created by a group of white university students, and I think that we would have benefitted from seeking out more perspectives from staff and students of colour. However, given the small nature of our project and the tight deadline that we had to work with, I think the risk that we took to be experimental in our approach really paid off – to me Art in Mind demonstrates the great potential of the co-production model, and I think (and hope!) that this will influence the CRC’s digital exhibition output going forward.
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