Week2 | Seminar: Scenes: Major/ Minor Curation with Prof Neil Mulholland

25 January 2020

Before seminar, I try to visit examples of what might be ‘major’ and ‘minor’ curatorial projects in preparation.

For major curation, I chose the more famous, large, cyclical (or resident) exhibitions that I remember, such as The Palace Museum and the Venice Biennale.

For minor curation, I have chosen smaller exhibitions that are of interest to me, in my hometown, with a single theme.

Using them as examples, I also derived the distinction between major and minor. For example, the popularity of the exhibition, the size of the exhibition, etc. But is it really that simple? What is used to define what is major curating and what is minor curating?

The size of the exhibition, it is impact? the number of participants in the exhibition, the number of works, the number of visitors, whether it is supported by the government, whether it is well funded, whether the theme of the exhibition is ambitious …… There are so many elements, and even if these are part of the definition, are there individual elements that are dominant? How can one determine whether an exhibition is major or minor without a reference point?

At the seminar my group and I had a disagreement about whether an exhibition that was not particularly distinctive was major or minor, and the professor gave me an example to make me understand that major and minor are not a fixed label, it may even shift depending on where the exhibition is located. So I shouldn’t waste time on giving them a clear definition. Major and minor are not two extreme points, they are two directions on a line.

At the end of the course, I observed the other two groups’ views on ‘major’ and ‘minor’ curation, and they were new to me in a number of ways, such as whether the exhibition online, whether there was a café, whether visitors were allowed to participate in the work, etc. I was also surprised by a point made by the red group, who used the switch in identity between artist and curator.

After the seminar, rather than knowing how to distinguish between major and minor curation, I analysed the various factors that may influence curation.

However, I am not sure that what I was given was what the professor had in mind when he arranged the class.

What I was thinking about was that different objective conditions or factors affect the size of different exhibitions. But I fear that what the professor wanted me to think about was the contribution of different sizes of exhibitions to different aspects (e.g. economic, political, value propositions).