Engineering Diverse Perspectives in Museums
Curating for the most part has historically been based on the idea that there is something to be gained from exposing the public to cultural and historical knowledge through the exhibition of certain works (Walhimer 2015). Traditionally, these exhibitions have been curated by experts with working knowledge of the exhibition at hand; however, with the shift from public consumption to a participatory action in exhibitions curating has begun to change in definition (Reilly 2019 pg. 1). There now seems to be a need for a diversification of stories. As museums move through this change to be more audience-focused, museums and other institutions are examining their relationship to community expectations of what it means to serve the public (Golding & Modest 2013 pg.1). The effort to fulfill these expectations can manifest itself in many different forms, two of which I will discuss here. Co-curating and group exhibitions have been exceedingly rising in popularity since the 1960s (O’Neill 2014). Curators have the authority to decide what artworks are exhibited and how they are mediated, presented, and distributed for the viewer (O’Neill 2014). This authority can shape the very nature of the work and the message that one receives from it, so the tradition of having a single narrative is harmful and debilitating.
Co-curating is only one attempt to include diverse perspectives within an exhibition. Co-curating can take many definitions, however for this instance I will be defining it as a collaboration with participants outside of museum payroll. This means that museums as of late have taken to new practices that have focused on power sharing and collaboration with the public and other experts (Reilly 2019 pg. 4) This in turn pushes curators to learn how to work not only interdepartmentally with one another, but with others in a museological sense (Reilly 2019 pg. 4). Co-curating in essence is the collaboration between institutions and the public. This collaboration allows for the insertion of diverse perspectives to enter the narrative curators make when creating exhibitions. One of the most adamant shifts in museums today is the way that they interact and relate with communities (Golding & Modest 2013 pg. 100). Museums are now looking towards these communities as a source of perspective and expertise in their own right (Golding & Modest 2013 pg. 100). The forging of these relationships make for the process of co-curation. Co-curating can develop interesting and diverse content by utilizing the competency and prowess of other communities.
Curating enables the distribution and mediation of art and artifacts to audiences and presents them from the private sector to the public (Goodyear 2021 pg. 6). The process of bringing artworks, objects, and ideas together forms public interpretations of them. By the grouping of these artworks, objects, and ideas through display a curator communicates these associations through non-verbal, visual and contextual relationships (Goodyear 2021 pg. 6). Through these principles it is clear that exhibition-making is a space for education, conjecture, conversation, and stimulus (Goodyear 2021 pg. 6) This can be shown in particular through group exhibitions. Group exhibitions give an opportunity for a curator to bring together the voices of multiple artists to bring forth a particular message. The group exhibition has become the new form of experimentation within the curating space (O’Neill 2014). Group exhibitions emerged as a way for curators to interact with contrasting ideas and interests of otherness ( O’Neill 2014). The diversity of outcomes that materializes itself from group exhibitions offers an alternative form to the traditional Western museological paradigms of a singular genre-specific exhibition and permanent collection (O’Neill 2014). Group exhibitions give the opportunity for curators to demonstrate diverse perspectives through the inclusion of multiple artists brought together through a unifying context.
In 2015, The New Museum created an exhibition for a Triennial called The Great Ephemeral. This exhibition responds to the “speculative nature of the global market, both by exploring its intangible, even emotional, aspects and by offering clear-eyed commentary on its inequalities” (New Museum 2015). This was a group exhibition co-curated by Meiya Chang, Johanna Burton, Sara O’Keefe, and Lauren Cornell. Meiya Cheng worked as a guest curator from Taipei Contemporary Art Center (TCAC). Through an interview conducted by ASIA Society, the curators respond to questions about their interactions with each other and their ambitions towards creating a group show. The Great Ephemeral draws on the devices presented above to create and showcase diverse perspectives. It was a group show that hosted a plethora of different artists and was co-curated across different institutions. Although this co-curation proved difficult, they found it overall very rewarding and conducive to presenting the work in an invigorating and impactful manner (Asia Society 2015). This exhibition was presented in accordance with The New Museum’s international partnership program Museum as Hub. The unifying factor for the artists was their use of protest in various forms to demonstrate their objection to various global injustices (The New Museum 2015). The Great Ephemeral focused on the global market and included work that challenges the status quo.
The Great Ephemeral proved to be a success in the inclusion of diverse perspectives and forging an example of the benefits of co-curation and group exhibitions. Museums have changed their approach to community engagement and realized the importance of active participation from the public in decision making. This active participation rears itself in the form of co-curation. In order to diversify presented perspectives, museums have to look outwards for expertise from the communities they are looking to represent. There can no longer be one narrative and audiences are demanding that their stories be told. Through group exhibitions curators can contextualize and equate artworks and artifacts to each other and a greater societal circumstance. Through exhibitions like The Great Ephemeral it is easy to see the merits of these principles. This thematic analysis serves to further the goals of Resistance in Residence. It is our hope to utilize these tools in order to present diverse and distinct perspectives in this exhibition. Through our utilization of the Living Archive that is done in collaboration with Community Wellbeing Collective and visitors of the exhibition, as well as our decision to make the exhibition a group show we attempt to bring forth alternative perspectives to the surface.
References:
Cline, Anna C., “The Evolving Role of the Exhibition and its Impact on Art and Culture”. Senior Theses, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 2012.
Golding, Viv, and Wayne Modest. Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections, and Collaboration. Bloomsbury Academic, an Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2013.
Goodyear, Jamie W., and Maria Nengeh Mensah. “The Practice of Co-Curating Queer Stories: An Autoethnography on the Creation of the Exhibition Témoigner Pour Agir.” Université du Québec à Montréal.
Iervolino, Serena. “Co-Curating with Trans People: The Challenges of Collaborating with Heterogenous Minoritised Communities.” Museum Management and Curatorship, 2023, pp. 1–24., https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2023.2188481
O’Neill, Paul. “Co-Productive Exhibition-Making and Three Principal Categories of Organisation: the Background, the Middle-Ground and the Foreground.” ONCURATING, 2014, https://www.on-curating.org/issue-22-43/co-productive-exhibition-making-and-three-principal-categories-of-organisation-the-background-the-middle-ground-and-the-foregrou.html#.ZC1HfezMI1K
Owen, Alice, et al. “Extracting Us: Co-Curating Creative Responses to Extractivism Through a Feminist Political Ecology Praxis The Extracting Us Curatorial Collective .” Contours of Feminist Political Ideology, edited by Siti Maimunah, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, pp. 51–73.
Reilly, Emma. “Co-Curation and Collaboration: A Case Study on the Effects of Co-Curation on Staff.” University of Washington, 2019.
Walhimer, Mark. Museums 101. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
“Co-Curating and ‘Making Space for Divergent Perspectives.’” Asia Society, https://asiasociety.org/museum/co-curating-and-making-space-divergent-perspectives
“The Great Ephemeral.” New Museum Digital Archive, 2015, https://archive.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/1945
