The topic of this week’s lecture is public projects in exhibitions. My undergraduate major is related to this, and I have certain experience in the design and implementation of public exhibition projects. However, in my previous experience, “public projects” are very rigid forms, such as lectures and workshops, which are very common forms. Therefore, I am looking forward to receiving some explanations on public exhibition activities from different cultural contexts. Gabi’s lecture met my expectations. What she narrated told me that the Public Programme is not only an activity to support exhibition, but also a part of the exhibition itself. The Public is not only the audience to come to the exhibition, they can become the curators of the exhibition project and the co-producers of knowledge.
In my previous understanding, the public project of an exhibition is a one-way output of art education activities to participants. However, Gabi mentioned in the class that one of the responsibilities of curators is to create a truly meaningful public space, which made me realize that public projects should not be merely art education exported to the outside world, but rather the construction of educational relations negotiated with participants. This updated my consistent understanding of exhibition Public projects, and also changed my planning of the Public Programme in my personal curatorial projects. Originally, I planned to hold two simple art creation workshops as the public project of the exhibition, but now I am considering reducing the activity to one, recruiting participants in advance, collecting what they want to discuss or learn through the activity, and then further designing the activity (of course, I will prepare the basic framework of the activity in advance). In this process, participants will no longer passively accept the content of the listener, but actively express their understanding of the exhibition, become the co-creator of the exhibition content.
