For Yilin Cong：
Cong’s reflections offer a powerful critique of curatorial methods, emphasizing audience engagement, cultural sensitivity, and exhibition accessibility. The discussion on the interactivity of exhibitions is insightful, especially the contrast between large and small exhibitions in China. The second week on cross-cultural curating is rich in content, but the current structure tends to be list-like, and it is recommended to add concluding transition sentences between different sections. The analysis of curating in different cultures is convincing, but the incorporation of more personal reflections or challenges to specific cases may add depth. The fourth week’s discussion on the double bind of Asian women is in-depth, but there is little integration with curatorial practice. Discussions on “how to respond to these social issues through curating” could be added, for example: how can curators use exhibition space, interactive methods, or exhibit selection to criticize traditional gender roles?
For Ying Duan：
Duan’s blog explores the topic of curating in depth, with a particular focus on China’s marginalized intangible cultural heritage. Thoughts on power dynamics in cultural preservation and the interactive approach of exhibitions are insightful. Integration of theoretical readings, however, the logical structure could be clearer, and the current text switches quickly between multiple topics, for example jumping from issues of exhibition scale to audience engagement to curatorial strategies, without clear transitions. Some exhibitions and artworks are mentioned, but detailed analysis is lacking. For example, when discussing cross-cultural curating, a specific exhibition’s curatorial strategy could be provided, with analysis of its strengths and weaknesses, rather than just an overview.
3 March 2025 at 10:16
BLOG FEEDBACK
As also noted in your pitch feedback below and in our recent tutorial, there is a need to simplify your project proposal. This is both necessary for making the scale of the project suitable for an emerging curator but I think will also make for a more clearly focused project.
In your Week 4 post on planning, there are elements of your project which you did not discuss in your pitch but which are interesting – in particular, I think there is real value in the possibility of the artistic collaboration and of professional artists engaging in farm labour. However, this type of activity would likely be better conceived as a residency (which could still culminate in a public sharing / exhibition).
Your Week 5 post includes some reflection on the planning meeting where you and your peers gave 2-minute mini pitches and it is good to see you articulating how your engagement with your peers’ work is also shaping your thinking and reflection on your own project.
Your post on Yudong Village provides some useful context on farmer paintings as a genre. What is not made explicit is the connection between this wider research and the project proposal you are developing. Including some reflection on how this research is informing the development of your individual curatorial project proposal would be beneficial.
Whilst your recent blog posts show evidence of the ongoing development of your own project, there is very limited engagement with curatorial theory in your blog at present. The learning outcomes for the course specifically require that you research and engage with curatorial theories and this is something to build on in future posts. In the first round of blog feedback, I provided some suggested resources and the book The Rural in particular would be a good place to start.
PEER FEEDBACK
Your feedback for your peers highlights both strengths in their blogs and areas for development. This feedback is constructive but focuses primarily on how particular posts could be improved in and of itself and not as part of a body of work for course assessment. As highlighted in the Week 4 Planning Meeting slides, peer reviewing “centres on providing constructive feedback using a set of criteria”. For the longer summative peer feedback you could build on this further, using the Toolkit guidelines and the Learning Outcomes as criteria to shape your feedback as these set the requirements for the work and the criteria against which it will be assessed. I’d also encourage you to address the feedback to your peer directly (eg. rather than writing Cong’s reflections, writing your reflections) – it is your peer that is the recipient of the feedback and this will make it feel more personal.
CURATORIAL PITCH FEEDBACK
Your curatorial pitch included a lot of information – covering theoretical foundations, artistic works, participatory elements and more. However, in amongst all of this information, your core focus/concept got lost and it wasn’t clear exactly what the project was or how the different elements fit into this.
Beginning with a clear statement of what your project is right at the start would have been really beneficial. Your title suggests a focus on peasant painting – defining this early on would have been really helpful too. Your first slide included three theoretical touchpoints and whilst it was good to see you connecting to theoretical ideas, without the clear introduction to your project first, the relevance of the theory on this first slide was not fully articulated.
The Toolkit functions as a useful set of guidelines to shape your focus – setting out the different elements that you need to address. The site of your project is really important but was not discussed in detail. I know from conversations with you and from work on your blog that you have a clear set of motivations for developing this project. It would have been great to share these in the presentation as they communicate the potential value of your project.
I do also think that there is a need to simplify the project. From your presentation and slides, I can’t quite get a handle on all of the different elements but there seem to be multiple parts and lots of additional participatory elements. Remember the Toolkit states that your project must be pitched at your level as an emerging curator. As such, you need to consider the scale of the project in relation to this.