In this class, each student gave a two-minute presentation on their curatorial concept, and I heard many fascinating and creative ideas. One question in particular—“What do you want to offer the audience?”—resonated deeply with me, prompting me to reflect on whether my own proposal had fully considered the audience’s experience and engagement. After my presentation, some classmates pointed out that my idea lacked clear connections to existing artworks or artists, making me realize that I need to conduct further research. Additionally, there are still many areas where my proposal can be refined and improved.
My classmates’ proposals were equally inspiring, making me even more excited about the upcoming exhibition. For instance, the exploration of human and non-human relationships sparked new thoughts about exhibition themes; the integration of paper cutting and AI was a direction I had never considered before; and the discussions on feminism, brought up by two classmates, were particularly thought-provoking. This class discussion not only broadened my perspective but also gave me a clearer understanding of what I need to work on next.
2 March 2025 at 23:10
Your curatorial project is a long-term process that continues to be explored and deepened every week.
In the second week, you have a preliminary understanding of curatorial exhibitions, and you begin to pay attention to the curatorial methods, spatial design, and audience experience of exhibitions, and get inspiration from different case studies. And I noticed that you began to consciously build research habits, and you went from “not paying attention to curating in the past” to “actively analyzing exhibition forms”, which is an important cognitive shift. In your spare time, you will have a detailed observation of the spatial design of the Chichu Art Museum, which can be combined with personal experience. However, the thinking at this stage is still relatively scattered, so it is recommended to start forming curatorial keywords while sorting out the inspiration, for example, you can try to draw a mind map to associate the case with the curatorial concept to help you establish a clearer framework in the subsequent curation process.
In the third week, you’ve entered the preliminary planning phase of the exhibition, not only proposing a theme, but also trying to identify two ways for the exhibition. You’ve already started to think about the implementation steps, which involve important elements such as site selection, government support, exhibition methods, audience engagement, etc. In addition, you also introduce successful case analysis, such as the combination model of farmland art + rural culture in “Rice Dream Space”, which is a good way to think. At present, the format of your exhibition has been well defined, which is a very rapid development.
In the fourth week, you’ve been working on the curatorial space planning, you’ve started to think about artist collaboration, you’ve envisioned infrastructure construction, and the exhibition project has a certain amount of practical thinking.
In the fifth week of class, you completed the presentation of the curatorial concept and received feedback from your classmates, and began to rethink the depth of the curatorial concept. The main content of this week is the initial presentation and adjustment of the curatorial concept, your reflection is valuable, and the next step is that you can delve deeper into the artists or works related to your curatorial theme, so that the exhibition concept is more solid. Note that you can also start writing a curatorial outline that integrates your curatorial concept, spatial layout, audience experience, and other content into a clear document.
Overall, your curatorial project has been progressing in an orderly manner, with steady research and reflection every week, and the overall pace is good！