A Practice under Scrutiny

My professional practice has allowed me to witness the development of curatorial theory and practice within the context of a design museum.24 At the Design Museum I had the opportunity to work under three successive directors; Paul Warwick Thompson (1993-2001), Alice Rawsthorn (2001-2006) and Deyan Sudjic (2007-present), each of whom brought different agendas to the museum. Over time, I have been able to reflect on how the policies they implemented informed the development of programmes at the museum and influenced changes to the curator’s role. This reflection informs Chapter 3 of this thesis.

In addition, my knowledge and expertise have been developed through curating a wide range of design exhibitions and teaching curating practice. Specific exhibitions have provided the context and opportunity to test new methodologies and experiment with different curatorial approaches.25 Planning and leading two practice-focused modules on the MA Curating Contemporary Design programme and regular interaction with CCD students has revealed a continually evolving field of practice and the need to respond to an expanding skill set for the design curator. In addition to the traditional areas of research and concept development, the curator is now required to have a close engagement with the more commercial areas of communications, marketing, events, sponsorship, finance, retail and publishing. This development forms a central focus in Chapter 4 of this thesis.

A Practice under Scrutiny

As a result of an evolving field of practice and new developments in the curator’s role, curating has now come a long way from its traditional definition. Writing in 1996, art critic and curator, Lawrence Alloway succinctly described the curator‘s traditional duties as:-

24

At the time of writing, I hold the role of External Examiner to MA Fashion Curation at London College of Fashion and MA Curating and Collections at Chelsea College of Arts.

25

The exhibitions include Verner Panton: Light and Colour (17 June - 10 October 1999); Hussein Chalayan: From fashion and back (22 January - 17 May 2009) and Christian Louboutin (1 May - 9 July 2012).

“(1) acquiring work for the museum, (2) supervising its preservation in store, and (3) displaying it, putting it on exhibition.”26

These traditional duties are connected to the running of a permanent collection and the act of arranging temporary exhibitions. In recent years, the term ‘curator’ has been used to describe activities in many different contexts. Today everything is curated from menus and interiors to playlists and phone apps. Google invite users to curate their profiles across a range of digital platforms. Restaurants provide menus curated by a food expert; the custodians of the newest drinking and eating establishment at Heathrow’s Terminal 3, The Curator, welcome customers to “the wonderful world of the curator” and aim to “introduce you to discoveries and innovations, expanding your knowledge, tempting your sophisticated palate to try new tastes and sensations, or reminding you of great dishes that perhaps you’d forgotten.”27 The windows and displays inside department stores and fashion boutiques are described as being curated and include artwork and props in their carefully designed interiors. In the commercial world, the term ‘curator’ has come to designate someone who pulls together, sifts through and selects to create some sort of sense. This type of curating is not situated in museums and galleries but in restaurants, department stores, boutiques and online. Curators cater for the needs of a new breed of consumer who is ever more demanding and knowledgable about what they consume and how.

26

Lawrence Alloway, ‘The Great Curatorial Dim-Out’ in Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson and Sandy Nairne, Thinking about Exhibitions, London: Routledge, 1996: 221.

27

Heathrow Airport website. Available at: https://www.heathrow.com/shops-and-restaurants/restaurants-a-z/the-curator (Accessed 10/09/18).

Fig. 4: (1) from L to R: The Curator Bar and Dining, Heathrow Airport Terminal 3; Domestic Art, Curated Interiors: Holly Moore, Assouline Press, 2008; A Magazine curated by… (2) from L to R: Curated Man menswear boutique, Richmond, south west London; The Curated Closet: Anuschka Rees,Virgin Books, 2017; How to Curate your Life: Work Life Balance for the Creative Entrepreneur: Lizzie Evans, Podcasts, 2017.

In a digital age, the rise of social media has enabled anyone to share their opinions, to select and present, or curate a scenario through a plethora of digital platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter. With the flood of content being published on the Internet every day, the process of curation has become an important part of how many users find and personalise content. Content Curation is now a recognised term to describe the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting it in a meaningful and organised way around a particular theme. A content curator cherry picks the most relevant content on a specific topic involving sifting, sorting, arranging and selecting information to share with their online community.

The process of content curation suggests a curatorial approach. It shares commonalities with the role of a museum curator who produces an exhibition by identifying the theme, providing the context, selecting the objects and making decisions about how to interpret and then display them for the public. A content curator is continually and consistently staying on top of a topic area and is a trusted resource for their audience. They are required to be discerning, discriminating and selective in only sharing the most relevant content. They specialise on a single specific topic and over time have the opportunity to become an authority, and

perhaps even a thought leader on that subject.

Fig. 5: From L to R: Curated List of Digital Marketing Blogs in 2017, Colorwhistle; Content Curation, Blog post, 2017.

Curator and documentary filmmaker, Steven Rosenbaum, has identified this development as part of a “curation nation” with brands, publishers and content entrepreneurs embracing the concept of curation to grow an existing business or launch a new one. Rosenbaum suggests that, as the sheer volume of digital information in the world increases, the demand for quality and context becomes more urgent and that curation is the only way to be competitive in the future.28

These new contexts enable everyone to “curate” with the result that the traditional role of curating within the museum is increasingly less understood. Curating has taken on a new meaning more frequently associated with a role that is more public-facing. These changing contexts for curating have generated a significant debate on the role of the curator. David Balzer has defined the shift as “Curationism” which he describes as the acceleration of the curatorial impulse to become a dominant way of thinking and being.29 He suggests that since the 1990s we have been living in the “curationist" moment in which institutions and businesses rely on others, often variously credentialed experts, “to cultivate and organise things in an expression-cum-assurance of value and an attempt to make

28

Steven Rosenbaum, Curation Nation: How to win in a world where consumers are curators, New York: McGraw Hill, 2010.

29

David Balzar, Curationism: How Curating took over the Art World and Everything Else,London: Pluto Press, 2015: 2-3.

affiliations with, and to court, various audiences and consumers. As these audiences and consumers, we are cultivating and organising our identities.”30

Many would argue that the appropriation of the term represents a cynical exploitation of its traditional meaning. Steven Rosenbaum accepts that museum curators are forced to compete with media curation but he also makes two important distinctions. Firstly, that curation is about adding value from individuals who add their qualitative judgement to whatever is being gathered or organised implying that the use of the term ‘curator’ in any context lends an authority and status to the activity. And secondly, that there is amateur and professional curation, and the emergence of amateur and “prosumer” curators is not in any way a threat to professionals.31 Jean-Paul Martinon suggests that the fact that the curatorial seeps and bleeds into many different fields and practices, which some complain is a problem, is precisely what gives it its power and potential. It is also “what makes it quintessentially of our time and, inevitably, a difficult thing to define.”32

As curatorial and exhibition-making activity is increasingly performed by professionals who are not aligned to a particular institution, or responsible for a collection, debate over the definition and use of the term continues and alternative meanings are sought to accurately describe the activity of devising and producing exhibitions.

Sociologists Nathalie Heinich and Michael Pollack describe the role of an exhibition author who devises the exhibition concept and also determines content and design as an “auteur”. They reference the field of film studies where the term has been used to describe an artist, such as a film director,

30

David Balzar, Curationism: How Curating took over the Art World and Everything Else,London: Pluto Press, 2015: 2-3.

31

Steven Rosenbaum, Curation Nation: How to win in a world where consumers are curators, New York: McGraw Hill, 2010: 3.

32

Jean-Paul Martinon (ed.), The Curatorial. A Philosophy of Curating, London: Bloomsbury, 2013: 3.