Curating as Research

Curating as Research (Raul Gschrey)

Updated version (2018), original published in: On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture 1 (2016) https://www.on-culture.org/journal/perspectives/curating-as-research/

Everything seems to be curated today: meals, music, marriage ceremonies. But beyond these inflationary uses, also the professional curation of museums, exhibitions or collections received increased attention, the arena, where curating as research and means in the production of knowledge comes to the fore. University courses in this traditional sphere of curating are booming, but there is little academic literature and it often remains vague what the role of the curator and their methods and repertoire of tools might look like. For me as an artist, curator, and academic, but also for the research area Visual and Material Culture Studies at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, JLU Giessen, these questions and how curatorial practice relates to academic work are of central concern.

The tasks and missions of curators are manifold; they develop and define topics, they explore relevant (artistic) material and follow up on the current state of research, they interpret and contextualise objects, establish connections between individual exhibits and artistic positions. Weiterlesen