Curso de Key Moments in the History of Curating

Week 1: The Curator as Author

• With his Documenta 5, Harald Szeemann cemented the template of the archetypal curator of contemporary art as one who had a unique voice and built exhibitions to form a cohesive whole. This week we will investigate the rise of the independent curator, analysing exhibitions that formulate an individual argument or take essayistic approaches to curating.

• The first Whitney Biennial was established in opposition to the mostly conservative exhibitions of the time, carried out by academic judges. It launched as an annual art exhibition with ‘no juries, no prizes’ and allowed artists to reclaim power by choosing what works they would exhibit. This week we will focus on the goliaths of the exhibition-making world: recurring large-scale international exhibitions, tracing the paths of reactions and counter-reactions to their predecessors, shifts in the art world, and significant historical events.

• This week we will trace how different exhibitions have aimed to decentralise the art world from Western Europe and North America, be they by attempting more ‘global’ approaches, or by honing in on overlooked locations. We will start with Magiciens de la terre, which sought to correct the problem of “one hundred percent of exhibitions ignoring 80 percent of the earth” by including featured 50% Western and 50% non-Western artists.

• Nicolas Bourriaud’s exhibition Traffic, marked the first use of the term ‘relational art’, heralding the idea of art as creating a social environment in which people come together to participate in a shared activity. This week we will explore exhibitions that have sought to engage audiences, changing their role from passive viewer into active participant.