2013 Dan Fox ; Being Curated (Frieze Vol. 154)

8/18/2019 2013 Dan Fox ; Being Curated (Frieze Vol. 154)

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Issue 154 April 2013

Being Curated

SURVEY

Dan Fox invited eight artists and artist groups to reflect on their relationships to

curators and curatorial discourse. Alongside responses from Ed

Atkins,Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Nick Mauss, Tom Nicholson, Paulina

Olowska, Slavs and Tatarsand W.A.G.E., Daniel Buren reassesses his 1972

statement ‘Exhibiting Exhibitions’

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Daniel Buren, Les cabanes éclatées imbriquées, travail in situ (Exploded Overlapping Cabins, Work in Situ),

2011, installation view at Centre Pompidou-Metz

Dan Fox

Second only, perhaps, to the white-hot temperatures of the art market, the rise of the

curator has been one of the most discussed developments in art over the past 15 years. The

growth of the profession has wrought profound changes on how we think about exhibitions

and what institutions can be. It has helped networks of artists to grow, and has shone a

light on the overlooked and underappreciated. It has also assumed ministerial power in

art-industry war games, and has – in Europe and the US, at least – taken over from

television production as the sensible option for nice middle-class youngsters wanting a

career in the arts. No other word or phrase from the professional lexicon of contemporary

art has leaked so quickly into widespread popular usage as ‘curating’. When it’s not

celebrities ‘curating’ your lunchtime sushi box or clothes shops ‘curating’ your summer

sock collection, curating is the motor of power and discourse in exhibition-making. For the

most part, the conversation about curating has largely been dominated by curators. (The

many who freelance as critics have also altered the nature of such basic staples of art

writing as exhibition reviews. But that’s another story.)

This does not strike me as the healthiest situation. (Then again, junior curators at New

York’s Museum of Modern Art in the 1950s probably thought the same about the

omnipotent critics of their day.) Yes, there are exceptions, and yes, I am generalizing. Of

course, I’m not the first to have wondered what the implications of the growth of curatorial

power are for artists. Curators – like critics – are nothing without art, no matter what the

most meta-inclined of curatorial theorists might argue. In 1972, Daniel Buren published a

short statement titled ‘Exposition d’une exposition’ (Exhibiting Exhibitions) in the

catalogue for Documenta V, in which he complained that: ‘The subject of exhibitions tends

more and more to be not so much the exhibition of works of art, as the exhibition of the

exhibition as a work of art.’ Buren’s text (in its 1992 English translation) prefaces this

survey, for which we asked a small selection of artists to respond to the following

questions: how do they feel about their role in the discourses of curating? What do they

think about their work being placed in themed exhibitions or biennials, or in the context of

new exhibition formats and experiments in display? Are they happy to engage in dialogue

with curators when shaping exhibitions, or do they feel instrumentalized, their work put at

the service of someone else’s interests? And how do artists who curate – and there are

many – feel about their position in relation to professional curators?


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Reflecting today on his original statement, Buren still argues passionately against the

grandiose excesses of auteur curating and ‘the exhibition of the exhibition as a work of art’.

Other responses speak about firm but productive negotiations, or liken their experiences

with curators to finely nuanced social encounters, both parties making discoveries about

the art work and the porousness of their respective roles. Together, these reflections

provide a snapshot of an ever-changing field of relations, one in which, as the saying goes,

‘It’s complicated.’

DANIEL BUREN: EXHIBITING EXHIBITIONS

Daniel Buren, Exhibition of an Exhibition, A work in 7 pieces, Work in Situ , exhibition view at Documenta V,

Kassel, 1972, (standing next to a Flag by Jasper Johns)

The subject of exhibitions tends more and more to be not so much the exhibition of works

of art, as the exhibition of the exhibition as a work of art.

Here, it is unmistakably the ( ———————— ), headed by ( ———————— ),* that

exhibits [expose] (the works) and lays itself o pen [s’expose] (to the critics). The works

presented are strokes of colours painstakingly selected – of the picture that makes up


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each section (room) in its totality. There is even an order in these colours, for they are

enclosed and composed in relation to the design of the section (selection) in which they

are displayed/presented. These sections (castrations) – themselves ‘strokes of colours’

painstakingly selected – of the picture that makes up the exhibition in its totality and in

its very principle, only make their appearance under the aegis of the organizer, the

person who re-unifies art by making it all the same in the casket/screen he prepares for

it. It is the organizer who deals with – and screens –all contradictions.

So it is true that the exhibition weighs in as its own subject, and its own subject as a work

of art.

The exhibition is clearly the ‘enhancing receptacle’1 [receptacle valorisant] where art not

only plays out its part but is also engulfed. For if, even yesterday, works were revealed

thanks to the Museum, nowadays they are no more than so much decorative gadgetry

helping the Museum to survive as a picture or tableau, the author of which is none other

than the very organizer of the exhibition. And the artist hurls himself and his work into

this trap, because the artist and his work are powerless, by dint of artistic practice, and

can do no more than let someone else – the organizer – do the exhibiting. Whence the

exhibition as art tableau, and as the limit of art exhibitions.2

In this way, the limits created by art itself, to act as a bolt-hole, turn against it by

imitating it, and art’s refuge, once formed by its limits, turns out to be the justification,

the reality, and the grave.

September 1992

* New edition of a text with the same title published on the occasion of Documenta V in

1972. Always topical, the exhibition and organizer of your choice can be placed in this spot.

1 Postface, Michel Claura, 18 Paris lV 70, Marcel Broodthaers, Michel Claura and Robert

Barry, International General, 1970

2 ‘Rahmen’ in Position Proposition, Museum of Mönchengladbach, 1971

41 years later! After accepting ‘Exhibiting Exhibitions’ for the Documenta V catalogue in

1972, Harald Szeemann told me that my text was ‘intelligent but having very little to do

with the reality’! However, even if he was then correct (which I don’t believe, because if I

identified the problem it’s because it already existed or was just emerging), it sooner or

later became an obvious reality, proving that my analysis was not just a theory stemming

from my imagination. That said, few organizers since Szeemann – not least the ones who


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consider themselves ‘artists’ – are anywhere near as talented as he was. Szeemann was

absolutely the inventor of this new tendency in the art world; the organizer as the real

artist in the show or, at least, the one above all the other participating artists.

Since that time, in terms of group exhibitions, to my eyes everything has come adrift. It’s

almost grotesque to see how exhibitions are increasingly becoming opportunities for an

organizer or a curator or whoever to write an essay which usually has nothing to do with

the artists invited, but concerns only his or her philosophy about art and society, politics or

aesthetics. Exhibitions focus increasingly univocally on who makes the show, and we can

see that the artists chosen to ‘illustrate’ his/her theory are mainly the same from one

exhibition to the next. So the very same works are, show after show, illustrating extremely

different themes or theories, without any problem. In fact, and this is quite reassuring, no

one cares – starting with the artists themselves – about the discourse produced by these

exhibition organizers. The only ones who pay attention to and speak about the organizers

are the organizers themselves, or art critics who don’t speak about the artists in the

exhibition so much as about the organizer, perhaps dreaming secretly to be an organizer of

exhibitions themselves.

Many artists are content to be invited to take part in a show, without criticizing either

whoever invited them or the farcical situation in which they have become mere objects. On

the one hand, it’s because their concern is to be invited regardless of the conditions,

making sure that this is primarily important for themselves and not realizing that, little by

little, their works are melting into a vague soup that is becoming more and more

indigestible. I still dream (if I didn’t, then I would be completely depressed) of a general

uprising!

Daniel Buren is an artist living in France. Recent exhibitions include ‘Excentrique(s),

work in situ’, in Monumenta 2012, Grand Palais, Paris, France (May 2012); and

‘Electricity Paper Vinyl… works in situ’, Bortolami Gallery / Petzel Gallery, New York,

USA (January 2013). In September, he will have an exhibition at Instituto Cultural

Cabañas, Guadalajara, Mexico.


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MARC CAMILLE CHAIMOWICZ

Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Jean Cocteau, (detail), 2003–12, installation view as part of ‘A

Bigger Splash: Painting After Performance’, Tate Modern Dear Dan,

A time was such when curators preferred the inanimate … They were more at ease with

objects, things, art works … than they were with people. Artists were just as suspicious …


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and, more at ease with a drink, were often aggressive. At once both patronising yet over

reverent … the curator’s positioning towards artists has long been one of ambivalence … in

their turn artists felt misunderstood – were often arrogant or paranoid … or both. Small

wonder then, that there was a common mistrust …

Performance went some way to redressing this … of necessity – we were, after all, working

in real time – and there was nowhere to hide … it may indeed have precipitated a climate

change … because some form of dialogue between artists and curators, generally with some

urgency, had now become a necessity. Of course, artists still drank too much, but now as

often than not in the company of the curators … and so began the realization that we might

yet, after all, be sharing a common agenda … So it is no mere coincidence that this key

word, ‘performance’, should now feature in both the titles of two current Tate exhibitions

in which my work is included: ‘A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance’ at Ta te

Modern, London, and ‘Glam! The Performance of Style’, at Tate Liverpool.

Is it not curious that the showing of my more anarchic installation Celebration? Realife

Revisited (1972–2000), in Liverpool, should have arisen from the more traditional route of

a simple loan request …? My contributions to the Tate Modern show – Jean

Cocteau (2003–12), J&J and After Image (both 2012) – were, however, the result of a

protracted yet focused dialogue with the curators which, in turn, shaped my contribution

and procured work thematically specific to the exhibition. So, whilst the axis of the curator

curating work from the artist remained this was nonetheless symptomatic of a new

sensibility which now took one from awkward imbalance to greater parity …

You may recall a brief exchange we had recently in London. Well, I am now writing from

Paris where I am preparing for the exhibition we spoke about, to be held at the Musée d’Art

moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC this autumn. I have been invited to be artistic director

for DECORUM and I shall be working principally with the curator Anne Dressen and

architect Christine Ilex on the staging of more than 100 carpets, rugs and tapestries by

modern and contemporary artists …

Ranging from the ‘Primitive’ to the ‘Conceptual’, these are to be displayed in a variety

of ways … I elaborate as the resultant show will emerge from a uniquely close collaboration

between curator, artist and architect …

I shall be dealing with issues – once deemed outside of an artist’s remit – as diverse as the

means of display, patternation and the use of wallpapers, the designing of motifs for

Axminster, décor as back-drop, the mapping of a floor plan and so on. And, given that


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much of the work to be shown oscillates between fine and applied arts, between high and

low culture, a degree of slippage will surely mirror emerging shifts of museological

emphasis?

… Initially somewhat tentatively, we are now, with greater aplomb, developing a shared

language by which to elaborate on a possible scenography, and it seems that as we move

from the mechanistic to the complicit, so we may be heading towards … possible

Baudelairean harmonies …

I hope this goes some way to meeting your request, and meanwhile look forward to seeing

you soon,

Amicably yours, Marc Camille

Marc Camille Chaimowicz was born in postwar Paris, France, and lives and works between

London, UK, and Burgundy, France. His installation Celebration? Realife Revisited (1972–

2000) is currently included in ‘Glam! The Performance of Style’ at Tate Liverpool, u k.

Forthcoming exhibitions include ‘En Suspension…’, curated by the artist, at FRAC des Pays

de la Loire, Carquefou, France (April 2013). In February, Madame Bovary by Gustave

Flaubert, a work by Marc Camille Chaimowicz, was published by Four Corners Books.


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ED ATKINS

Ed Atkins, Us Dead Talk Love, 2012, emulsion, Indian ink, photocopy and archival tape on board,

20 panels in 5 suites, 2.4 × 1.2 m

My experience, which is conspicuously limited, is that there can be a great element of

collusion in working directly with a good curator: something a little giddy and excited and

very much in secretive, esoteric accord. The chance for lots of thrilled affirming and urgent

exchanges that, publicly, probably manifest as a kind of obscure fraternity – an expression

of faith in the work and in the possibilities of the relationship and in the wider contexts

and discourses that it might induct or contribute to.


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Curating, it seems to me, might best be understood as a kind of relationship – a friendship

– that is both committed and somehow capricious enough to be, in any product of the

relation, altruistic. There’s a very real possibility that artists and curators are the same and

the other to one another.

A scene of hospitality maybe warrants analogy here, where the host and guest are

productively confused. Here, I suppose that the curator begins in the role of the host, and

the artist in the role of the guest – though I wouldn’t say that with any certainty. The

institution or gallery, or wherever the work is housed, is the curator-host’s home. As the

artist-guest, I don’t know whether I need to take my shoes off or use coasters under drinks

– or whether I can ask for a hard drink – or avoid conversations about politics or what. The

curator-host, however, doesn’t really know the ‘my’ (such as it is authoritative) of my work,

which is paradoxically a precondition of their hosting, so it’s more than likely that the two

roles switch and continue to do so in the process of making the show. In lieu of the third

party: the audience.

So this relationship and its slippages might, in this idealized mode, do something pretty

much occult to the identities of both the curator and me, however temporarily – insofar as

they are confused, they are the same and they are so very different to one another as to be

profoundly incoherent.

In working directly with an artist – rather than at a remove with simply the work of an

artist – the curator, I think, might confront a conspicuously alien aspect of their own

identity and, at least partially, actually be the artist – no doubt in all their banality and

anxiety.

For myself, the confusion between a curator and me can be hugely productive. And while

my vanity is certainly well served in the situation, I would say that it’s as close as I get to

the mysteries of collaboration – which is to say, in this context, that it doesn’t feel like

collaboration, because there’s not really a consistent division.

I should say that I’m predominantly thinking of my gallerists when I talk about this kind of

curatorial encounter. Certainly the relative long-termism of that relationship presents a

marked difference to a comparable institutional contact.

Still, there have been several other experiences of wonderful equi-valence, in my brief time

as an artist, that makes me think that, despite any quixotic sensation about the above, it’s

not actually as rare as a more cynical, antipathetic telling might have you believe. Some of

my very best friends are curators.


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Ed Atkins lives in London, UK. Recent solo projects include those at MoMA PS1, New

York, USA, and Chisenhale Gallery, London. In August, he will present a solo exhibition

at the Kunsthalle Zurich, Switzerland.

NICK MAUSS

Nick Mauss, Concern, Crush, Desire, 2011, cotton appliqué on velvet, brass doorknobs and door

stoppers, installation view as part of the 2012 Whitney Biennial, 3.3 × 2.4 × 2.9 m


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Nobody likes the curator as functionary or octopus, pushing artists’ profiles through the

various templates of the art system. But the emergence of this figure cannot have taken

place without the consent of artists, their dealers, apparent critics, collectors, etc. and by

an abdication of responsibility, a loss of glamour, even, on behalf of all these parties –

while promoting an illusion of increased sparkle. The question now is how willingly all of

us answer to and over-emphasize the demands of an attention economy.

Or, we could work slowly, deliberately, giving licence to indulgence or dissolution, and

allow things to come together. What if the frame of an exhibition could be a passageway, a

transitional, jarring, erotic space, a left-over velvet applique antechamber in a cosmetics

emporium, a pre-echo that shudders through algorithms of wanting: Marcel Broodthaers >

Sturtevant > Madeleine Vionnet? What are other ways of relating things, of proposing

counter-constellations, of making problematic correlations? These are the questions I

asked myself as I worked very closely and with great pleasure with two curators as an artist

included in a recent biennial, as a way of making my presence porous within the

framework of this particular attention-grab. Something like a presence that also had the

intensity of an absence – of self-annihilation. As they opened up the entirety of the

museum’s collection to me, and as I navigated through the database, it began to call out

different names, to radically affect my paths of search and selection.

I also remember going through the vetting process of one particularly cynical youth

triennial, which was managed entirely via email, in order to allow for the filtering of large

amounts of data points (masses of recommended names and pdf portfolios) to arrive at a

final selection of artists, all under the premise that this was a new and up-to-date way of

generating an exhibition: ‘globally’, ‘digitally’. By the time I was invited to participate in the

exhibition and to sign off on the image rights to photographs of my own work for purposes

of the institution’s publicity, I realized that there was no reason for me to participate in this

show, as all the relationships had become flat, entirely interchangeable. I had never met or

spoken to any of the curators, I had no idea what the show was supposed to be about, or

what it was even interested in being about, and thought it strange that nobody questioned

the complete perversion of the exhibition as a possibility to a fully realized bureaucratic

travesty.

Self-sabotage as aesthetic.

Nick Mauss is an artist who lives in New York, USA.


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TOM NICHOLSON

Tom Nicholson, Evening shadows, 2011–12, installation in the Elder Wing of Art Gallery of South

Australia of 38 painted copies of H.J. Johnstone’s Evening Shadows (1881), borrowed from citizens

in and around Adelaide, and a stack of 10,000 off-set printed posters, each poster: 60 × 84 cm

I have mostly been fairly privileged in having good experiences of being involved in large

themed exhibitions or biennials. In the best cases, I’d say that these shows – and

specifically their curatorial conceptualization – honours the art work by considering it in

relation to a range of intellectual, political and experimental work, inside and outside art.

The process of exhibition-making, then, functions as part of the making public of those

relations (and the leakage) between the art work and those different kinds of intellectual,

political and experimental work. That is something I both welcome as an artist (in that I

think art should be part of our wider, collective, public discourse) and also feed upon

(those relations in turn flow into my own working and in this way become part of that

ongoing generative process that is critical to any artist).

I would not say that I have ever felt as though my work is instrumentalized. Perhaps this is

naivety on my part but, in a general sense, I have faith in the nature of the encounter with

an art work, in the wildness of that encounter, in the way that the sustained process of

attending to an interesting art work is not exhausted or contained by a single framework.

Possibly it is simply my good fortune, but the conversations and exchanges I have had with

curators in these large-scale shows have been overwhelmingly interesting, usually

generous to the work, and generally in tune with the singularity of the work and the

demands of that singularity.


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At the level of the pragmatics of exhibition-making, my conversations with curators around

the physical placement of a work have occasionally been affected by curatorial

preconceptions, in a way that I have felt risks flattening the work. In these cases I have

simply said ‘no’, and that has been fine. I generally welcome very frank conversations with

curators, which are both a happy liberation from Anglo-Saxon forms of reserve about

potential disagreement or offence, but also, in the best situations, yield really interesting

insights about the work – something that I imagine is the closest that an artist gets to the

position of a writer with an excellent editor. In even the most trusting and intimate

versions of this relationship with a curator, I have never the lost the sense of being able to

simply say ‘no’ to a suggestion, so there is certainly a limit in that relationship I would

always maintain (and I have, at least in my experiences, always been able to maintain this

limit in a very friendly way).

On the other hand, in the published written responses to themed shows or biennials, I

think there is often a subsuming of the art work to curatorial authorship. I guess this partly

arises from the shorthand involved in the word-length limitations in reviewing. I suspect it

is also because writers are sometimes also curators or, in some wider sense, peers of

curators, and it often feels like the writing addresses curatorial structures or devices rather

than the singularity of art works. On several levels I regard this as a problem, not least in

that it flattens what an art work is or can be, the way that art works unsettle our

taxonomies and preconceptions rather than illustrating them.

As an artist living in a fairly far-flung place (Melbourne), one of the things I most

appreciate about large themed shows or biennials is contact with artists from other places.

The artists I have met through these shows have often become very close friends and

valued peers, and though we may go many years without seeing each other, the exchanges

established by that first occasion of showing together becomes the basis of a very particular

and durable connection. Though the first meeting often occurs in an institutionalized

context (a museum or a biennial) what is striking to me is that these friendships and

exchanges quickly become autonomous. They become part of the conversations, networks,

exchanges, generosity and reciprocity that enable artists to keep working, to keep

generating, and to do so with a kind of (relative or qualified) autonomy that is (and sorry

for the grandiosity of invoking this term) necessary to the strange sovereignty of art works.

Tom Nicholson is an artist who lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. He is a lecturer

in drawing at Monash Art, Design and Architecture. His work was recently part of the


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inaugural Qalandiya International, a biennial event held across a number of locations in

Palestine.

PAULINA OLOWSKA

Zofia Stryjeńska, installation view, 2008, an exhibition curated by Paulina Olowska for the

Schinkel Pavilion as part of the 5th Berlin Biennale

I like flirting as an artist-curator. With the works I select. With histories and themes. With

artists. With exhibition curators. With whom and with what I flirt stems from necessity, or

is the natural course of things – it constitutes a key theme of my art. Art historian ClaireBishop once described my artistic practice as ‘direct curatorial’.

Continuing with flirtation as a metaphor, I’d like to talk about the exhibition ‘Olinka, or

Where Movement is Created’, held at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, last year. The show was

inspired by the life and work of two artists, Nahui Olin and Dr. Atl, living outside of ‘the

centre’, in the idealistic-Utopian world of a Mexican province. Magnolia de la Garza and

Adam Szymczyk offered the artists they invited the opportunity to co-create the exhibition.

This joint creativity (flirtation) of curators and artists, as well as of artists and artists, took

place on three levels. Firstly, at the level of the creation of new works, or the choice of

existing ones from an artist’s output. Secondly, juxtaposing these in an open-ended

manner with works selected by the curators from the archive collection. Thirdly, there was

the opportunity to work together on the visual aspect of the show, for instance, through

collective discussion of the most suitable hanging of works in relation to each other. What I

mean to say is that the curators were in a permanent creative dialogue with the artists, and


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the exhibition was ‘open form’ up until the very last moment. The process of developing

the exhibition was dynamic and extremely fascinating. This scenario also made the artists

look at the show in a more synthetic way. They were not focused only on their own work, or

the works in the immediate vicinity of their work.

To me, it doesn’t matter who’s who – if an artist is an artist, if a curator is a curator, if a

curator is an artist, or the other way round – this is an old and very constraining narrative.

I opt for a new narrative, one that sees such categories loosely. It is my experience that the

most rewarding practice is one that involves collaboration switching traditionally ascribed

roles in order to navigate exhibition territory seamlessly, and charting the borders that are

reached in the process of development. I hope that this is the future of art and exhibition-

making.

Paulina Olowska lives in Raba Niznam, near Krakow, Poland. ‘The Method’, an

exhibition that she devised, is currently on view at Studio Voltaire, London, UK, and in

June she will have a solo show at Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland.


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SLAVS AND TATARS

Slavs and Tatars, Beyonsense, 2012, installation view as part of Projects 98, Museum of Modern Art, New York

It can’t be oysters and foie-gras every night, can it? Otherwise, we risk coming down with

what the French suffer each new year: acrise de foie (‘crisis of the liver’), only in this case

perhaps the homonym – a crise de foi (‘questioning one’s faith’) – would be more


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appropriate. With curators – as with lovers, friends or accountants for that matter – we

must mix it up a bit. Some nights just call for plain rice and yoghurt.

While the gilded discourse surrounding the role of the curator appears increasingly

sophisticated, if not at times outright esoteric, it also comes at the expense of some brass

tacks. In these oft-amnesiac times, we tend to be in the arrière-garde rather than the

avant-garde. If anything, we seek more rather than less engagement from curators. Is it a

coincidence that the heightened logorrhea in curatorial discourse coincides with an uptick

in the transactional? Instead of entertaining a discussion about the ideas driving an

exhibition – how a particular work fits the given proposal or how the context provides a

new understanding of the work, perhaps even steering it to new frontiers – we are too

often asked to move immediately to questions of logistics. Transport, budget, schedules,

etc., are the standard fare before even these are cast aside in pursuit of the next pressing

engagement. Is it because such responsibilities strike most as rudimentary, low-hanging

fruit, not worthy of the otherwise noble aspirations of curators, museum staff,

administrators, gallerists and artists alike?

The actual hanging and scenography of an exhibition are as integral, if less seductive, as

the more immaterial discussions about representation, engagement or agency. We find The

Menil Collection staff’s debates (not to mention hermeneutic implications) over the height

to hang a picture – Jermayne MacAgy’s famous line that the centre should ‘hit at the tits’ –

as compelling and relevant as our more abstract research, into say linguistic hospitality or

mystical substitution, even if we do not paint nor have any intention to. Nearly four

decades ago, the radicalism of Heiner Friedrich’s original dictum for the Dia Art

Foundation – ‘one artist, one space, one work … forever’ – still holds up against the more

daring ideas put forward today across innumerable periodicals and symposia.

Due perhaps to our own relatively late arrival to art after a decade spent in other fields,

from public-sector strategy to media and graphic design, we do not have any shame in

understanding the stakes involved as artists. We can’t help but shake the feeling that we

are all – every single one of us, from teacher to trapeze artist, financier to filmmaker – in

the service industry. So instead of a puerile pitting of the curator versus the artist or vice

versa, we believe it would be better to ask: ‘Service to whom? To what?’ For Slavs and

Tatars, the service is to our region, Eurasia; to the public; to each other. But it is also,

crucially, to the integrity of the commission and idea behind a project. Most of our work

exists largely thanks to the commission of the curator and the accompanying

institutions. Given the collective nature of our practice, we look to curators as we do to


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academics, gallerists and installation crews among others, as integral partners in an almost

alchemical process, that allows for a series of thoughts to resonate spatially, formally,

intellectually and affectively.

Slavs and Tatars’ ‘Behind Reason’ is on view at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany,

until 6th May and their ‘Friendship of Nations: Polish Shi’ite Showbiz’ opens at

Presentation House, Vancouver, Canada, on 12 April and runs to 26 May.

W.A.G.E.

W.A.G.E., Poster for ‘Consciousness Coffee Klatch’ , 2009, NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, New York

W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the General Economy) was founded by a group of artists,

performers and independent curators who were brought together by a common sense of

institutional exploitation. Independent curators – along with other cultural producers –


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provide a workforce within a multi-billion dollar industry from which others profit greatly.

Like artists and performers, independent curators are often not considered as wage labour

or subcontracted labourers, and relegated to fee categories that bear no compensatory

relationship to the work we’re asked to provide.

Last year, W.A.G.E. was invited by Tirdad Zolghadr to present a workshop with his

graduate students at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Annandale-on-

Hudson. Together with the class, we made a list of curatorial responsibilities and duties:

— Research and development: seeing exhibitions, archival research, reading, email

correspondence, studio visits and site visits.

— Conceptualizing an exhibition: proposal writing and commissioning art works, as well as

working with artists to produce them.

— Fundraising: maintaining or cultivating donor relations, both socially and through

submitting written proposals.

— Legalities: facilitating permissions, loans, insurance, contracts and visas.

— Mounting an exhibition: overseeing exhibition design and architecture with fabricators,

writing and preparing wall texts and labels, organizing public programming, public

relations, essay writing and catalogue design for publication.

— Ongoing administration: oversight, invoicing, designing and maintaining budgets,

arranging shipping and managing labour from installation to de-installation.

If independent curators complete even half of the work on this list, then curatorial fees are

symbolic figures. Since we have accounted for the actual labour being performed – the

kind of labour that in any other context would be remunerated unless it were an unpaid

internship – we are able to quantify and valuate it in terms of real wages. This should be

done either in relation to other comparable forms of labour, or it could be a wage or fee

calibrated to the cost of living.

The rise of the independent curator has an impact upon artists because it represents

another mouth to feed from exhibition budgets. If artists and curators are pitted against

each other in the battle for compensation, we have been divided; and if curators don’t

support artists by writing equitable artist fees into their budgets, we will have been

conquered by a system that inherently denies the value of all cultural labour.


21/21

W.A.G.E. is an activist group based in New York, USA, that focuses on regulating the

payment of artist fees by nonprofit art institutions, and establishing a sustainable model

for best practices between cultural producers and the institutions that contract their

labour.

Dan Fox

is senior editor of frieze and is based in New York, USA.

frieze is now accepting letters to the editors for possible publication

at [email protected].
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]

Documents

2013 Dan Fox ; Being Curated (Frieze Vol. 154)