"The anthology Curating and the Educational Turn introduces twenty-seven critical essays describing this phenomenon and represents an extremely helpful tool for anyone interested in the future of curatorship and exhibitions. The book shows the huge potential that exists for art institutions to be laboratories and places of knowledge production."--Book jacket.

Once considered a mere caretaker for collections, the curator is now widely viewed as a globally connected auteur. Over the last twenty-five years, as international group exhibitions and biennials have become the dominant mode of presenting contemporary art to the public, curatorship has begun to be perceived as a constellation of creative activities not unlike artistic praxis. The curator has gone from being a behind-the-scenes organizer and selector to a visible, centrally important cultural producer. In The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), Paul O'Neill examines the emergence of independent curatorship and the discourse that helped to establish it. O'Neill describes how, by the 1980s, curated group exhibitions--large-scale, temporary projects with artworks cast as illustrative fragments--came to be understood as the creative work of curator-auteurs. The proliferation of new biennials and other large international exhibitions in the 1990s created a cohort of high-profile, globally mobile curators, moving from Venice to Paris to Kassel. In the 1990s, curatorial and artistic practice converged, blurring the distinction between artist and curator. O'Neill argues that this change in the understanding of curatorship was shaped by a curator-centered discourse that effectively advocated--and authorized--the new independent curatorial practice. Drawing on the extensive curatorial literature and his own interviews with leading curators, critics, art historians, and artists, O'Neill traces the development of the curator-as-artist model and the ways it has been contested. The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) documents the many ways in which our perception of art has been transformed by curating and the discourses surrounding it.

It’s all Mediating: Outlining and Incorporating the Roles of Curating and Education in the Exhibition Context brings together thinkers and practitioners in the fields of exhibition curating and gallery education from different corners of Europe. The publication explores the two core functions of museums: exhibiting of the content and educational activities directed to audiences. These areas of activity – both committed to “mediating” between art and its audience – have existed since the birth of the public museum, but, as the result of professionalisation and specialisation of the museum field, they have developed into separate professions and have become the responsibility of specialised staff. “Curator” and “educator” are both relatively new titles in museums, and, in many countries, the professional education for these occupations is young or yet to be established. The volume sets out to encourage dialogue between the sectors. It discusses how the professional field is outlined at present: How do these aspects relate to each other? What is the division of labour between curators and educators and what are the models of collaboration? What kind of interests and values guide their work? It further examines how the specialists incorporate their roles: How are professional identities built? While specialisation has brought focus and quality to the practice, have the fields drifted too far apart from each other? The book is a source of information and insights for anyone working in curating and education, including both practitioners as well as researchers of these fields. With its international span, the book serves the interests of students in the fast growing fields of curatorial studies, museum education, and museology in different parts of Europe. The issues tackled in the book have pertinence also for cultural policy study and research. It’s all Mediating is produced by the Finnish Association for Museum Education Pedaali.

To stay relevant, art curators must keep up with the rapid pace of technological innovation as well as the aesthetic tastes of fickle critics and an ever-expanding circle of cultural arbiters. Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance argues that, despite these daily pressures, good curating work also requires more theoretical attention. In four thematic sections, a distinguished group of contributors consider curation in light of interdisciplinary and emerging practices, examine conceptions of curation as intervention and contestation, and explore curation's potential to act as a reconsideration of conventional museum spaces. Against the backdrop of cutting-edge developments in electronic art, art/science collaboration, nongallery spaces, and virtual fields, contributors propose new approaches to curating and new ways of fostering critical inquiry. Now in paperback, this volume is an essential read for scholars, curators, and art enthusiasts alike.

The New Curator: Exhibiting Architecture and Design examines the challenges inherent in exhibiting design ideas. Traditionally, exhibitions of architecture and design have predominantly focused on displaying finished outcomes or communicating a work through representation. In this ground-breaking new book, Fleur Watson unveils the emergence of the ‘new curator’. Instead of exhibiting finished works or artefacts, the rise of ‘performative curation’ provides a space where experimental methods for encountering design ideas are being tested. Here, the role of the curator is not that of ‘custodian’ or ‘expert’ but with the intent to create a shared space of encounter with audiences. To illustrate this phenomenon, the book explores a diverse, international range of exhibitions. Divided into six themes, a series of project profiles are contextualized through conversations with influential curators and cultural producers such as Paola Antonelli, Kayoko Ota, Mimi Zeiger, Catherine Ince, Aric Chen, Zoë Ryan, Beatrice Leanza, Prem Krishnamurthy, Marina Otero Verzier, Brook Andrew, Carroll Go-Sam, Rory Hyde, Eva Franch i Gilabert, Patti Anahory and Paula Nascimento. Featuring over 100 color illustrations, this highly designed, beautiful book offers an innovative contribution to the field. An essential read for students and professionals in architecture, design, art, visual culture, museum studies, curatorial studies and cultural theory. The book also features a foreword by Deyan Sudjic and an afterword by Leon van Schaik AO.

Edited by Paul O'Neill. Introduction by Paul O'Neill, Annie Fletcher.

Too many public art projects result in short-term, temporary interventions, often connected with an exhibition, biennial or event. "Locating the Producers" investigates how and why more longer-term, durational and accumulative projects have began to emerge in response to a single place. This dynamic and extensive publication provides the first in-depth examination of exemplary curatorial projects.

"Exploring one of the most influential methods of contemporary cultural production, Self-Organised takes a broad view on the matter. Artists, curators and critics discuss empirical and theoretical approaches from Europe, Africa and South and North America to how self-organisation today oscillates between the self and the group, self-imposed bureaucratisation and flexibilism, aestheticisation and activism. The contributors identify now as a crucial moment to propose ways forward for parallel initiatives and institutions alike: from de-organisation and waiting, to rupture and coexistence of aesthetics and politics. However, what they all seem to share is a refreshing search for critical platforms of citizenship, harnessing self-determination in the wake of neo-liberal mainstreaming and right-wing populism alike." --> z ov.

Stop curating! And think what curating is all about. This book starts from this simple premise: thinking the activity of curating. To do that, it distinguishes between 'curating' and 'the curatorial'. If 'curating' is a gamut of professional practices for setting up exhibitions, then 'the curatorial' explores what takes place on the stage set up, both intentionally and unintentionally, by the curator. It therefore refers not to the staging of an event, but to the event of knowledge itself. In order to start thinking about curating, this book takes a new approach to the topic. Instead of relying on conventional art historical narratives (for example, identifying the moments when artistic and curatorial practices merged or when the global curator-author was first identified), this book puts forward a multiplicity of perspectives that go from the anecdotal to the theoretical and from the personal to the philosophical. These perspectives allow for a fresh reflection on curating, one in which, suddenly, curating becomes an activity that implicates us all (artists, curators, and viewers), not just as passive recipients, but as active members. As such, the Curatorial is a book without compromise: it asks us to think again, fight against sweeping art historical generalizations, the sedimentation of ideas and the draw of the sound bite. Curating will not stop, but at least with this book it can begin to allow itself to be challenged by some of the most complex and ethics-driven thought of our times.

Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take part an artist can promote new emancipatory social relations. Around the world, the champions of this form of expression are numerous, ranging from art historians such as Grant Kester, curators such as Nicolas Bourriaud and Nato Thompson, to performance theorists such as Shannon Jackson. Artificial Hells is the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art, known in the US as "social practice." Claire Bishop follows the trajectory of twentieth-century art and examines key moments in the development of a participatory aesthetic. This itinerary takes in Futurism and Dada; the Situationist International; Happenings in Eastern Europe, Argentina and Paris; the 1970s Community Arts Movement; and the Artists Placement Group. It concludes with a discussion of long-term educational projects by contemporary artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tania Bruguera, Pawe? Althamer and Paul Chan. Since her controversial essay in Artforum in 2006, Claire Bishop has been one of the few to challenge the political and aesthetic ambitions of participatory art. In Artificial Hells, she not only scrutinizes the emancipatory claims made for these projects, but also provides an alternative to the ethical (rather than artistic) criteria invited by such artworks. Artificial Hells calls for a less prescriptive approach to art and politics, and for more compelling, troubling and bolder forms of participatory art and criticism.