There was kinda a lot of art news on the internet this week. Highlights: Everyone is a curator, Taylor Renee Aldridge discusses collaboration with Jacolby Satterwhite, Ulay died, reconsidering Post Malone, the end of oversharing, SXSW was canceled, David Frum doesn’t understand how bills work, lessons on reporting, and mythical mountain lions.
1. New York Times: Everyone’s a Curator Now
This article is hilarious but also so, so real. I first started critically thinking about the word curator, and what it means to be a curator, in high school. A freelance curator/artist/writer came to my school to install her solo exhibition, do studio visits, and host a workshop. She was the first person I heard use the term “freelance curator”; previously I had only associated “curator” with people who work in museums. This was in 2013 and Instagram was the hot new app and soon everything was going to be curated.
As recently as 1987, though, curators have been considered “creative agents in their own right, and master of the kind of the sociopolitical commentary that underpins many of today’s exhibitions.” Further, it is not only this kind of curation that is happening anymore. Anything curated is synonymous with “the aesthetically conscious,” as Maryellen Stewart describes.” And the word has become so ubiquitous it doesn’t mean much at all at the moment.