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.

How curating has changed art and how art has changed curating: an examination of the emergence contemporary curatorship. 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.

A curatorial situation is always one of hospitality. It implies invitations to artists, artworks, curators, audiences, and institutions; people and objects are received, welcomed, and temporarily brought together. It offers resources for material and physical support while also responding to a need for recognition, respect, or attention. Finally, and very importantly, a curatorial situation operates in the space between an unconditional acceptance of the other and exclusions legitimized through various rules and regulations. This publication analyzes, from the perspective of hospitality, the curatorial within the current sociopolitical context through key topics concerning immigration, conditions along borders, and accommodations for refugees. The contributions in this volume, by international curators, artists, critics, and theoreticians, deal with conditions of decontextualization and displacement, encounters between the local and the foreign, as well as the satisfaction of basic human needs. Hospitality: Hosting Relations in Exhibitions is the third volume in the Cultures of the Curatorial book series. Copublished with Kulturen des Kuratorischen, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig Contributors Beatrice von Bismarck, Nanne Buurman, Maja Ćirić, Alice Creischer, Andrea Fraser, Lorenzo Fusi, Wiebke Gronemeyer, Erik Hagoort, Anthony Huberman, Thomas Locher, Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer, Dieter Roelstraete, Stefan Römer, Jörn Schafaff, Andreas Siekmann, Ruth Sonderegger

Now that we ‘curate’ even lunch, what happens to the role of the connoisseur in contemporary culture?

Since its origins in 1967, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival has gained worldwide recognition as a model for the research and public presentation of living cultural heritage and the advocacy of cultural democracy. Festival curators play a major role in interpreting the Festival's principles and shaping its practices. Curatorial Conversations brings together for the first time in one volume the combined expertise of the Festival's curatorial staff—past and present—in examining the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage’s representation practices and their critical implications for issues of intangible cultural heritage policy, competing globalisms, cultural tourism, sustainable development and environment, and cultural pluralism and identity. In the volume, edited by the staff curators Olivia Cadaval, Sojin Kim, and Diana Baird N’Diaye, contributors examine how Festival principles, philosophical underpinnings, and claims have evolved, and address broader debates on cultural representation from their own experience. This book represents the first concerted project by Smithsonian staff curators to examine systematically the Festival’s institutional values as they have evolved over time and to address broader debates on cultural representation based on their own experiences at the Festival.

Curating Revolution examines how Mao-era exhibitions shaped popular understandings of, and participation in, the political campaigns of China's Communist revolution.

Using examples of indigenous models from Indonesia, the Pacific, Africa and native North America, Christina Kreps illustrates how the growing recognition of indigenous curation and concepts of cultural heritage preservation is transforming conventional museum practice. Liberating Culture explores the similarities and differences between Western and non-Western approaches to objects, museums, and curation, revealing how what is culturally appropriate in one context may not be in another. For those studying museum culture across the world, this book is essential reading.