"Books on Curating: Contexts and Contemplations" a Series of Seminars Led by Maria Kalinina

Date

Schedule

19:30–21:00

Place

Garage Education Center

DESCRIPTION

Garage Library launches a series of seminars led by curator Maria Kalinina. Participants are invited to read and discuss books on contemporary curating, published as a part of the GARAGE PRO series, to trace the history of post-war art in the light of new exhibition practices.

The history of contemporary art may not only be learned through the works of great artists, but also through exhibition practices and individual events that deliver those works to the public. The second half of the twentieth century in art was marked by emergence of the curator as a professional occupation, with dozens of books and publications written on its history and philosophy. Since 2015, new editions of the GARAGE PRO series, released as part of the collaborative publishing program between Garage and Ad Marginem Press, have introduced texts by key theorists and professions in the fields of curation and cultural production, such as Viktor Misiano, Pascal Gielen, Brian O’Doherty, Nina Simon, and others.

During the series of seminars, initiated by Garage Library, participants are invited to read the main publications on the history and philosophy of curating together with the course leader Maria Kalinina. The group will then explore the essence of curatorial practices alongside its socio-cultural conditions and learn how big exhibitions shaped the history of international contemporary art.

Recommended reading for each session is available at Garage Library.

SEMINAR LEADER

Maria Kalinina is independent curator and researcher, member of the editorial board at Moscow Art Magazine (Khudozhestvenny Zhurnal), curator at START Project for Young Art at WINZAVOD Center for Contemporary Art (2012-2013), co-founder of MediaUdar international festival of art and activism, lecturer at the Curatorial Strategies course at The Higher School of Economics (2014-2017).

HOW TO TAKE PART

Free admission with advance registration

Schedule

Introduction to Curation and Curatorial Production

Theorists and professionals in the field see goals and meanings behind the curator’s role in many differing ways. How is the exhibition-making process organized within the framework of the art world today and what is a curator’s role in it? Why can’t contemporary institutions function without a curator? What knowledge is required from exhibition organizers and mediators, editors, and experts? During the session participants will look back at the foundations and define what constitutes the curator’s profession.

REGISTRATION


Reading materials for the discussion:

Viktor Misiano. Five Lectures on Curating  

Adrian George. The Curator’s Handbook: Museums, Commercial Galleries, Independent Spaces 

Date
Tuesday, May 15
Time
19:30–21:00
Place
Garage Education Center

Establishment of Curating in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

The Western art world at the end of the 1960s saw the curator as a person who looked after museum collections and arranged displays transform into the curator, as an independent professional, who put on shows without a specific institutional affiliation. Such change wasn’t accidental and can be explained by a variety of cultural and social factors and transformations that happened in the museum world—such will be discussed at the session.

The session will cover the publication with a cult-following A Brief History of Curating by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, published outside of GARAGE PRO series.

REGISTRATION


Reading materials for the discussion:

Hans-Ulrich Obrist. A Brief History of Curating   

Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Ways of Curating  

Karsten Schubert. The Curator's Egg: The Evolution of the Museum Concept from the French Revolution to the Present Day  

Date
Tuesday, May 22
Time
19:30–21:00
Place
Garage Education Center

Curating at the Era of Late Capitalism. Political Economy of the Art World

Art is attached to capital by ‘an umbilical cord of gold’. And although art is often critical of this relationship, at times, even denying it, the influence that the market has on artistic practices cannot be underestimated.

How does the art world become organized in the era of inevitable commercialization and what is a curator’s role in the relationships of art and the market today? How is it possible to correlate and to differentiate between an artistic value and a market price of a certain work? How do successful and famous artists resist the persistent attention of the "art merchants"?

REGISTRATION


Reading materials for the discussion:

Isabelle Graw. High Price: Art Between the Market and Celebrity Culture

Michael Bhaskar. Curation. The Power of Selection in a World of Excess

Date
Tuesday, May 29
Time
19:30–21:00
Place
Garage Education Center

Curatorial Strategies After the "End of History". Curator as an Artist and Artist as a Curator

Fundamental changes that happened to art in the 1990s were marked by an upsurge of new artistic strategies and practices, including those concerning curatorial work. Curators are learning from artists, while the latter are more and more often seen migrating towards curatorial practice. The history of curating becomes reinterpreted through exhibition processes—the reenactment of famous shows of the past is growing popular as a genre. 

This session will cover the phenomenon of historicizing curatorial practices, issues of cultural identity, that often define the work of artists and curators alike, also the term "contemporary" art itself, that acquires different interpretations depending on position and views of various theorists and professionals in the field.

REGISTRATION


Reading materials for the discussion:

Paul O'Neill. The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s)

Terry Smith. Thinking Contemporary Curating

Date
Tuesday, June 5
Time
19:30–21:00
Place
Garage Education Center

Intellectual Production and Immaterial Labor of the Curator. Controversies of Curating in the Digital Age

How does material labor get replaced with communication and other types of "linguistic activity" in the art world? Why are exhibitions nowadays more reminiscent of social life forms, while artists’ projects mimic large-scale research work, science centers, and labs?

REGISTRATION


Reading materials for the discussion:

Pascal Gielen. The Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude: Global Art, Memory and Post-Fordism  

Nicolas Bourriaud. Relational Aesthetics. Postproduction

Date
Tuesday, June 13
Time
19:30–21:00
Place
Garage Education Center