What does it take these days to run a 21st Century museum? If you do a little GOOGLEsearching to try to find some kind of answer to such a question you might find something like an an advertisement for a "Director/Chief Curator" that will provide some clues.
Its clear that in some (many?) ways the anti has been 'upped' significantly and that there is a different paradigm in play.
The advertisement below has been provided without change except for the removal of the name of the institution and other identifying text. Suffice to say it was an international institution with a middle rage profile and in many ways the advertisement is indicative of many for such positions.
However, museums as institutions are closer to universities than most and are increasingly being seen as academe unfettered in its research. Likewise, their attachment to academe may well be seen as being spurious by some academics. It has probably been so for longer than anyone cares to think about. Nonetheless, museums as institutions have changed and are changing and some are leading the way in many investigations given their closeness to their Community of Ownership & Interest. To some extent this advertisement articulates all this at least subliminally.
NB: MRIP is a fiction but a position such as this has been published recently
AN OPPORTUNITY
The MRIP Centre is looking for a Director/Chief Curator, Visual and Digital Arts to envision, lead and manage the implementation of all Visual and Digital Arts programming at The MRIP Centre, including the studio residency and work study programs, the John Smith Gallery and the MRIP International Curatorial Institute. The department is currently assessing its facilities and staffing to better support artists working in digital and experimental technologies such as video, sound art, interactive storytelling and mobile apps among others.
This review is in its early stages and the direction of this facility enhancement will be determined in part by the successful candidate in response to the demands required, today and tomorrow, by contemporary arts practice. The successful candidate will be highly collaborative in style and have an expressed interest in developing innovative and cross-disciplinary programming and research.
POSITION OBJECTIVES
- Leads the Visual and Digital Arts department, envisioning a compelling future for programs that meet the ambitions laid out in the overall strategic plan of the Centre
- Develops new programming of a high artistic calibre that meets the needs of local, national and international artists and curators in the 21st century and increases the reach of our nationally and internationally renowned programs
- Leads the curatorial direction of the John Smith Gallery and manages The MRIP Centre’s collection of approximately X,000 works
- Creates an environment where visual and digital artists can experiment and push creative boundaries to build on existing artistic knowledge and facilitate personal growth and development
- Oversees a group of onsite staff with expertise in studio facilitation across artistic disciplines, curatorial research, exhibit preparation and production, publications, and collections management
- Creates the annual program plan and puts required funding and resources in place to bring the Visual and Digital Arts vision to life
- Draws on his/her own network of contacts within the visual arts community to form a roster of exceptional sessional creative faculty
- Ensures the John Smith Gallery's reputation is enhanced as an institution of artistic excellence so that it is positioned at the forefront of contemporary art
- Responsible for the MRIP International Curatorial Institute, which supports research and professional development opportunities in the curatorial field
- Develops an active program of dissemination of the results of studio activities and exhibitions through print and electronic channels
- Works with the VP Arts and Directors of Film & Media, Theatre & Dance, Literary Arts, Music and Indigenous Arts to develop inter-disciplinary projects
- Has excellent knowledge of current art practice and a comprehensive understanding of art education and professional development at the post-secondary level
- Displays familiarity with funding sources to identify and support the application for grant opportunities
- Possesses at minimum a master's degree in Art History, Curatorial Studies, Fine Arts or a related field
- Has worked at least five years in a leadership role in a visual arts context
- Experience with major capital projects is considered an asset
- Candidates offered a position with the Centre, in this capacity, will be required to obtain a criminal record check through the local police detachment, verifying a clear record before a final job offer can be made
- This position requires flexibility in schedule, working occasional weekends and evenings
- Travel is required
- This is a permanent salaried Management/XYZ position, subject to a 12-month probationary period, based on 37.5 hours per week
- Salary commensurate with level of education and experience
- The MRIP Centre offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits package to all of its full-time salaried employees. For more information, please visit our benefits page.
- Application process: We are accepting applications for this position until a suitable candidate is found. If this opportunity matches your interest and experience, please submit your application online via The MRIP Centre careers website: www.mrip.whatever
A more than interesting development has been the emergence of Independent Curators International (ICI). ICI produces exhibitions, events, publications, and training opportunities for diverse audiences around the world. A catalyst for independent thinking, in a world where the status quo is increasingly under challenge. The emergence of such 'professional opportunities' allows curators with a particular message and/or sensibility to engage with both an audience and an idea in an international forum and/or regional forum at he cutting edge.
In time any serious applicant for a position such as the one advertised above may well need to have played a role in such a network in order to win a chance to put their case. Already, career curators are investing in their futures and qualifying as PhD candidates. Furthermore, having done so it does not take a leap of faith to imagine that they might want to put their specialist 'expertise' to work on the open market as independent curators on a contract basis.
ICI was formed to connect emerging and established curators and artists with institutions The organisation is working towards to forging an international network of networks and to generate new forms of collaboration. As the borderlines between various forms of cultural production blurr, and sometimes dissolve, this kind of initiative allows innovative thinkers in the world of cultural production to work across disciplines and historical precedents.
ICI is a hub that provides access to the people, ideas, and practices that are key to current developments in current museum practices in the field More to the point, the move is on in museums in the USA and Europe in particular to inspire fresh ways of seeing and contextualising current cultural production.
ICI has produced many traveling exhibitions over many years and has worked a large number museums, university art galleries, and art centers in 29 countries worldwide, including Australia.
Exhibitions curated by ICI curators have reached over 6 million people worldwide. The exhibitions and events have attracted extensive local, national, and international press. Both the exhibitions and their curators and are placed in a critical framework through accompanying catalogues and books published by ICI.
Since 2010, 15 ICI exhibitions have been presented by 70 venues in 23 countries profiling the work of over 350 artists worldwide; 110 curators and artists from the U.S and abroad have contributed to ICI’s talks programs, online journal, and conferences; and 121 curators from 24 countries and 14 U.S. states have participated in the Curatorial Intensives, ICI’s short-course professional training programs.
Not quite 'new kids on the block', independent curators are changing the critical landscape in museum practice at least in arena of 'cultural production' however that is variously understood. It can also be claimed that while many/most museums and art galleries maintain their stables of curators the imperatives for change are as likely as not to be be looking a lot more closely at 'flying in' curators with specialist knowledge and experience. Also, independent curatorship seems for the most part to be focused upon the arts but speculatively it can be expected that increasingly there may well be scientists looking to independent curation as a career option –at least for a part of their career paths.
CITIZEN CURATORSHIP
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CASE STUDY
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CASE STUDY |
The citizen curator is increasingly taking the initiative to collect and care for things, all kinds of things, that are changing the ways we see and imagine museums – indeed the world and things in general. Citizen curators are the collectors of all manner of things. Think about it, there is a collector with a museum around almost every corner albeit that suburban living spaces may be their venue. Collecting is 'cultural production' and a collection is a cultural product (art?).
Citizen curatorship is not a new idea, or just an American idea, its not even a radical idea, but it is a dammed good one! No wonder museums struggling to maintain their relevance are increasingly engaging with museum and gallery goers and inviting 'citizens' into the curatorial tent in various ways. It is an increasingly attractive idea.
Why engage with museum and gallery goers?
Why ask them to share their ideas, stories and collections? Basically, they personalise and diversify the voices and experiences presented in cultural institutions. They lend credibility to the visitors’ knowledge, skills and experiences, while exposing other museum goers to content that could not be delivered by staff working in isolation from their visitors. When staff allow visitors to contribute, it signals that the institution is open to, and eager to, engage with the institution in a participatory way. Most of all it is good marketing in a 21st C context.
Museumgoers generally have plenty to say about what they see, but rarely do they get to choose what they are exposed to. Past practice was directed towards "giving a program" to their visitors rather than engaging with and 'doing it with' their visitor base – that 'audience' that are in fact a museum's Community of Ownership & Interest and indeed their reason for being.
The Digital Curator at the Museum of London, writes about displaying tweets in the galleries.At the end of the Galleries of Modern London during the London Olympics there was a display about the Olympics, and next to the case is a temporary exhibition about the Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies. There were objects and costumes from the ceremonies, film of the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies. Edited into the film is a small selection of the #citizencurators tweets.Suddenly, visitors had opinions and a little bit of agency, actually it was recognised they not only had a voice – they had something to say and in a place like a museum.
The Brooklyn Museum, inspired by James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds, staged a 2008 photography exhibition titled “Click!” that ranked entries according to feedback from museum visitors and online voters. Surowiecki book is a fascinating book. He is New Yorker business columnist who explores a deceptively and exquisitely simple idea. That is, large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant. Indeed Surowiecki argues that large groups are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.
Now that digital technology allows large groups of people to communicate effectively the imagined walls that once siloed idea sets (information silos) are increasingly crumbling.
Thus curatorships in museums are arguably undergoing a paradigm shift. Indeed museums are being democratised and hierarchies are being delaminated – and in some cases torn down. Rather than become more and more specialised and insulated from their 'audience' curators are increasingly being exposed to incisive critiques of their output. Moreover these critiques are reaching a wider and wider readership via social networks and the very digital technologies that connects them and allows them their voice to reach enormous audiences – sometimes at the speed of light.
LINKS
CLICK HERE: A Standard Setting Position Advertisement
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