Art curators do more than create brilliant montages in galleries for your viewing and purchasing pleasure.
They outfit hospitals, hotels, yachts, and then some.
Their craft is a meticulous one, requiring a level of expansiveness and depth unlimited by genre, or culture, or trend.
They must be willing to peer into the mystery of the artist and pave the path for expository and explosive creations to be seen. It is placement, it is color, it is the exact moment, size, shape, at just the right angle that can captivate one person or a thousand.
They are the A & R guys and gals of the art world, with a je ne sais quoi to introduce an artist to the world.
To understand the benefits of what lies within the special repository that is the art curator, we’ve curated 😉 some insightful questions for a deep dive for the next conversation you have with your art curator.
“Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits.”
―Robert Smithson
How do you select pieces for an installation or venue
Consensus is in. If a curator is not upgrading the venue with their brand of genius with relevance and avant-garde something is missing.
It’s as challenging as making a blank piece of paper speak from the ethers, and cherry-picking the precise words to make the paragraph sing.
For a curator every piece chosen matters. The value must be added whether curating for a client home or a metropolitan museum that will garner international attention. Every piece chosen must build on the next. If a piece somehow dims the ones chosen before it, it may be best in another venue.
The work has to fit the space, the trite round hole square peg is befitting here. It doesn’t mean the pieces have to lack uniqueness and variation, just that certain pieces will unanimously work better with the angles of a room or the size of the wall. Curators are like indoor weathermen and women, the doppler radar of a venue considers the lighting, temperature, humidity levels, and what certain works can be subject to in terms of hot and cold in said venue space.
Ask your curator what the rules of thumb for preservation are
Preservation is part and parcel of the role of a curator. After all, to curate, is to be responsible for caring for something or someone. Caring is a loaded word as a parent to a child you are responsible for keeping that child alive, protecting him from hurt, harm, or danger, making sure he is well-mannered and presentable, keeping him healthy, and of sound mind and this is no simple task.
Curators do the same from finding new artwork, sussing out the fakes and frauds, storing and reconditioning, authenticating, adapting to the changing society and how it interacts with art.
According to Hans Ulrich Obrist curator, basic rules are to safeguard art heritage, select new work, connect to art history and display that work.