Feb. 3 – 4, 2022
MA Curating Contemporary Design (in partnership with The Design Museum) at Kingston School of Art
Museums, too, find themselves in an existential crisis. Over the last few decades, according to a report of the US National Endowment for the Arts, “audiences for museums, galleries, and the performing arts institutions have decreased, and the audiences that remain are older and whiter than the overall population.” Long heralded as the bastions of a local and/or national culture, museums can often seem exclusive, elitist places unable, unwilling even, to open up to the social realities of the 21st century.
In this scenario, once more, participation promises to be a powerful remedy. And again, we must ask what is the best way of collectively and publicly redefining the role of a museum in the 21st century, considering the constraints and features of our times and the democratic principles we seek to fulfill. What would museum spaces look like to help fulfill these principles of genuine equality and inclusion? What would that mean for the curatorial process and also the role of the curator? And finally, is it possible to curate in a truly participatory way and what would that look like?
The workshop ran throughout two days and focused on two mind-mapping exercises:
Mind-mapping exercise 1: what do we mean by democracy?
Mind-mapping exercise 2: what do we mean by a democratic curatorial practice?
Team: Amelie Klein, Vera Sacchetti, and Jana Scholze (Kingston University)