Contemporary Curating, Artistic Reference and Public Reception: Reconsidering Inclusion, Transparency and Mediation in Exhibition Making Practice

184 Pages·2021·16.119 MB·English

by  Stéphanie Bertrand

Contemporary Curating, Artistic
Reference and Public Reception
Contemporary Curating, Artistic Reference and Public Reception under-
takes a unique critical survey and analysis of prevailing group exhibition
making practices in Europe, the UK and North America.
Drawing on curatorial literature and two in-depth case studies of group
exhibitions, Bertrand advocates for a mode of curatorial practice that
secures the content of artworks, in contrast to prevailing open-ended, inde-
terminate approaches. Proposing a third exhibition type beyond the cur-
rent binary exhibition ontology that opposes art historical narratives to
curatorial installations or Gesamtkunstwerk, the book directly tackles the
enduring critique of curating as a mediating activity that produces same-
ness in group exhibition contexts by establishing artistic equivalences. The
book relies on the principles of analytical philosophy to assess how dif-
ferent exhibition making approaches fix reference and determine artistic
reception, reintroducing a standard to evaluate exhibitions beyond personal
taste and thematic consistency. Bertrand ultimately proposes an alternative
conception of practice that affirms the renewed relevance of the institu-
tional group show in the present context.
Contemporary Curating, Artistic Reference and Public Reception will be
of interest to academics, researchers and students working in museum and
curatorial studies, visual cultures, art theory and art history programmes.
Art theorists and critics, as well as curators of contemporary art with a
research-based practice, should also find much to interest them within the
pages of the book.
Stéphanie Bertrand is a Canadian curator and researcher based in Greece.
She holds a PhD in Museology from the School of Architecture at Aristotle
University, Thessaloniki, and an MFA Curating from Goldsmiths College,
London. She is the recipient of the prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship,
Onassis Foreigner’s Fellowship and Hannah Arendt Prize in Critical Theory
& Creative Research. She is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global
Postdoctoral Fellow at Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture & Technology at
Concordia University, Montreal, and ICS-FORTH, Heraklion.
Routledge Research in Art Museums and Exhibitions
Routledge Research in Art Museums and Exhibitions is a new series focus-
ing on museums, collecting, and exhibitions from an art historical perspec-
tive. Proposals for monographs and edited collections on this topic are
welcomed.
Absence and Difficult Knowledge in Contemporary Art Museums
Margaret Tali
Art Museums of Latin America
Structuring Representation
Edited by Michele Greet and Gina McDaniel Tarver
The Twentieth Century German Art Exhibition
Answering Degenerate Art in 1930s London
Lucy Wasensteiner
Curatorial Challenges
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Contemporary Curating
Edited by Malene Vest Hansen, Anne Folke Henningsen and Anne
Gregersen
Liberalism, Nationalism and Design Reform in the Habsburg Empire
Museums of Design, Industry and the Applied Arts
Matthew Rampley, Markian Prokopovych, and Nóra Veszprémi
The Venice Biennale and the Asia-Pacific in the Global Art World
Stephen Naylor
A History of Aboriginal Art in the Art Gallery of New South Wales
Vanessa Russ
Contemporary Curating, Artistic Reference and Public Reception
Reconsidering Inclusion, Transparency and Mediation in Exhibition Mak-
ing Practice
Stéphanie Bertrand
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Research-in-Art-Museums-and-Exhibitions/book-series/
RRAM
Contemporary Curating,
Artistic Reference and
Public Reception
Reconsidering Inclusion, Transparency
and Mediation in Exhibition Making
Practice
Stéphanie Bertrand
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2022 Stéphanie Bertrand
The right of Stéphanie Bertrand to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
ISBN: 978-0-367-53635-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-53636-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-08268-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
To my husband and my daughter

Contents
List of figures ix
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
1 The parallel rise of inclusion, transparency and curating 8
Origins of social exclusion 10
Diverging paradigms of exclusion 13
Axioms of exclusion and curatorial compatibility 14
Origins of transparency 17
Administrative and scientific conceptions of transparency 19
Curating, transparency and demystification 21
Polysemy and indeterminacy 25
Notes 28
References 28
2 Inclusionary practices: Representative diversity
and indiscriminate address 31
From universality to multiculturalism and from comprehensive
to open-ended, indeterminate exhibitions 32
Thematic curating 36
Rule-based exhibition formats 41
Curating’s educational turn 48
Popular appeal 51
Critical appraisal and nominal aesthetic judgment 52
Emancipation and subjecthood 56
Note 59
References 59
viii Contents
3 Transparent practices: Artistic reference and art world
distribution networks 63
Negating ideological mystification, hermeneutic flux
and global monoculture 64
The logic of transparency and opacity 67
Transparent exhibition making practices 71
Predication 72
Substitutivity 76
Rule-based exhibition formats 81
Vagueness versus ambiguity 82
Interchangeability and network circulation 86
Notes 88
References 88
4 Curatorial mediation: Openness, processuality
and indeterminacy 91
Curating and mediation 92
Pro- and anti-mediation stances in curatorial discourse 96
Tacit knowledge 100
Withdrawal 102
Co-production 105
Notes 109
References 109
5 Referential opacity: A new framework for practice 112
Referentially opaque (or non-referential) curating 114
One exhibition, two consecutive conditions of reference 117
Questions of theme and substitution within a large-scale
exhibition 132
Notes 146
References 147
6 Three corollaries: Instrumentality, assessment criterion
and bounded address 149
Instrumentality and singularity 149
Assessment criterion 155
Public reception: Bounded address 156
Note 160
References 160
Conclusion 162
Index 166
Figures
2.1 Serpentine Galleries, ‘Interview Marathon’, 28–29 July 2006 43
2.2 Olafur Eliasson, Echo house, 2007, monofrequency lights,
mirror foil, installation view: Manchester International
Festival, Opera House, 2007 44
3.1 Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, The Augustan Bridge at Narni,
1826, oil on paper, 48 × 34 cm 75
3.2 Gustave Courbet, Paysage Guyere, 1874–1876, oil on canvas,
46.5 × 55 cm, private collection 77
3.3 John Gerrard, Solar Reserve (Tonopah, Nevada), 2014,
simulation, dimensions variable 80
3.4 Olafur Eliasson, Still river, 2016, ice, stainless steel, plastic
sheet, wood, 1.2 × 10 × 2 m, installation view: Long Museum,
Shanghai, 2016 81
5.1 Installation view: ‘Baghdad/Space Cog/Analyst’ at Frith Street
Gallery, London, 2008 118
5.2 Installation view: ‘Baghdad/Space Cog/Analyst’ at Frith Street
Gallery, London, 2008 120
5.3 Installation view: ‘Baghdad/Space Cog/Analyst’ at Frith Street
Gallery, London, 2008 121
5.4 Gabriel Kuri, Sin título/Untitled, 2008, marble and shampoo
bottle, 94 × 62 × 2 cm, installation view: Frith Street Gallery,
London, 2008 122
5.5 Diango Hernández, Drawing (Your music has ideological
problems…), 2005, vinyl records, record stand, speakers,
tape, ink, 55 × 25 × 60 cm, installation view: Frith Street
Gallery, London, 2008 123
5.6 João Onofre, Untitled version (I See a Darkness), 2007, HD
video, colour, sound, 04’18”, variable dimensions 125
5.7 João Onofre, Every Gravedigger in Lisbon (Alto São João
Cemetery), 2006, digital c-print, detail of a set of 76.5 × 72
cm (each/ framed) 127
5.8 João Onofre, The Grey Guardian (working title), 2008,
photocopy of photocopy, no. 500, The Guardian, 30 June
2008, 42.1 × 29.7 cm, installation view: Frith Street Gallery,
London, 2008 128