Books
Jen Kavanagh welcomes an imaginative challenge to museum orthodoxy
Dreaming up ideas for exhibitions and collecting projects is a major perk of working in the field of curation, but it’s rare that our ideas can go beyond our institutions’ strategies or push boundaries into uncomfortable territories. In addition, the business of creating displays that sit outside our museums’ walls in places and spaces that offer rich dialogue and new audience engagement is often halted by logistical challenges or the desire to draw visitors through our doors.
The book Curatorial Dreams: Critics Imagine Exhibitions hypothetically removes these restrictions, offering exciting and innovative examples of how histories could be told in unfamiliar and non-heritage spaces, with great potential benefits to us as practitioners and to the communities who engage with the content.
The editors, Shelley Ruth Butler and Erica Lehrer, both work for universities, so the book is rooted in critical academic thinking that challenges the norms of museological practice. They observe: “Our idea is that working outside our comfort zones, in a constructive rather than deconstructive mode, can be a productive departure for scholars and academics… Such dreaming asks us to diversify our methods, while offering an opportunity to engage with wider audiences in new ways.”
The book seeks to address, and encourage dialogue around, the “tensions that divide museological theorists and museum practitioners”, by inviting curators and scholars to imagine exhibitions. The editors acknowledge that the deep investment these scholars have made in their research could offer practitioners new insight and fresh resources for use in exhibitions. Contributors come from a range of disciplines and span multiple countries, from Australia to South Africa, Poland to Chile – a fact that highlights a multitude of cultural challenges and sensitivities.
The curatorial dreams are divided into four parts. The first, “Curating in the Vernacular”, takes curatorial intervention out into the field. It includes papers from anthropologists such as Chandra Bhimull, whose vision involves presenting research on air travel within the African diaspora community of Barbados at the island’s international airport.
Bhimull’s dream follows visits to two exhibitions about travel and their lack of recognition of race within the discussion: her vision reflects on race, mobility and freedom from the perspective of someone from “a community of dispersed persons”. It is a very personal and engaging insight into a topic that has been scarcely explored.
The second part focuses on art installations that aim to push the limits of the art gallery as an institution. It includes a paper by Robb Hernández that aims to “interrogate the selective way in which Chicano art has been canonised in recent years in the United States by excluding histories of Aids”.
Part three, “Activating Art and History”, delves into challenging subjects and explores how “new curatorial strategies are being sought that might create sites of reconciliation, empathy… or inspire action.” Margaret Lindauer’s paper on the dispossession of Navajo people in New Mexico proposes using provocative questions to challenge audiences’ understanding. By asking “If a foreign government invaded your community, what would you do?” she hopes to get visitors to self-reflect, becoming implicitly inscribed in the exhibition’s narrative.
The last section contains papers from established institutions, such as the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and the Western Australian Museum in Perth, offering insight into how major museums can and are looking to transform what they offer. Butler’s paper “Museum without Walls” responds to “the contemporary marginalisation experienced by black Canadians, and attempts to present the African gallery as part of contemporary Canadian culture” through interesting, guided, participatory interventions.
Curatorial Dreams is far from a practical handbook, but it does inspire and challenge everyday curatorial practice. Some boundaries may be immovable, but that shouldn’t discourage curators from thinking big about how to communicate and engage with challenging subjects.
Jen Kavanagh is an independent curator and oral historian. She is also a mentor for the Associateship of the Museums Association programme
The book Curatorial Dreams: Critics Imagine Exhibitions hypothetically removes these restrictions, offering exciting and innovative examples of how histories could be told in unfamiliar and non-heritage spaces, with great potential benefits to us as practitioners and to the communities who engage with the content.
The editors, Shelley Ruth Butler and Erica Lehrer, both work for universities, so the book is rooted in critical academic thinking that challenges the norms of museological practice. They observe: “Our idea is that working outside our comfort zones, in a constructive rather than deconstructive mode, can be a productive departure for scholars and academics… Such dreaming asks us to diversify our methods, while offering an opportunity to engage with wider audiences in new ways.”
The book seeks to address, and encourage dialogue around, the “tensions that divide museological theorists and museum practitioners”, by inviting curators and scholars to imagine exhibitions. The editors acknowledge that the deep investment these scholars have made in their research could offer practitioners new insight and fresh resources for use in exhibitions. Contributors come from a range of disciplines and span multiple countries, from Australia to South Africa, Poland to Chile – a fact that highlights a multitude of cultural challenges and sensitivities.
The curatorial dreams are divided into four parts. The first, “Curating in the Vernacular”, takes curatorial intervention out into the field. It includes papers from anthropologists such as Chandra Bhimull, whose vision involves presenting research on air travel within the African diaspora community of Barbados at the island’s international airport.
Bhimull’s dream follows visits to two exhibitions about travel and their lack of recognition of race within the discussion: her vision reflects on race, mobility and freedom from the perspective of someone from “a community of dispersed persons”. It is a very personal and engaging insight into a topic that has been scarcely explored.
The second part focuses on art installations that aim to push the limits of the art gallery as an institution. It includes a paper by Robb Hernández that aims to “interrogate the selective way in which Chicano art has been canonised in recent years in the United States by excluding histories of Aids”.
Part three, “Activating Art and History”, delves into challenging subjects and explores how “new curatorial strategies are being sought that might create sites of reconciliation, empathy… or inspire action.” Margaret Lindauer’s paper on the dispossession of Navajo people in New Mexico proposes using provocative questions to challenge audiences’ understanding. By asking “If a foreign government invaded your community, what would you do?” she hopes to get visitors to self-reflect, becoming implicitly inscribed in the exhibition’s narrative.
The last section contains papers from established institutions, such as the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and the Western Australian Museum in Perth, offering insight into how major museums can and are looking to transform what they offer. Butler’s paper “Museum without Walls” responds to “the contemporary marginalisation experienced by black Canadians, and attempts to present the African gallery as part of contemporary Canadian culture” through interesting, guided, participatory interventions.
Curatorial Dreams is far from a practical handbook, but it does inspire and challenge everyday curatorial practice. Some boundaries may be immovable, but that shouldn’t discourage curators from thinking big about how to communicate and engage with challenging subjects.
Jen Kavanagh is an independent curator and oral historian. She is also a mentor for the Associateship of the Museums Association programme