Recent years have seen a flurry of books about art, politics, and activism in the west. This is part of larger discussions on the role of the arts in society and reactions to the tumultuous world in which we live. Many have attempted to engage art institutions with the communities around them through exhibitions and public programmes. Until we decolonise collections, diversify workforces and change who is in power, we will not see a transformation in the art that is shown, how art museums function and who they serve.
Maura Reilly’s Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating focuses on the work of curators in developing exhibitions and collections displays in major western institutions between 1976 and 2017. It’s a useful introduction to the subject, offering context to our current position. It points to influential artists, thinkers, critics and curators, and references useful publications.
The book is divided into five sections, each with an overview and case studies that include descriptions of exhibitions and critical responses from the arts press. The examples are from the US and Europe, and generally from well-known spaces of contemporary art, such as the Venice Biennale, Germany’s Documenta and New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Reilly charts broad tendencies through the programmes that have had the biggest impact on mainstream discourse. She also highlights moments of censorship that must be considered – for instance, in the “1980s and 1990s, any US museum that received federal funding was forbidden to display work that made explicit reference to homosexuality or Aids”. And when the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland, announced its Ars Homo Erotica exhibition, a Law and Justice Party MP said that “just as pedophilic and zoophilic art does not exist, neither does homosexual art exist”.
In her introduction, Reilly explains “strategies of resistance”: revisionism, area studies and relational studies, weighing up their uses and limitations. A seasoned curator who is personally invested in this practice, Reilly maintains a strong critical voice throughout, with frequent statistical reminders of the lack of female artists and those of colour, and other layers of exclusion. For example, transgender artists are more excluded from sexually diverse exhibitions than gay men. As she points out, “counting is… a feminist strategy”. By including press responses to exhibitions, she reveals the inherent prejudice of the media.
Reilly’s study presents a narrow breadth of exhibitions in terms of geography, scale and context. Although this is acknowledged, it contradicts the book’s criticism of exclusion. By focusing on large museums, Reilly celebrates the moments of rupture in conservative structures as perhaps more radical than the continuous and admirable activism of small galleries.
Another oversight is the limited definition of curating. The author focuses solely on exhibition making, particularly with collections and existing work. She neglects crucial discussions around commissioning and omits the conceptually and physically varied spaces experienced through curating public programmes, engagement or learning.
While the #OscarsSoWhite and Black Lives Matter movements are mentioned, analysis of their impact is lacking. The book is, sadly, bound to big-hitter arts organisations and although this is interesting as an introduction to a field of practice, it is limited.
One study cannot do everything and I hope to see a range of sister texts published by Thames & Hudson that highlight work in different institutional and geographical contexts. For anyone interested in a rigorous, critical and political practice, this book should serve as the start of a long reading list.
One trend becomes clear through the book – while there have been important moments of representation and change in the past 40 years, the art world remains a space of exclusion. I will close, as the book does, with a call to action. We must change the systems of oppression and prejudice that override individual attempts at change. Analysis and discussion are crucial for this, but so is action. Let’s heed the words of the inimitable bell hooks, a US author, feminist, and social activist, whose strategy of “talking back” Reilly quotes: “Speaking… is not solely an expression of creative power; it is an act of resistance, a political gesture that challenges politics of domination that would render us nameless and voiceless.”
Elinor Morgan is senior curator at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
Maura Reilly’s Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating focuses on the work of curators in developing exhibitions and collections displays in major western institutions between 1976 and 2017. It’s a useful introduction to the subject, offering context to our current position. It points to influential artists, thinkers, critics and curators, and references useful publications.
The book is divided into five sections, each with an overview and case studies that include descriptions of exhibitions and critical responses from the arts press. The examples are from the US and Europe, and generally from well-known spaces of contemporary art, such as the Venice Biennale, Germany’s Documenta and New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Reilly charts broad tendencies through the programmes that have had the biggest impact on mainstream discourse. She also highlights moments of censorship that must be considered – for instance, in the “1980s and 1990s, any US museum that received federal funding was forbidden to display work that made explicit reference to homosexuality or Aids”. And when the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland, announced its Ars Homo Erotica exhibition, a Law and Justice Party MP said that “just as pedophilic and zoophilic art does not exist, neither does homosexual art exist”.
In her introduction, Reilly explains “strategies of resistance”: revisionism, area studies and relational studies, weighing up their uses and limitations. A seasoned curator who is personally invested in this practice, Reilly maintains a strong critical voice throughout, with frequent statistical reminders of the lack of female artists and those of colour, and other layers of exclusion. For example, transgender artists are more excluded from sexually diverse exhibitions than gay men. As she points out, “counting is… a feminist strategy”. By including press responses to exhibitions, she reveals the inherent prejudice of the media.
Reilly’s study presents a narrow breadth of exhibitions in terms of geography, scale and context. Although this is acknowledged, it contradicts the book’s criticism of exclusion. By focusing on large museums, Reilly celebrates the moments of rupture in conservative structures as perhaps more radical than the continuous and admirable activism of small galleries.
Another oversight is the limited definition of curating. The author focuses solely on exhibition making, particularly with collections and existing work. She neglects crucial discussions around commissioning and omits the conceptually and physically varied spaces experienced through curating public programmes, engagement or learning.
While the #OscarsSoWhite and Black Lives Matter movements are mentioned, analysis of their impact is lacking. The book is, sadly, bound to big-hitter arts organisations and although this is interesting as an introduction to a field of practice, it is limited.
One study cannot do everything and I hope to see a range of sister texts published by Thames & Hudson that highlight work in different institutional and geographical contexts. For anyone interested in a rigorous, critical and political practice, this book should serve as the start of a long reading list.
One trend becomes clear through the book – while there have been important moments of representation and change in the past 40 years, the art world remains a space of exclusion. I will close, as the book does, with a call to action. We must change the systems of oppression and prejudice that override individual attempts at change. Analysis and discussion are crucial for this, but so is action. Let’s heed the words of the inimitable bell hooks, a US author, feminist, and social activist, whose strategy of “talking back” Reilly quotes: “Speaking… is not solely an expression of creative power; it is an act of resistance, a political gesture that challenges politics of domination that would render us nameless and voiceless.”
Elinor Morgan is senior curator at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
