This dissertation investigates the theory and praxis of curating web-based exhibitions from the perspective of a practitioner (the author Marialaura Ghidini). Specifically, it investigates how the web as a medium of production, display, distribution and critique has had an impact on the work and research of independent curators and the way in which they configure their exhibition projects. With a focus on the last decade, curatorial work of production and commission is considered in relation to technological developments, previous theoretical work into the mapping of exhibitions online and the analysis of case studies which are paralleled with the author’s own exhibition projects. What has emerged from this combination of theory, practice and comparison of approaches is the rise of a tendency in contemporary curatorial practices online: the creation of exhibitions that migrate across sites—online and offline—and integrate different components—formats of display and distribution—giving life to exhibition models which this study names as those of the 'extended' and 'expanded'. The figure of the curator as mediating ‘node’ is another characteristic emerging in relation to this tendency. Its features are identified through the observation of six case studies, which include Beam Me Up, CuratingYouTube and eBayaday, and interviews with their curators, and three projects that the author organised with the web curatorial platform or-bits-dotcom, 128kbps objects (2012), (On) Accordance (2012) and On the Upgrade WYSIWG (2013), which experiment with modes of integrating web-based exhibition with other exhibition formats, such as the gallery show and print publishing. Through combining contextual review and curatorial practice, this study names the tensions existing between online and offline sites of display and modes of production and commission, offering critical and practical ground work to discuss the tendency of migrating exhibitions and integrating formats within the larger context of curating contemporary art.

Dynamic patterns of cultural exchanges and transformations in the era of globalisation have been disputed subjects in contemporary curating. This has fundamentally transformed the conception of art exhibitions. Today, with numerous biennials and international exhibitions in different cities, curating has become an international arena where the dynamics and complexities of the world intersect. However, contemporary curating, instead of presenting diverse narratives and subject matter, often presents an internationalised or institutionalised consensus of a global art community, based on the hegemony of the dominant culture. Following this argument, this dissertation examines the practice of contemporary curating, questioning whether its framework fixates on limited frames of representation. And it asks the following questions through my own curatorial practices: firstly, what curatorial strategy can be employed for illustrating the complex narratives of contemporary art? Secondly, to what extent can this practice challenge situated knowledge and given frame of contemporary art and curating? And thirdly, how should the practice be evaluated in terms of enriching the narratives of contemporary art exhibitions? These questions should not be discussed and answered within a single and dominant framework, since the term globalisation itself is illusionary and even vaster than any definitions. Therefore, in order to keep this argument specific and reliable, the research will focus on a few related discourses and specific case studies of contemporary art. This includes close reflection on my own curatorial practices with contemporary Korean artists, which aim to depoliticise a uniform representation of Korean art. It will also involve indepth research on the different artistic subjectivities of the artists, and some historical and critical studies on Korean art and a few related exhibitions. Based on these studies and reflections, I will attempt to articulate my curatorial practices and conceptions in order to suggest some possible modes for curating complex narratives of art, with less erasing and effacing of realities, but with more visualisation of the overlap of diverse narratives. As mentioned, the discussion will be developed within specific contexts, narratives and practices of contemporary art. With the specific case studies, this practice-led research will develop a particular argument on curating beyond representation, moving across the complexly illustrated contours of contemporary curating and globalisation.

"Muitos, como dizia Artaud, referindo-se aos críticos, "gostariam que a nossa aprendizagem fosse feita entre quarto paredes, fechada no laboratórios", mas nos fazemos cena aberta, cara a cara com o publico. "Many", as Artsud used to say, referring to the critics, "would like our learning to take place within four walls, enclosed in laboratories", but we rather do it openly, face to face with the public" (Itaqui, 2005). "Fields are greener in their description than in their actual greenness. Flowers, if described with phrases that define them in the air of the imagination, will have colours with a durability not found in cellular life" (Zenith, 2001). This thesis proposes Critical Portfolio as a new format for methodological exchange between curators of contemporary visual arts. The research took place between the years of 2001 and 2006 and was based on the curotion of exhibitions with strong visible idiosyncratic approaches to selection and display (these becoming the research questions). It wasfollowed by the documentation and critical reflection of their associated methodologiesand final outputs, and resulted in a Critical Portfolio with clear links threaded between thevarious sections. The research is an enquiry into the nature of process and impacts upon themethodological visibility of emerging fields of curatorial practice and research.This charting of curatorial activity is divided in two parts:Projects included (with relation to the research questions) and projects excluded (with no clear relation to the research questions). Part 1- The projects included (4th year Expo, B-Sides - The Sculpure Show, Art Cup and A-Tipis) have token place in various European institutions and propose specific approaches to selection and display.Part 2- Projects excluded (Ver?o, Her?is e ViI es, Gran Pacman etc) do not show a clear relation to methods of selection and display. Each individual project in Part 1 is organized according to a common structure consisting of Project Image, Exhibition Pro-Forma, Concept Development, Portfolio Images,Correspondence between Curator and Artists, and Process Documentation. This structure, which takes a different configuration in each of the projects, allows for a clear and objective search for specific elements and contributes to new possibilities for comparison. The relation between the projects and the curatorial methods of selection and displaydenote critical preoccupations which become synthesized in the Curatorial Programms. This thesis identifies a "gap" in the structure of curatorial handbooks and proposes an approach that will not only close it, but bring more depth to an arising discussion around curatorial methodologies. Imagining this Critical Portfolio turns into a chapter of a curatorial handbook (synthesis of a curator's practice), the handbook is thus turned into a library/archive hosting each individual curator's documented methodology (Capital Culturalas repository of multiple curatorial practices is described in the Conclusion).

This thesis constitutes a new approach to contemporary exhibition studies, a field of research that has until now dedicated little attention to connections between exhibitions of contemporary art and those of architecture. The late 1970s saw a 'historical turn' in the architectural discourse, which alluded to the rediscovery of history, after its abandonment by all the Modern masters, and developed in close alignment with architecture’s project of autonomy. This thesis proposes a reading of this period in relation to the formative moment for contemporary curatorial practices that brought art and architecture together in unprecedented ways. It takes its starting point from the coexisting and often contradictory spatial representations of art and architecture that occur in exhibitions, which constitute the inherently paradoxical foundations – and legacy – of today’s curatorial discourse. The timeframe of the late 1970s, which is this study’s primary focus, marks the beginning of the institutionalisation of the architecture exhibition: The opening of the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1977), the founding of ICAM in Helsinki (1979), and the first official International Architecture Biennale in Venice (1980), all of which promoted architecture within the museum. This period also saw the idealism of the social, political and artistic revolutions of 1968 finally dissipate, marking the emergence of a new conservatism. The concurrent postmodernisation of the cultural discourse, together with the post- industrial era’s changing economic climate, prompted a need to redefine the purpose and position of the architectural profession. The resulting new architecture not only developed within the space of art, but also substantially reshaped it, provoking numerous artistic and curatorial responses, which continue to this day. In order to explore and elucidate the connections between the fields of architecture, contemporary art and curatorial practices, the chapters consider the often-overlapping notions of architecture as object, concept, process, media and context through period case studies, including examples of the ‘void shows’ and artist museums, Ungers’ building of the DAM, Friedman’s Street Museum, Frankfurt’s Museumsufer, Matta-Clark’s and Kabakov’s respective practices and Portoghesi’s ‘Strada Novissima’ at the first Venice Biennale of Architecture. Surveying the separate models of architectural displays, drawn from different institutional and disciplinary contexts of the late 1970s and early 1980s, this thesis questions how these different exhibition typologies have expanded the definition of architecture. It also investigates the ways in which contemporary curatorial and art practices have been informed and shaped by architecture, and, how these curatorial representations of architecture adhere to the wider cultural, political and economic contexts. Ultimately, the thesis reconsiders the past as a way to grasp the present, and, through the analysis of the socio-political and economic contexts of the case studies, it builds a critique of the globalised hyper-acceleration of contemporary curatorial production.

Qu’est-ce que le curating ? Quel ensemble de pratiques et de représentations ce terme évoque-t-il ? Cette thèse se propose de répondre à ces questions en envisageant la pratique curatoriale sous l’angle du design, entendu ici comme discipline du projet. Face à la confusion des termes pour qualifier les acteurs du curating, il convient d’abord d’en préciser la définition en observant les différentes acceptions favorisées par la discipline et leurs effets. C’est pourquoi la première partie propose une archéologie de la pratique curatoriale en analysant la variété des dispositifs et des acteurs animés par le souci de l’art. Cette approche transhistorique permet de mettre en évidence la complexité des enjeux que soulève l’exposition à l’heure de la cohabitation des conservateurs, commissaires et curateurs. En s’appuyant sur une expérience de terrain en médiation, la seconde partie aborde la mise en œuvre de l’exposition comme une activité de projets portée de main de maître par la figure du curator. Occupé à proposer des bouquets d’œuvres aux couleurs variées selon les cahiers des charges et les contextes dans lesquels il intervient, ce dernier se comporte in fine comme un designer capable de proposer des réponses aux problèmes de l’hypermodernité. En tant que discipline, le design est ici d’un double secours : De la conception à la réception d’une exposition, il permet de mesurer le dessein essentiel à tout projet ; et dans un second temps, il permet de dessiner des portraits que ces acteurs véhiculent en variant les poses et les postures. La troisième partie propose enfin de comprendre le curating à travers le prisme du dispositif oraculaire delphique. Son but est d’élargir la réflexion en opérant un recul plus à même d’éclairer la problématique contemporaine de l’autorité curatoriale. Cette relecture à partir de l’oracle antique initie une nouvelle compréhension des expositions et des plis de la création contemporaine, en interrogeant le processus de transformation d'un display en produit touristique séduisant, capable de mobiliser des foules aux quatre coins de la planète autour de visions enjouées, pour un temps de l’art qui semble passé de la contemplation béate à une attention distraite. / What is curating? What kind of practices and representations does it bring up? This PHD propose to answer those questions by imagining curatorial practise under design perspective. Curating actors being hard to name from each others, a definition must be given while observing names used by different discipline and their effects. That is why the first part propose an archeology of curatorial practice analysing the diversity of displays and of caregivers. This transhistorical approach underlines the complexity of what's at stake in exhibition nowadays. As for the second part, a field work in museum public relations helps to analyse the set up ofan exhibition from a project point of view, the curator being the conductor. Busy proposing sets of pieces of art responding to contexts and shaped by constraints of the field in which he works, he finally behave just like a designer able to answer the different questions of an hypermodern world. As a study subject, design here can help in two different ways : From conception to final installment of an exhibition, it helps understand what lies beneath the very beginning of the project and draws portraits of curatorial actors. Finally the third part propose to understand curating through the lens of delphic oracular practices. It aims at widening the perpectives of study to better understand curatorial problematics. This reinterpretation from antic oracle perspective allows a new understanding of contemporary exhibition and creation and questions transformation processes that turns an exhibition into an appealing touristic product, in a time where art seems gone from mute contemplation to a zapping attitude.

The museum and the gallery are two sites in Canada that are instantly imagined as spaces that house the history and culture of the white man. This statement of course is a generalization. However, in my youth, this is how I visualized these particular sites of culture housed here in the west. I know now that there is a rich Indigenous counter-history within the still white spaces of the gallery and museum. My personal interest is with this Aboriginal narrative as it is voiced by artists, writers and curators whose work is tied to the gallery or museum space. This thesis is a reflection on my own praxis as a curator that has since 1997 taken me to both museum and gallery sites. The existence of Indigenous public institutionssuch as an Aboriginal community museum or an Aboriginal contemporary art gallerycreates a red shift within a communitys cultural imaginary. In Canada, many Aboriginal artists, curators, scholars, educators and writers have engaged tirelessly for many decades in decolonizing cultural work that centers Aboriginal voice, history and collective memory. In my curatorial work as co-founder and director of The Red Shift Gallery: an aboriginal contemporary art space in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, I am indebted to, and inspired by, the experience, example, creativity and wisdom of these cultural workers who continue to forge the way: infiltrating, appropriating, and re-making existing institutions and discourses, as well as creating new Aboriginal-centred events, places, and images, they are shifting the boundaries of what is considered to be relevant both in art, in history, and in the present. In this thesis, I will discuss my emerging praxis as a curator. In the Introduction: Nachimowin-My Story, I reflect on my early life in Cumberland House, Saskatchewan and the cultural lessons I have retained from living with my Cree grandparents, Peter and Margaret Buck, and, the colonial lessons I have learnt in the wider community of Cumberland House. I also talk about the founding of the Misti Saghikan Historical Committee in Cumberland House, which is still to this day a fledgling project. In Chapter 1: Methodology in Motion, I examine how my thinking about curatorial work has been influenced by a number of Aboriginal educators and cultural theorists, including Marie Battiste, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Graham Hingangaroa Smith, and the cultural workers who participated in the Making a Noise conference and publication, among others. In Chapter 2: The Red Shift, I talk about co-founding The Red Shift Gallery with Joi Arcand and I discuss selected exhibits that I have curated and programmed as director of this gallery and as an independent curator. In chapter 3: Othered Women, I discuss an exhibition I curatedOthered Women (2008)that examine the discursive and material violence of imperialism and its impacts on the lives of Aboriginal women, past and present. In 2008, I was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts Aboriginal Curatorial Residency at aka gallery, Saskatoon. As part of this residency, I developed a three-gallery exhibition, Othered Women, which foregrounds the agency and voice of six contemporary Aboriginal women artists. In selected works, these artists testify to the role of Aboriginal women in the fur trade and the formation of Canada as a country, and, to the multiple ways in which Aboriginal women have been fixed in mainstream Canadian histories under the sign of the Other. This exhibit reveals how these six artists are appropriating, dismantling and transforming the cultural controls of colonial discourse, and, how they are giving voice to their own situated Indigenous-centred knowledge(s) across a range of visual media, including textiles, photo-based work, and installation.

The museum and the gallery are two sites in Canada that are instantly imagined as spaces that house the history and culture of the white man. This statement of course is a generalization. However, in my youth, this is how I visualized these particular sites of culture housed here in the west. I know now that there is a rich Indigenous counter-history within the still white spaces of the gallery and museum. My personal interest is with this Aboriginal narrative as it is voiced by artists, writers and curators whose work is tied to the gallery or museum space. This thesis is a reflection on my own praxis as a curator that has since 1997 taken me to both museum and gallery sites. The existence of Indigenous public institutionssuch as an Aboriginal community museum or an Aboriginal contemporary art gallerycreates a red shift within a communitys cultural imaginary. In Canada, many Aboriginal artists, curators, scholars, educators and writers have engaged tirelessly for many decades in decolonizing cultural work that centers Aboriginal voice, history and collective memory. In my curatorial work as co-founder and director of The Red Shift Gallery: an aboriginal contemporary art space in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, I am indebted to, and inspired by, the experience, example, creativity and wisdom of these cultural workers who continue to forge the way: infiltrating, appropriating, and re-making existing institutions and discourses, as well as creating new Aboriginal-centred events, places, and images, they are shifting the boundaries of what is considered to be relevant both in art, in history, and in the present. In this thesis, I will discuss my emerging praxis as a curator. In the Introduction: Nachimowin-My Story, I reflect on my early life in Cumberland House, Saskatchewan and the cultural lessons I have retained from living with my Cree grandparents, Peter and Margaret Buck, and, the colonial lessons I have learnt in the wider community of Cumberland House. I also talk about the founding of the Misti Saghikan Historical Committee in Cumberland House, which is still to this day a fledgling project. In Chapter 1: Methodology in Motion, I examine how my thinking about curatorial work has been influenced by a number of Aboriginal educators and cultural theorists, including Marie Battiste, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Graham Hingangaroa Smith, and the cultural workers who participated in the Making a Noise conference and publication, among others. In Chapter 2: The Red Shift, I talk about co-founding The Red Shift Gallery with Joi Arcand and I discuss selected exhibits that I have curated and programmed as director of this gallery and as an independent curator. In chapter 3: Othered Women, I discuss an exhibition I curatedOthered Women (2008)that examine the discursive and material violence of imperialism and its impacts on the lives of Aboriginal women, past and present. In 2008, I was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts Aboriginal Curatorial Residency at aka gallery, Saskatoon. As part of this residency, I developed a three-gallery exhibition, Othered Women, which foregrounds the agency and voice of six contemporary Aboriginal women artists. In selected works, these artists testify to the role of Aboriginal women in the fur trade and the formation of Canada as a country, and, to the multiple ways in which Aboriginal women have been fixed in mainstream Canadian histories under the sign of the Other. This exhibit reveals how these six artists are appropriating, dismantling and transforming the cultural controls of colonial discourse, and, how they are giving voice to their own situated Indigenous-centred knowledge(s) across a range of visual media, including textiles, photo-based work, and installation.

This thesis investigates the evolution of curatorial practice in Britain and the United States in the first four decades of the twentieth century through an analysis of the formative years of two museums, the Wallace and Frick Collections, and of two academic programmes, the Fogg Art Museum Course at Harvard University and the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London. Through these case studies, this study charts the emergence and development of a specialised curatorial knowledge base that was influenced by traditions of connoisseurship and criticism and shaped by discussions surrounding art history’s disciplinary parameters taking place in the museum, the press, the art market and the university. This investigation makes visible the processes through which art museum curators, keepers and directors collaborated in the creation and standardisation of their own expertise and contends that this quest was fundamentally intertwined with struggles for authority, agency and professional recognition. The manifestation of this expertise resulted in a renegotiation of institutional power dynamics and gave rise to a new type of art museum leader: the connoisseur-scholar, who performed an important function in the art museum’s transition from a space dominated by gentlemanly amateurs to one in which academically trained art historians increasingly assumed positions of authority. Asserting that the formation of this knowledge base cannot be separated from the academic institutionalisation of art history and curatorial training, this study demonstrates that individuals operating in the spheres of the art museum and the university were engaged in a dialogue through which the core values of these respective endeavours were realised. Detailing these processes and relationships and locating them within the context of a shift towards aesthetic idealism, this thesis provides insight into the historical origins of modern-day curatorial practice in Britain and the United States.

This practice-based research discusses critical responses to the structural pressures of 'independent' curating under neoliberalism. The study argues for politicising project-making in accordance with such values as equality, collective autonomy and interdependency. The argument contributes to current debates about the practical plausibility of politicising project-related modes of production in the expanded field of art. The thesis acknowledges that 'independent' curators are culturally and economically dependent on the same apparatus that they want to contest. My work approaches this basic contradiction as a practical and conceptual challenge that prompts a series of questions as to how to practice within the apparatus, whilst at the same time resisting the social pressures of the very same system. The methodology merges sociological analysis of the social conditions of 'independent' curating with the tacit knowledge of the forms of curatorial resistance elicited by the pressures discussed. Thus, I set aside the aesthetical contents of curatorial projects and focus on their social forms. Utilising Walter Benjamin s concepts from The Author as Producer (1934), I argue that to politicise project-making, an 'independent' curator is required to intervene in the social apparatuses of curatorial production. The thesis reveals a number of social pressures, which manifest themselves in 'independent' curatorial practice and analyses tactics that 'independent' curators develop in response to those pressures. I interpret the examples of curatorial practice, submitted to evidence my argument, both as symptoms of those social pressures and as sites of politicised, curatorial intervention. To analyse politicised curating, I introduce two central terms 'the apparatus of project-making' and 'radical opportunism'. These terms facilitate the analysis of the intrinsic contradictions and ethical complexities of politicised curating. I apply this conceptual framework to the different aspects of project-making, analysing temporal structures, modes of governance and competitive features of the apparatus, alongside politicised, curatorial responses to the pressures discussed. In order to discuss curatorial tactics that respond to the social pressures of project-making, I introduce new terms, such as 'free/slowness', 'neither a project nor an institution' and 'interdependent curating', discussed in the consecutive Chapters.

Cette thèse interroge le champ de pratiques et de positions discursives appelées récemment « curating ». L’approche que nous avons choisie est celle de l’analyse des écrits des curateurs d’art contemporain. De nature très variée, ils nous permettent de percevoir leurs conceptions à partir de leurs pratiques d’organisation d’expositions et des diverses activités de présentation publique de l’art. Il s’agit de traiter la proximité, ainsi que la distance, entre la construction d’une théorie curatoriale et la pratique à travers un ensemble de règles et d’opérations de normalisation décidées par une communauté disciplinaire et professionnelle. La notion de champ de curating est abordée à partir des diverses conceptions sociologiques et philosophiques qui nous conduisent à approfondir la question de l’écriture des curateurs sur un terrain concret au sein des expositions. À travers des cas historiques, nous abordons la question des traces écrites laissées par une exposition ; nous examinons également certains problèmes associés à la construction de l’histoire des événements artistiques d’art contemporain. La dernière partie de cette recherche est consacrée à la question des stratégies discursives de positionnement des curateurs à partir des publications parues depuis les années 1990. Ces formes discursives constituent entre autres la base de l’enseignement des formations curatoriales récentes. / This thesis questions the practice field and discursive positions recently called curating. The perspective we have selected is the analysis of writings by contemporary art curators. Of varied nature, these texts allow us to discern their understanding of their practice of organizing exhibitions and diverse activities for the public display of art. With the purpose of tackling the proximity and the distance between the construction of curatorial theory on one hand, and on the other, curatorial practice as determined by a set of rules and processes decided by a disciplinary and professional community. The notion of the curatorial field is approached through various sociological and philosophical concepts that lead us to deepen our inquiry about writing to a concrete field of exhibitions. Selected historical cases allow us to address the issue of written traces left by an exhibition; equally important, we examine certain problems related to the construction of the history of art events in contemporary art. The last part of this research is devoted to the question of discursive strategies of positioning by curators, starting with publications that first appear in the 1990s. These discursive forms, among others, constitute the foundation of teaching in recent curatorial training.