Looking primarily at the family photographs in Anne Carson’s epitaph in book form, this essay explores how Nox multiply exhibits translation as the approximation of an imperfect nearness. The replica of a testimonial object Carson created after her brother’s passing, Nox is a resolutely non- narrative work of poetry structured around a belabored translation of a Catullan elegy, prose poems, photographs, and other fragments of memorial matter. Examining Nox as an intimate archive made public through Carson’s act of curation, my project draws attention to how this work analogizes translation to the understanding of affective life. Inspired by Marianne Hirsch’s critical work on vernacular photography, I demonstrate that the exhibited family photographs in Nox not only thematize Carson’s focus on illumination and darkness, but also materially amplify the inaccessibility of the felt lives they encapsulate. I argue that Nox, like the photographs it houses, models a memorial practice insistent simultaneously on materiality and the incomplete proximity to what remains. / text

This thesis explores the rich and provocative fields of interaction between Australian artists and museums from 1975 to 2002. Artists have investigated and engaged with museums of art, social history and natural science during this period. Despite the museum being a major source of exploration for artists, the subject has rarely been examined in the literature. This thesis redresses this gap. It identifies and examines four prevailing approaches of Australian contemporary art to museums in this period: oppositional critique, figurative representation, intervention and collaboration. / The study asserts that a general progression from oppositional critique in the seventies through to collaboration in the late nineties can be charted. It explores the work of three artists who have epitomised these approaches to the museum. Peter Cripps developed an oppositional critique of the museum and was intimately involved with the art museum politics in Melbourne during the mid-seventies. Fiona Hall figuratively represented the museum. Her approach documented and catalogued museum tropes of a bygone era. Narelle Jubelin’s work intervened with Australian museums. Her work has curatorial capacities and has had real effect within Australian museums. These differing artistic approaches to the museum have the effect of contesting history and expanding narrative within museums. / Curators collaborated with artists and used artistic methods to create exhibits in Australian museums during the 1990s. Artistic approaches are a major methodology of museums seeking to contest traditional modes of history and expand narrative in their exhibits. Contemporary art has played a vital, curatorial, role in the Hyde Park Barracks, Museum of Sydney, Melbourne Museum and Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, amongst other museums. While in earlier years artists were well known for their resistive approach to the art museum, this thesis shows that artists have increasingly participated in new forms of representation within art, social history, and natural history museums. I argue that the role of contemporary art within “new” museums is emblematic of new approaches to history, space, narrative and design within the museum. (For complete abstract open document)

This study departs from the observation that since the late 1980´s educational programmes for curators have been established and since then expanded greatly. The programmes are part of a process of institutionalization and professionalization of the role of the curator within the international contemporary art field where the role as such has gained much power. Even though many statements have been made about this relatively new phenomenon of curatorial studies, there is a lack of sufficient research. The intention of this study is therefore to examine the educational programmes as such. The selection of 15 programmes has been made with the purpose to include early as well as newly established and to cover a wide geographic area. The starting point has been to ask what kind of knowledge and role of the curator the programmes are given prominence to. Using Michel Foucault´s and Norman Fairclough´s theory and methods on discourses I examine the programmes as a discursive practice. The analysis shows that there is a strong coherence within the field of the programmes and certain ideals, conventions and procedures are shared among them. The programmes are highly dependent on the professional field of curators – individuals as well as institutions are frequently being invited to lecture and support the students. The application procedures make sure that students who are willing to adopt to given ideals and norms, are being accepted. Furthermore the ideal role of the curator has been defined with the following concepts – new institutionalism, an expanded working field and discursive curating. The curator is highlighted as creative, critical and independent. These concepts have been singled out and made explicitly unique for the role of the curator by the programmes although aspects have clearly been taken from the role of the artist and the critics. The result has been a stronger competition between these positions. The programmes are institutions that promote the curator as an important and irreplaceable agent and to claim even a stronger position new assets have been singled out in the form of a theoretical and academic capital.         Educational programmes included in the study: École du Magasin, Grenoble, Whitney Independent Study Program, New York, Curating Contemporary Art, Art Royal College of Art, London, De Appel Curatorial Programme, Amsterdam, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, MFA Curating, Goldsmiths, London, CuratorLab - Curatorial Program for Professionals in Arts, Crafts and Design, Konstfack, Stockholm, Curating Art - International Master Programme in Curating Art, including Management and Law, Stockholm university, Curatorial practice, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, Post-graduate Programme in Curating, Zürich University of the Arts, PhD-programme Curatorial/Knowledge, Goldsmiths, London, Cultures of the Curatorial, Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, CuMMA - Curating, Managing and Mediating Art, Aalto University, Helsinki, PhD-programme Curating, Zürich University of the Arts in collaboration with the university of Reading, Praxis Master’s Programme, Finnish Art Academy, Helsinki.

The remarks on this subject stem from the conditions spatial works engender in the encounter with the viewer. The aim has been to provide the reader with a framework within which to place individual experiences of the works. The exhibition Spatial Works, to which this research paper is connected, exemplifies variations within spatial work. By organizing an exhibition around this context, the variations presented is fleshed out. The research preceding the exhibition has resulted in the development of a specific terminology; an articulation of different practices in installation art. Psychodramatic, Thespian, Temporal and Permutation are here seen as mannerisms of spatial works of art. The expanded significance presented in this paper is a feature of composition, as the dramatic condition characterizes the encounter between object and subject. The polyphony of information encountered by the viewer is not only created by the art work itself, but also by its signifying composition, so to say `al fresco´ of the work, of which the observer gains certainty of the pieces spatiality as well as understands of the work of art. / WIRE, Critical Writing and Curatorial Practice

This thesis explores the rich and provocative fields of interaction between Australian artists and museums from 1975 to 2002. Artists have investigated and engaged with museums of art, social history and natural science during this period. Despite the museum being a major source of exploration for artists, the subject has rarely been examined in the literature. This thesis redresses this gap. It identifies and examines four prevailing approaches of Australian contemporary art to museums in this period: oppositional critique, figurative representation, intervention and collaboration. / The study asserts that a general progression from oppositional critique in the seventies through to collaboration in the late nineties can be charted. It explores the work of three artists who have epitomised these approaches to the museum. Peter Cripps developed an oppositional critique of the museum and was intimately involved with the art museum politics in Melbourne during the mid-seventies. Fiona Hall figuratively represented the museum. Her approach documented and catalogued museum tropes of a bygone era. Narelle Jubelin’s work intervened with Australian museums. Her work has curatorial capacities and has had real effect within Australian museums. These differing artistic approaches to the museum have the effect of contesting history and expanding narrative within museums. / Curators collaborated with artists and used artistic methods to create exhibits in Australian museums during the 1990s. Artistic approaches are a major methodology of museums seeking to contest traditional modes of history and expand narrative in their exhibits. Contemporary art has played a vital, curatorial, role in the Hyde Park Barracks, Museum of Sydney, Melbourne Museum and Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, amongst other museums. While in earlier years artists were well known for their resistive approach to the art museum, this thesis shows that artists have increasingly participated in new forms of representation within art, social history, and natural history museums. I argue that the role of contemporary art within “new” museums is emblematic of new approaches to history, space, narrative and design within the museum. (For complete abstract open document)

This thesis presents three main arguments. First, that curating in national museums is a process of meaning making and that the exhibitionary meaning is situated in and mediated by culture, thus, the products of curatorial work, i.e. the exhibitionary complexes are complex political and cultural constructions. Second, that the exhibitionary complexes final visual outcome, i.e. the exhibitionary complexes images and texts result in the presentation of mythological constructs of Byzantium as the only truth to their audiences. Third, that what is finally communicated through the presentation of mythological constructs of Byzantium is national identity and dominant cultural values. The latter is effected through the representation of the Byzantine Empire as part of the identity of the dominant cultural group of the country to which each national museum belongs. National identity is communicated through the exhibitionary complexes, either by suggesting historical continuity of the contemporary national identity of a country s dominant cultural group through Byzantium, as in the case of the Greek national museums, or by undermining the very idea that Byzantine history, European history and British history are so very different, as in the case of the British Museum. Both interpretations are culturally constructed realities . The above approaches are explained through the investigation of exhibitionary meaning around Byzantium, by identifying and analysing the nature and cultural functions of the presuppositions that are involved in each museum s curatorial practices. These presuppositions are the cultural ideas, values and beliefs of the involved dominant cultural groups on Byzantium and on their own identity. My identification and analysis of these presuppositions includes research on the historical, political and cultural context of each museum, the culturally accepted history and art history literature of each country on Byzantium, as well as research on museum archives. By explaining and using the curatorial concepts of democratisation and demystification , adopted and adapted to the practices of the museums under study, and by analysing the British and Greek interpretations of Byzantium, which make themselves apparent in the images and texts of the British and Greek exhibitionary complexes , I provide a cultural account of the making of exhibitionary meaning, explaining contemporary perceptions of Byzantium, its use in identity making and its relation to national politics. By doing this, I also explain the implications of those presuppositions to the making of exhibitionary meaning, and I provide an explanation of how and why the power system of the exhibitionary complex is still in play although we are shifting into the era of the Democratic museum (Fleming, 2008). The concluding remarks of the thesis include suggestions for the further development of the curatorial practices of democratisation and demystification.

This study, entitled African modernism and identity politics: curatorial practice in the Global South with particular reference to South Africa, postulates that perceptions of African identity in curatorial exhibitions are changing, moving towards the intercultural views generated by Africans themselves. African identity politics is investigated in relation to critical ideas on African modernism and post-Africanism, in conjunction with similarities with Nicholas Bourriaud’s concept of altermodernism. The research focus falls within the Global South as a geo-political location, with particular reference to South African artworks and their curation. In this qualitative study, an investigation is launched of curated exhibitions dealing with identitarian issues. A critique is set up on curatorial approaches on African identity as presented at seminal exhibitions, from the 1985 exhibition, Tributaries: a view of contemporary South African art (curated by Ricky Burnett), through the 1990s Johannesburg Biennials, to more recent exhibitions such as Documenta XI (2002, curated by Okwui Enwezor) and Africa remix: contemporary art of a continent (2004-2007, curated by Simon Njami), as well as the Tate Liverpool exhibition Afro modern: journeys through the black Atlantic (2010, curated by Tanya Barson and Peter Gorschlüter). Along with a critique of curatorial intentions, these exhibitions are reviewed in order to explore the representation of African modern identity. This study considers how, after postcolonialism and postmodernism, binary differences such as Western/African and black/white have become less pronounced, due to globalising processes, resulting in interculturalism and transnationalism. This study captures the shift away from the centrality thinking of postmodernism and postcolonialism, not in terms of white superiority, but in terms of a reconstruction of the modern, in order to situate Africa as a product of globalisation. The study hypothesises that transmutation has occurred, rendering society as culturally intermixed, and thus dismantling essential racial stereotypes. The study rather investigates identity exchange in terms of translation, where the understanding of difference is considered in terms of changing understandings of difference itself through globalisation. In order to surpass stereo-racial boundaries, this study postulates that identitarian understanding is now transconscious, pluralised to the point of being racially exchanged. The exhibition Trans-Africa: Africa curating Africa challenges and transmutes stereotypes of backwardness, exoticism and dislocation in perceptions of Africa within the curatorial realm, and aims to elicit new frameworks to interpret African art. The curatorial objective is to posit a contemporary understanding of African identity within the public domain: in a space where terms like race, culture, tradition or self/other need not form the basis of identitarian understanding in Africa. The outcome of such an understanding is explained through the concept of the transmutation of culture, that problematises differences in cultural translation and trans-consciousness. This results in a transnational and global understanding, no longer limited to the understanding of African identity with regard to diasporic or nomadic conditions. As such, cultural intermixing and trans-consciousness conveys that within changing curatorial perceptions, the issue of who has the right to comment on whom is fading. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Visual Arts / unrestricted

The thesis examines the evolving realtions of the aesthetic and conceptual aspects in exhibition-making after the 'conceptual turn' that took place in the late-1960s and instigated key transformations in the aesthetic condition of art and contemporary curatorial practice. Drawing on a broadly construed and variously manifested conceptualism pervading the growing field of curating since 1990s, the thesis focuses on investigating the relation between the aestheti and conceptual dimensions of three exhibitions that have had a significant impact on the postconceptual development of curating. In doing so, it aims to construct an alternative genealogy that reaffirms the significance of the aesthetic element, and so to reconstruct curatorial practice from the perspective of an Aesthetics of Curating. This trajectory unfolds a non-unitary Curatorial Aesthetics that emerges and develops together with the conceptual shift offering a revisionist perspective to dominant practices and discourses today that tend to devalue or repress aesthetic modes of production. The driving force of the thesis is neither to affirm aestheticism nor simply reversing the received positions. Instead, the investigation of aesthetics - as the poetics of an exhibition and a philosophical understanding of the experience offered - provides a reading that contests the emphasis placed upon conceptualism in order to revise those relations and established assumptions, and enable us to understand contemporary aspects of curating that have been downgraded. The thesis focuses on three case-studies, which mark important shifts in the conceptual development of curating from 1969 to 2007: When Attitudes Become Form: Works-Processes-Concepts-Situations-Information (Live in Your Head), curated by Harald Szeemann. Kunsthalle Bern (1969); Les Immateriaux, co-curated by Jean-Francois Lotard and Thierry Chaput, Centre George Pompidou, Paris (1985); Documenta 12, under the artistic directorship of Roger Buergel and chief curatorship of Ruth Noack, Kassel (2007). By exploring the different ways in which these exhibitions accommodate, engage with, and define aesthetic experience in relation to their conceptual modes, the study provides an alternative account of Curatorial Aesthetics that attains its transformative potential and political efficacy in the present through the invention of new sensations that incite new modes of thinking and acting.

This research examines how the practice of curating has been used to further counter-hegemonic agendas in public art institutions since 1989. The central aim is to provide a fuller, contextualised, and medium specific understanding of the how the institutional exhibition might be used to challenge the hegemony of neoliberalism and the post-political consensus politics that sustains its dominance. It provides insights, through both historic case studies and reflective practice, that problematise the idea that the institutional art exhibition is a viable medium for counter-hegemonic critique, or represents the ideal space for the development of an agonistic public discourse. This thesis presents collaborative research undertaken with Tate Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University. The research presented both extrapolated from, and contributed to, the development of an exhibition, co-curated with Tate Liverpool, entitled Art Turning Left (8 November 2013 – 2 February 2014) and a supplementary publication of the same name. The first section investigates how the idea that curators can counter neoliberal dominance, through institutional exhibition-making, developed. It draws from analyses of previous exhibitions, and the theory of Chantal Mouffe, in order to critically evaluate the curatorial application of counter-hegemonic critique and agonistic practice. It also provides a review of how exhibitions (held in major art institutions since 1989) have articulated politics, in order to determine their relationship to neoliberal dominance, and to identify significant gaps in the dialogue facilitated by these institutions. These analyses provides the theoretical and contextual grounding for the final two chapters, which provide a rationale and critical evaluation of my own attempt to develop an alternative counter-hegemonic curatorial strategy for the exhibition at Tate Liverpool. They document, and analyse, the areas of dissensus, and the ideological and pragmatic limitations that emerged, in trying to realise these theoretical propositions (in practice) in a public art museum. The thesis therefore provides a critical framework for the development of an alternative practice that positions the exhibition as a form of post-political critique and specifically targets the hegemonic role that institutional exhibitions play in reinforcing class distinctions and devaluing nonprofessional creativity.