Publicly funded art institutions in Sweden are tasked with the mission of making contemporary art available and accessible to the citizens. This thesis investigates three cases of publicly funded art institutions in Sweden, namely Göteborgs Konsthall, Malmö Konsthall and Liljevalchs Konsthall. The study examines the exhibitions presented by the institutions during the fall of 2023 and how they are curated to be inclusive or exclusive towards visitor groups. By using a model of curatorial values in conjunction with a constructed model of the exhibition as social space, inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s concept “social space”, this research will reveal different strategies used by the institutions for mediating curatorial intentions through the exhibitions.    Empirically the thesis is based on observations of three exhibitions and their visitors and interviews with exhibition hosts. The material is used to examine how the institutions work towards different audiences and how curatorial decisions influence visitor behaviour within the selected institutions.    The results show that the three cases differ in curatorial decisions and values. Further, the social space model used indicates that institutions differ in how they award agency to visitors. The analysis shows that visitors, by acting in unpredictable ways, contribute to the social space of exhibitions in ways not intended by the curator.     In conclusion, this study shows that the mission of the municipality-driven art institution is multifaceted and holds challenges when attempting to engage a broad audience while displaying exhibitions of high artistic integrity. The curatorial choices reflect in the audience and these choices therefore determine who will partake in the exhibition. The curator therefore plays a crucial role in how the exhibitions work with inclusivity.

This paper explores through Donna Haraway's storytelling practices feminist approaches to collaborative writing. Employing a phenomenological qualitative research approach, the thesis aims to analyze how Haraway herself exercises feminist writing and facilitates the learning of collaborative storytelling. The first research question: How does Haraway practice storytelling while simultaneously situating herself as well as others, is focused on investigating Symbiosis, Symbiogenesis and the Lively Arts of Staying with the Trouble, a chapter from Haraway's publication Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016). Drawing on the qualitative analysis carried out through the process of phenomological re-telling, two case studies are presented. The two publications The Books of the Books, edited by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in association with dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012 and Critical Zones – The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, edited by Peter Weibel and Bruno Latour building on the exhibition Critical Zones: Observatories for Earthly Politics in 2020 are examined in terms of their curatorial and editorial orientations in order to answer the question: How can the position of a curator perform as a multidisciplinary editor without resigning to its own singularity or acting omnisciently? In the proposed practice of a phenomological approach of re-telling, it is referred to Rosi Braidotti's remarks on the nomadic subject, along with feminist modes of (academic) writing, as motivated by scholars such as Mona Livholts and Nina Lykke. The thesis demonstrates that collaborative storytelling and writing directs the emphasis on methods of citation and referencing, just as their various possible layouts. In highlighting these, the paper also reveals the challenges of such writing to produce perceived hegemonic knowledge while not being collaboratively situated.

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.

[pt] O projeto expográfico da trigésima segunda Bienal de São Paulo Incerteza Viva se reveste de possibilidades de estudos sobre representações do espaço, integrados a ações da arte, arquitetura e urbanismo, para estruturar plataformas curatoriais em sistemas - teórico e prático - de análises conjunturais do espaço social. / [en] The exhibition design of the 32nd Biennial of São Paulo Live Uncertainty grounds possibilities on studies of space representations integrated to action forms of art, architecture and urbanity, for structuring curatorial platforms in systems - theory and practice - of analytical conjunctions regarding social space.

This study unites the burgeoning academic field of exhibition histories and the critiques of race-based exhibition practices that crystallised in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. It concerns recent practices of presenting and contextualising black creativity in British publicly funded art museums and galleries that are part of a broader attempt to increase the diversity of histories and perspectives represented in public art collections and exhibitions. The research focuses on three concurrent 2010 exhibitions that aimed to offer a non-hegemonic reading of black creativity through the use of non-art-historical conceptual and alternative curatorial models: Afro Modern (Tate Liverpool), Action (The Bluecoat), and a retrospective of works by Chris Ofili (Tate Britain). Comparative exhibitions of the past were typically premised on concepts of difference that ultimately resulted in the notional separation of black artists from mainstream discourses on contemporary art and histories of British art. Through a close and critical textual analysis of these three recent exhibitions, which is informed by J.L. Austin’s theory of speech acts (1955), the study considers whether, and to what extent the delimiting curatorial practices of the past have been successfully abandoned by public art museums and galleries, and furthermore, whether it has been possible for British art institutions to reject the entrenched, exclusive conceptions of British culture that negated black contributions to the canon and narratives of British art in the first place. The exhibition case studies are complemented and contextualised by an in-depth history of the Bluecoat’s engagement with black creativity between 1976 and 2012, which provides a particular insight into the ways that debates about representation, difference and separatism have impacted the policies and practices of one culturally significant art gallery that is frequently overlooked in histories of black British art. With reference to the notion of legitimate coercion as defined by Zygmunt Bauman (2000), the study determines that long-standing hegemonic structures continue to inform the modes through which public art museums and galleries in Britain curate and control black creativity.

With the outbreak of COVID-19, the Swedish government allocated specific financial support to cultural practitioners, however, excluding curators from this assistance. As a result, a group of engaged professionals formed the Swedish Curators’ Association, marking a recent effort in curatorial self-organization. This study aims to understand and illuminate the phenomenon of curatorial self-organization and how the experience of self-organizing is understood by curators in 2022. It investigates the past and current personal lived experiences of four curators through phenomenological methodological, and theoretical approaches. Next, the study explores how their perception correlates with the current curatorial lifeworld. At the core of this study is the hypothesis that in a consolidated lifeworld, curatorial self-organization becomes a model of a joint phenomenological body, functioning as a mechanism of sustainability, balance, and orientation due to the diversity of curatorial practices and experiences of its members. Archival materials and four interviews are at the core of the research. Study results showed that curatorial self-understanding and perception of self-organization are formed very individually; therefore, it would be inaccurate to generalize the phenomenon without having that in mind. Additionally, several internal and external factors played a significant role in the latest formation and perception of the phenomenon. The study also revealed that previous experiences of curatorial self-organizations have not been present in today’s active curatorial lifeworld, existing as familiar yet distant memories. Finally, the study goes beyond its initial hypothesis to find that the current attempt to self-organize curatorially in Sweden can be equated to a tool for curators to self-define, articulate the changing curatorial roles, and re-understand the essence of the profession.

This project examines opportunities for history exhibition design practices. Research into museum studies and creative work in typography, photography, graphic design and architecture result in curation and design of a prototypical exhibit about the granite quarrying industry of Stonington, Maine.

Continuous Curatorial Conversations is a practice-led exploration of conversation, both as a medium and as a tool for capturing supplementary histories of the curatorial. The primary question of this research project is how the medium of conversation can be explored to write supplementary histories of the curatorial which thus far have been omitted from extant publications on the subject. Three important sub questions guide this exploration. First, what is and has been the role of conversation within the curatorial? What are the possibilities and limitations within the medium of conversation? What roles do conviviality and hospitality play within the process of conversation? This thesis reflects upon a series of curated projects that explore the sp/pl/ace for curatorial conversation and also reviews a collection of one-to-one recorded conversations conducted by the author, including conversations with Alfredo Cramerotti, Hedwig Fijen, Mel Gooding, William Furlong and Sarah Lowndes. Sites of fieldwork include: the 54th Venice Biennale; Manifesta 8, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art; and Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2012. Through these projects and related recordings it unpicks the norms and possibilities of what and when one can record on the subject of the curatorial. The hypothesis of this study is that a great deal of curatorial activity is locked up in conversation, yet a disproportion makes it to the pages of the history of the field. Furthermore, in its clean transcribed form it misrepresents the fragility and nuance of the original exchange. The theoretical context of this research looks at Nicolas Bourriaud’s notion of Relational Aesthetics, the writing of Maria Lind and Paul O’Neill, with a focus on Audio Arts. A new methodology relating to curatorial conversation and its recording has therefore been identified as ‘critical conviviality’. The writing relating to Continuous Curatorial Conversations research takes the form of four books. The book ‘An Introduction’ comprises the PhD thesis and sits next to a bespoke online platform www.continuous-curatorial-conversations.org which hosts a selection of audio recordings collated during the research process. The books ‘Continuous’, ‘Curatorial’, and ‘Conversations’ unpack the lineage and context of Alexandra C.M. Ross’s practice and projects conducted during her research and are to be read in no strict order. The new knowledge resulting from this thesis and relating practice is the attention to the subtleties of conversation and its capture as it relates to the instigation, recording and presentation of semi-private matters in semi-public contexts.

Cette thèse vise à interroger la façon dont les biennales internationales d’art contemporain, en tant qu’événements culturels et premiers temps d’historicisation des oeuvres et des artistes, contribuent à la fabrique des imaginaires de l’altérité. Le cadrage chronologique de notre recherche s’ancre à partir de 1989, date qui correspond à un « tournant global », un changement de paradigme qui aurait eu pour effet de repenser les rapports de domination et les logiques de centre/périphérie, notamment dans le champ de l’art contemporain. L’internationalisation de l’art contemporain et le renouvellement des cadres de pensées que l’on rattache au « tournant global » ont donné lieu à l’émergence d’un processus de labellisation de la différence, dont témoignent des catégories artistiques et esthétiques telles que « art non-occidental » ou « art global », porteuses d’imaginaires renouvelés que ce travail de recherche entend analyser. Notre démarche, qui s’appuie sur un corpus de six expositions ayant marqué le champ des événements culturels internationaux, est volontairement pluridisciplinaire et vise à considérer l’hétérogénéité du matériel qui compose ces expositions. En premier lieu, la mise en lumière des discours expographique résulte de l’analyse conjointe de trois composantes : les écrits, à partir desquels nous proposons une typologie spécifique qui considère la fois les intentions qui président à leur production et les usages qui en sont faits ; les pratiques artistiques, qui dans le cadre des biennales sont au service du discours expographique ; et les gestes de mise en exposition qui sont propres au dispositif médiatique spécifique des biennales. En deuxième lieu, la réalisation d’entretiens et la collecte d’archives ont permis de circonscrire le contexte d’énonciation et l’intentionnalité des événements. En tant que dispositif médiatique à part entière, le catalogue d’exposition a également donné lieu à une méthodologie adaptée à l’ensemble des éléments (discursifs et non discursifs) qui le caractérise. Plus particulièrement, les écrits de connaissances que l’on y trouve ont fait l’objet d’une analyse sémiolinguistique permettant de mettre en lumière les processus de concrétisation des concepts, et donc de saisir les imaginaires et valeurs qui sont attachés. L’approche privilégiée pour analyser ce corpus permet ainsi d’articuler à la fois les spécificités de chaque exposition (c'est-à-dire leur individuation à travers l’articulation de leur concept et de leur dispositif) et leur inscription dans un réseau (en tant que résultat d’un processus de réécriture), vis-à-vis du thème de l’altérité. / This research aims to examine how contemporary international art biennials, considered as cultural events and as first step in the historicization process of works and artists, contribute to the making of « otherness » as an imagined community. The chronologic frame of our research is anchored in 1989, which correspond to the « global turn », a shift of paradigm that would have led to the rethinking of domination relationship and the logic center/periphery, especially in the field of contemporary art. The internationalization of contemporary art and the renewal of the frameworks of thought that are often connected with the global turn have led to a process of labeling the difference, as evidenced by artistic and aesthetic categories such as « non-western art » or « global art » that carry renewed representations that this research intends to analyze. Our approach, which is based on a corpus of six exhibitions that have marked the field of international cultural events, is deliberately multidisciplinary and aims to consider the heterogeneity of the material that composes these exhibitions. First, we highlight the expographic discourses from the analysis of three components : the writings, from which we propose a specific typology that considers both the intentions that preside over their production and the uses that are made of them ; artistic practices, which in the context of biennials are at the service of the expographic discourse ; and the gestures of exhibitions which are characteristics of the specific media device of the biennials. Secondly, interviews and the collect of archival documents have led us to circumscribe the context of enunciation and the intentionality of the events. As a media device in its own right, the exhibition catalog also gave rise to a metholody adapted to all the elements (discursive and non-discursive) that characterize it. More particularly, the writings of knowledge have been the subject of semiolinguistic analysis to highlight the processes of concretization of concepts, and thus have led us to grasp the artistic values that are attached to the imagined otherness. The preferred approach to analyze this corpus thus makes it possible to articulate the specificities of each exhibition (i.e their individuation through the articulation of their concept and their device), and their inscription in a network (as a result of a process of rewriting) at the same time.

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.