Curation. The art of creating a story with a set of objects. To curate is to take a lump of clay and create a solid shape. As a pre-med student, many would believe that I don’t have the eye for such a thing. They would also have you believe that the idea of art is too abstract for a scientific thinker.
Let me respectfully disagree.
Science is an art of no comparison. Science is creating order out of chaos, taking a large amount of information and finding commonalities and facts where many could not pinpoint. For me, Science is knowing what the big picture is and being able to extract every small detail. Seeing underneath something that is already hidden, that is the true definition of a scientist.
Anyways, curation.
Art is a beautiful thing, in all of its forms, and photography has become an essential part of Art and American Culture. Pictures are a form of permanency, evidence of a time that is past. On Snapshot Day, first year Macaulay students took a photo that meant something to them, or at the very least had to do with New York. When I became one of the Lead curators for the Arts section of the STEAM Festival, an exhibition of Science Forward posters and photographs taken on Snapshot Day, I was very hesitant to undertake the task. Curating is a foreign thing, a country I’ve never visited but have always heard about. Where would I gain the background to understand what I was supposed to do?
As a first semester freshman in Macaulay Honors College, I took Seminar 1: Arts in New York City. During this semester, students went to see exhibitions at different museums at the request of their professors. After going to the New Museum, The Met and the Guggenheim Museum, I observed the commonalities between how formal exhibits were structured. Without these experiences, my work for the STEAM Festival would’ve been incomplete.
The Student Curators for the STEAM Festival had very different attitudes when it came to the Exhibition. Most of our time was spent discussing the work and the overall theme. My idea for the Exhibit was Destination Macaulay, a premise that summed up the eventuality of coming to Macaulay regardless of campus affiliation. This idea became the official theme for the Exhibit. The exhibit would attempt to revolve around the ideals of Macaulay with interjections of City Life.
The true test came when the photographs arrived at Macaulay. Hundreds of photos descended upon my curation team. Many felt overwhelmed by the amount and a feeding frenzy for the high quality photos commenced. I suggested choosing a theme before choosing photos to allow for a greater diversity in exhibitions a well as decrease the potential for arguments over photos. For myself, I decided on doing Transportation in New York and Peopling of New York, keeping in line with the theme of highlighting different parts of New York.
The task of curating takes time, energy and an eye for details. Having a vision, an idea about how everything falls into place is integral to the final project. The work of curators is not just that of a preserver but it is also creating something new. Curators should become more confident in their role as the conductor of a whirlwind of possibilities. The negative perceptions on curating, combined with years of poor advocacy on the parts of museums create a decrease in resources and shrink the job market. This will have lasting impact on collections and how they are interpreted.
In installing any work of art, a curator is very aware of how it will be seen or experienced by the viewer. Curator’s aim to ensure that the viewer’s response to the work is as useful, inspiring, and enjoyable as possible. The role if the curator is now shifting to focus more on audience engagement as opposed to specialized knowledge. The role of the curator isn’t dying, but the out-of-date definition is. Contemporary museums and art audiences have many options when it comes to their entertainment, and it is up to these organizations to make sure their programming evolves and stays competitive; otherwise, they run the risk of going extinct. Expertise still matters, for art historians in particular, because the knowledge of what these collections are in context adds to the permanence of the entire exhibit.
As a Pre-Med student, I never imagined holding two different positions titled Curator in my first semester of college. I opened myself up to change and pushed myself to create visions for the overall landscape of my life. Curation is the art of creating order out of a whirlwind of information.
