‘Curator as … ’ constructions speak of a welcome self-reflexivity and plurality of approach, but they also almost inevitably stick in the craw. There’s a faint atmosphere of subterfuge about them, of borrowing the glamour or gravitas of another profession in an attempt to graft it onto one that we’re aware is, for all its possibilities, also commonly bound up with the grey, clerk-y stuff of fundraising and filling out loan forms. (Among these constructions, the worst offenders I’ve come across include ‘curator as anthropologist’, ‘curator as stylist’ and once, unforgivably, ‘curator as DJ’.) More importantly, the fashion for analogy in framing the figure of the curator points to a certain lack of self-confidence in the field, as though curating is an activity that can only be understood, or even validated, with reference to activities that exert a greater gravitational pull. Despite the explosion in curatorial discourse over the past couple of decades, despite the foregrounding of ‘star’ curators in innumerable biennale press releases, the feeling remains that the profession is at times still closer to the advertising copywriter who claims to ‘work in the creative industries’ than to the novelist who is simply and unapologetically a novelist.
Tom Morton, Frieze, March 2006
Morton raises a probing finger at the schitzoid nature of curatorial identity and a self-doubting nature verging on multiple personality disorder. Not long ago I had a conversation with two other artists on the curious necessity for the artworld to cleave to removed and isolated genres, ideas, or identities other than itself. Not to in order to speak about the world legitamately, but to give itself the legitamacy of speech. The 'hook' or 'treatment' of a cultural trope (Deller on anthropology), (Hirst on God), (Koons on money) gives artists a way in, but are these topics and correspondences necessarily rendered into titbits and buffet picking as the curator pays passing attention to a highly complex area? The gravitas of a gravitational pull is expanding, and does this drive for a heavyweight cause inevitably lead to a greater state of anxiety as curators desparately skim away at the surfaces of overlooked depths?
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