Some Aspects of Curatorial Work in Art Museums and Galleries

Abstract

In modern art museums and galleries curators play an important role not only in managing artefacts and collections, reviving, and interpreting them, but also developing a variety of exhibitions and art projects. The difficulty of implementing such projects in parallel to the scientific initiatives, requires other types of knowledge (philosophical, religious, aesthetic, etc.) as their success largely depends on the curator, who, in fact, often takes over the role of a manager as well.

Exhibitions in art museums are often curated by the people who at the same time are the staff members, although these responsibilities can be delegated to the professionals who work at the other institutions and may be specifically invited to participate in the project. Sometimes such functions can be entirely suggested to the others, such as the artists, educators, or art critics. The situation in this regard has changed considerably over the last twenty years: now there exists a pool of freelancers or independent curators who are not affiliated with any specific institution and use their own idiosyncratic ways of organizing exhibitions. They are invited to administer special exhibitions or are offered curation of a wide range of projects both inside and outside the system of the institution or online.

Obviously, the specifics of curatorial activities within diverse institutions (museums, galleries, festivals, contemporary art biennials) differ from each other and have their own features that determine direction of art projects, methods and means of their implementation. The article discusses these features and characteristics, as well as the main trends of modern curatorial practice on the examples of several curatorial projects implemented at the European Art Institute and Albertina Museum (Vienna, Austria: Niko Pirosmanashvili's exposition Niko Pirosmani - A Wanderer Between Worlds. Curator: Bice Curiger, 2018-2019).