4000 words 24 hours
Essay 2 (2000 words, 70%): Curatorial Proposal
This assignment is an exercise in curatorial writing and the preparatory steps of an exhibition proposal. Choose no more than five artworks either discussed in class or of your choosing (or a combination thereof) that in their grouping provide the basis for a small-scale exhibition with a clear, compelling and focused premise. You may choose any medium, e.g. painting, sculpture, installation, video, performance, etc. You can also include other objects outside of the five artworks, e.g. archival materials, historical objects, etc., if you think they would enrich the content and display. Submit as one Word document, each section identified clearly.
Your Curatorial Proposition comprises three parts, to be clearly identified in your submission:
1) Exhibition Proposal; 2) Wall Labels; 3) Checklist
1. The Exhibition Proposal (approx. 1000 words) situates the artworks/objects you’ve chosen within your curatorial framework and needs to assert the significance of your exhibition. If there is any desired programming to accompany the exhibition (e.g. symposium, panel discussion, performance, artist talk, etc.), include a brief description at the conclusion of the essay. If you have an exhibition location in mind, please include this information, but it is not mandatory.
An effective exhibition proposal should:
· succinctly highlight the strength of each individual work, attending to form and concept, and explain how the curated group of artworks provides illuminating and provocative lines of thought
· reflect careful thinking on relevant issues and ideas from the class. Original and critical reflection on established terms and theoretical frameworks will make your proposal more exciting and provocative
· use writing that is concise, elegant, and critical, but addresses a broader public than that of an academic paper (ask yourself if your language could be understood by a secondary school student or a member of a museum’s board of directors)
· keep quotations, footnotes and theoretical jargon to a minimum (footnoted references should not be necessary).
2. Your Wall Labels (150-200 words each) provide a brief and compelling explanation of the artwork, and if relevant, a sense of how it relates to the artist’s own biography and practice. Each label should also give a sense of how it broadly engages with the curatorial scheme. An effective didactic wall label should make the viewer want to return to the artwork to think about it further. You can find examples at various museums in the London area.
Examples:
Dinh Q. Lê
Vietnamese-American, b. 1968
Untitled, from the series Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness , 1998
C-print and linen tape
During his childhood in Ha Tien, a Vietnamese town near the border with Cambodia, Dinh Q. Lê witnessed violent incursions by the Khmer Rouge. In the late 1970s he and his family settled in the United States as refugees, and Lê later received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. The series Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness (1994-9) marked a significant moment in his practice, occurring around the time that Lê decided to return to Vietnam and make his home in Ho Chi Minh City. It is the first major series in which he used the method of interweaving strips of photographs, following bamboo mat weaving techniques he learned from his aunt during his childhood. Here he juxtaposes two different images associated with Cambodia: bas-reliefs of battle scenes from the 12th-century temple of Angkor Wat, and photographs of prisoners from the Khmer Rouge detention center known as S-21, now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Lê creates a dialogue between two episodes of Cambodian history that he sees as intrinsically rooted in violence, producing an alternative means of memorializing these victims.
Zarina Hashmi
Indian, b. 1937
Travels with Rani, 2008
Intaglio on Arches Cover buff paper
Edition of 25
Zarina has worked in a variety of media and forms. At the core of her practice is printmaking, especially woodcut, but also etching. Her practice raises broader issues concerning homelessness and dispossession in the modern world.
Travels with Rani maps the places that Zarina visited with her sister, against a background composed of the names of the places they traveled to written in Urdu. Although their trips took them to both India and Pakistan, the artist has deliberately left out the border in her diagram. Urdu, written in the nastaliq style of Persian script, was widely used by Muslims in India until Partition, when it became the official language of Pakistan, and its usage in India declined. About this the artist has written:
I chose Urdu not for the beauty of the calligraphy or the exoticism of its aesthetics. I was placing my work in a historical moment, capturing a time when one wrote and read in Urdu. Urdu was born in Delhi; Amir Khusrau called it Hindawi, the language of Hindustan. Now we are witnessing the slow death of this language in the same city.
3. Your Checklist provides an inventory of the artworks. Please provide thumbnail images with the following information:
1. The artist's name followed by year of birth and, optionally, place of birth).
2. The title of the work (italicized).
3. The date of the work.
4. The medium of the work.
5. The size of the work (cm or in.).
6. The current location of the work (e.g. private collection, museum, etc.)
Example: Vandy Rattana (b. 1980, Phnom Penh, Cambodia), Preah Vihear, 2008, digital C-print, 60 x 90 cm. Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.
**Formatting Guidelines:
· 12 pt. Times New Roman or Calibri font, double-spaced, 1 inch margins.
· Images embedded in text closest to first reference. Full image captions including source (see Formatting Guidelines document on class Moodle site).
· Consistent system of citation, either footnotes or in-text parenthetical, MLA or Chicago Manual of Style. Footnotes are typically used in art historical publishing.