Curating Communities
Wiring fragments of a human museum
I oftentimes fondly think about the curator or museum director through the lens of orchestra or concert halls where the artistic director or conductor runs the show. It is, indeed, easy to swap one for the other albeit either deal with a slightly diverse humanistic experience. Both work on experiences which intentionally transmit reactions, emotions… and lots more. Have you ever thought of it this way? I do know that museum directors are oftentimes perceived to be strange beings locked up in their ivory towers but this is not always the case.
Back to the orchestra conductor who would have a very clear task to handle. He would prepare well in advance for his commitments by carefully choosing his repretoire, selecting his focus with regards to taste and style, and putting together his choice of composers to showcase. In doing so he would keep his audience and publics clearly in mind, making sure to reach out and promote a repertoire with a vision and strategically chosen objectives. The more the director understands his publics and audiences, and the ways and means how these can be broadened to include new categories and identities, the more successful that concert or season would be. The quality, relevance and extent of impact falls foursquare on the director.
Let’s go back to the curatorial or museum director profile. The word “curator” comes from the Latin word curare, which means “to take care” albeit the term has been used and abused extensively. Indeed, the definition has expanded and contracted to include all sorts of ‘caring’ activities which, in effect, is not a contemporary development. In Ancient Rome, curatores were in charge of overseeing the bathhouses, aqueducts and sewers. In Medieval times, the curatus was a priest devoted to the care of souls. It is only with the advent of the first museum collections that the curatorial category also came to include the care of collections and artefacts. The modern curator is a trendsetter in today’s artworld, oftentimes working closely with art galleries promoting artist’s works and repertoires, be they up-and-coming, revelations or unknown quantities in search for recognition. Most of the modern curator’s work would also be about presenting the narratives and ambitions of contemporary societies, usher in new collecting trends and taste, and respond to the political climate of the time.
In comparison to the orchestra conductor, the art curator’s repertoire would be his network of artists, his orchestra would be his public and his ambition would be to bridge his public with his repertoire. More often than not however, the repertoire takes over his publics and there is rarely the case of bridging the two or perhaps orchestrating his public to connect, understand and experience his repertoire beyond the economics of values of art galleries and art markets especially if this happens beyond the museum institution.
The question then beckons. What type of curator, director or, more importantly. visionary or professional with a vision does the humanist museum possibly require?
‘A humanist museum is one led by a curator or a museum director who negotiates rather than sets the yardstick for meaning… while trying to bridge with a broad range of identities which together make up its corresponding community or communities.’
I don’t want this to read as a solemn declaration of principles, intentions and ambitions. It might be a snapshot of a future that might not happen at all, and which goes beyond creating buffers and interpretative mechanisms of a dying breed of art museums that oftentimes attract visitors and publics just for having seen the masterpiece, or just having been to the art museum that everybody talks about. I write about this topic elsewhere.
Much like the orchestra director, the curator of the humanist museum would orchestrate his museum experience in response to his corresponding community in a bid to promote a repertoire that stands for taste, vision and strategically chosen objectives. In a sense, he would be negotiating his personal preferences with the taste and ambitions of the community and his knowledge of those would by consequence become crucial, indeed, fundamental towards the success of the institution in reaching out to its community.
There is much that we can discuss which is participatory especially when it comes to programming. Francois Matarasso’s A Restless Art 2019 : How participation won, and why it matters is perhaps the latest comprehensive take on community and participatory art practice. I also read this ambition in Orhan Pamuk’s Modest Manifesto for Small Museums. There is no question for the author that what is needed is the museum of the future is the ordinary and the everyday…
‘We don’t need more museums that try to construct the historical narratives of a society, community, team, nation, state, tribe, company, or species. We all know that the ordinary, everyday stories of individuals are richer, more humane, and much more joyful.’
The Naqsam l-MUŻA project (Sharing MUŻA) which I write about elsewhere in English, and also in German, is a practical example of a curatorial practice that is community-driven. The methodology is straightforwardly simple. A community or a selection thereof is invited to visit the art museum, initiated to the museum experience so as to break the ice (especially if they would have never visited before), helped with their choice of artwork and invited to share and present their choice of artwork amongst family and friends. Their choice and the reasons for it is finally shared with the community within its public spaces.
For the humanist museum of the 21st century, particularly the art museum, the ambition would lie somewhere between Matarasso’s succinct summary of participatory practice and Orhan Pahmuk’s vision to re-create the world of single human beings in the museum of the future. Orchestrating the narratives of the community would certainly require a methodology, such as the Naqsam l-MUŻA (Sharing MUZA) project. The ambition would still be to bring forth the individual’s identity, perhaps through choices that are inherent to the museum experience, but which go a long way in shaping our humanist museum.
