The Curatorial Conundrum

The Curatorial Conundrum is nearly off to print. The book looks at the burgeoning field of curatorship and tries to imagine its future. Both practitioners and theorists consider a variety of futures: the future of curatorial education, the future of curatorial research, the future of curatorial and artistic practice, and the institutions that will make these futures possible.

They examine the proliferation of graduate courses in curatorial studies over the last twenty years, and consider what can be taught without giving up what is precisely curatorial, within the ever-expanding parameters of curatorial practice. They discuss curating as collaborative research, asking what happens when the exhibition operates as a mode of enquiry in its own right. And they explore curatorial practice as an exercise in questioning the world around us, and speculate about what it will take to build new, innovative, and progressive curatorial research institutions.

Contributors include Nancy Adajania, Mélanie Bouteloup, Nikita Yingqian Cai, Luis Camnitzer, Eddie Chambers, Zasha Cerizza Colah, Galit Eilat, Liam Gillick, Vladimir Jerić, Koyo Kouoh, Miguel A. López, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Paul O’Neill, Tobias Ostrander, João Ribas, Sarah Rifky, Sumesh Sharma, Simon Sheikh, Lucy Steeds, Jeannine Tang, David Teh, Jelena Vesić, What, How & for Whom/WHW, Mick Wilson and Vivian Ziherl.

Edited by Paul O’Neill, Mick Wilson and Lucy Steeds, and published by the Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College/Luma Foundation and The MIT Press. Due in March/April 2016.