We're all curators, aren’t we? Through filters, hashtags and a few clicks of buttons, websites and apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow us to ‘curate’ our news, social feed and brand–image. When we move house we ‘curate’ our room furnishings and bookshelves. At parties,
the playlists are ‘curated’ to create a ‘curated’ mood. So, is curating today just a synonym for picking and choosing? Has the term been appropriate for the sake of pretension? As a student curator at the ICA through the Spiegel–Wilks Seminar for Contemporary Art, I learned that being a curator is far, far more than simply organizing and overseeing, despite what the dictionary definition of the job says.For the past two semesters my class has been working to curate a group show, entitled Do/ Tell, on display in the Project Space and Ramp Space at the Institute of Contemporary Art from April 22nd to August 16th. The exhibition explores how acts of storytelling construct ideas of home, family and identity through the works of Erin Bernard, Heather Hart, Rachelle Mozman and Akosua Adoma Owusu. Using our research on ICA’s 1994 exhibition Carrie Mae Weems as a jumping off point, we conversed with art professionals, travelled to New Orleans, proposed an exhibition and brought it to fruition—which involved meeting with the artists, producing a publication, organizing a programming series, procuring funding, marketing and more. Beyond the logistics of ensuring our choice of artists and artworks were represented, we worked to contextualize the exhibition—to ensure it's meaningful and necessary for our audience and community.
Needless to say, being a student curator required significantly more effort and brainpower than aggregating your Pinterest or Tumblr feeds. Regardless, if you want to visit the exhibition and use #DoTell on your ‘curated’ posts, we won’t object.
