Curatorial Thinking: Exhibition as Medium

The special exhibition, where objects are grouped together for a limited time to elucidate a particular thesis or argument, has been a key curatorial practice since the establishment of the public museum.But all exhibitions, whether time-bound or “permanent,” tell stories, communicate meaning, and establish values by presenting objects and ideas mediated through space. This course will examine how curators, exhibition designers, and educators construct aesthetic, historical and didactic narratives, and how they deploy different modes of interpretation such as text, images and digital components to complement objects. Assignments will include the preparation of an exhibition using Google SketchUp, entailing interpretive components and objects/images. Weekly assignments will focus largely on curatorial practice and interpretation, including writing labels and wall texts. Midterm presentations will be an opportunity to workshop the proposed exhibition. One exhibition critique is to be posted to the class website during the semester, and there will other short assignments. This course is a prerequisite for MA students intending to submit an Exhibition QP. As in other QP tracks, topics should come out of a pre-existing paper or project. The faculty advisor under whom the original paper was written, together with the instructor of this class, will share advising for the project. Deadlines and other aspects of the QP process will remain consistent with other tracks. 3 credits. Satisfies the digital literacy project requirement. MDP.