Making An Exhibition is a new feature of cura. which investigates different aspects of curating and exhibition making. Though rather than contributing to the proliferation of curatorial debate, bolstering critical theory or examining exhibition paradigms, it concerns itself instead with the more practical and ‘hands on’ aspects involved in the making an exhibition. It intends to examine how an exhibition is staged and how this plays part in its subsequent reception, providing a partial answer to precisely what the set-up of an exhibition entails.
Chapter 2: Emily Pethick / The Showroom, London
by vincent honoré
V.H. I am very interested in discussing spaces, in particular the very notion of programme and direction. My first conversation for cura. was with Pierre Bal-Blanc, the director of CAC in Brétigny. I thought that maybe we could start by talking about The Showroom as a space, and its history.
E.P. The Showroom was established in the East End of London in 1988 by David Thorp, and had two further directors, Kim Sweet and Kirsty Ogg, before I took over in 2008. read more »
ARNOLD BODE and the perfect combination of history environment and contemporary
by lorenzo benedetti
“He not only had the sense to see the necessity of a documenta, but he had also a sense of quality.” (Gerhard Richter)1
Arnold Bode is certainly among the most exceptional figures in the history of art of the last century, if one thinks of the impact of one of the most significant exhibitions of international art of the twentieth century, the Kassel-based documenta, which he wanted and created. A project born from the need to shed light on the artistic production of the latest generations belonging to the years of oppression and dictatorship in Germany in the 1930s, which had prevented any real freedom of expression. read more »
Talking to Walls. Momentum – 6th Nordic Biennial
by marianne zamecznik
“We designed a sequence of events to be perceived in time along a predefined path. This path led viewers through constant confrontations of forms and colors; those already stored in the memory with those that succeeded.” (Wojciech Fangor and Stanislaw Zamecznik)1 read more »
Gregor Schneider. Ten Years After
by ulrich loock
In 2001 Gregor Schneider received the Golden Lion for the work installed in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Ten years later it is time to consider his complete oeuvre, which ultimately entails asking if it even makes sense to rely on the problematic and much contested notion of an oeuvre in discussing the pieces,
installations, and exhibitions that have been presented under the artist’s name over the years. Indeed, the notion of the oeuvre has been problematic for a long time, as it implies the idea of an artist who stands at the origin of artefacts that he or she produces and places in the world, as objects submitted to his or her own reflection, and to a public who would recognize them as that creator’s achievements and ultimately read them as exemplary expressions of his or her mind, desires, and concerns. read more »
Re-reading the Classic
by francesca cavallo
It hardly made the news in Italy, but in London, where I live, I could not but read with a mixture of anger and sinister amusement the story, reported by British newspapers, of an ancient Roman statue which has undergone ‘cosmetic surgery’. According to the news item (The Guardian, BBC News etc.), our Prime Minister has commissioned the reconstruction of the missing parts of a sculpture of Venus and Mars (they were missing an armand a penis respectively), a sculpture which was ‘borrowed’ from an Italian museum to decorate his headquarters in Palazzo Chigi. read more »
Free Speech
by raimar stange
The issue of free speech seemed to have been definitively settled after the second World War, at least as far as Western democracies were concerned. This is not the case. Even in the West the private monopoly of the media and its more or less direct link with political decision-makers increasingly block progress and reform. This is true not only in Italy. read more »
Stripes & Colours
by maria laura corsini
