the art of CURATION

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One summer’s day a few years back found me and my friend Ella on Carnaby street in London. The candy-coloured boutiques framed the aloof, white façade of the building we were about to enter: the Museum of Youth Culture, a pop-up museum with a shop upstairs, and an exhibition space underneath. Weaving our way downstairs through photography catalogues, t-shirts and posters, we had high hopes for an exhibition of photography of the past century’s youth cultures in the UK. Instead, we found a room – a single introductory paragraph about something or other, which included the curator’s name, and a few walls of photos, all neatly labelled with the photographers’ names and nothing else. We made a polite turn of the room, occasionally pointing out interesting hairdos or a picture of a child making a defiant face to the camera, and then we left, feeling vaguely disappointed but mostly bored and unfulfilled.

In a sense, the exhibit had done exactly what it was meant to – it had shown us pictures of youth culture in the UK over the decades. But it had done little more than that. It pointed, it said Look at this, isn’t it cool? and had nothing more to say on the matter. There was no explanation for the pictures, no history or context provided, or even a description of where, who, or what. There was no rhyme or reason to what we had been shown – there was no story.

The art of curation, of good curation, is the art of telling a story. It is the weaving of history, context and objects (whether that be art or artefact) and bringing them together into a tapestry that presents an overall narrative. The audience should start at one end with the set-up of a story and be led by the curator to its conclusion. . It is not enough to simply fill a room with things that all vaguely fall under the same header, a google image search could do that.

To demonstrate what I mean, it would help to compare this exhibit with another. In 2015, the V&A museum in London held an exhibition that had previously been on at the Met in New York –Savage Beauty, an exploration of the career of fashion designer Alexander McQueen. The show’s curators at both the Met and the V&A displayed an intimate understanding of both the themes of McQueen’s work, and the progression of his work, techniques and ideas. Most importantly, they understood that the audience needed context in order to appreciate what they were looking at. The curators displayed McQueen’s work in its proper context; they explained both through text and visuals how the gothic, the natural world, Romanticism, Scottish nationalism, combined with the events of his own life were all integral influences on his work over the years.

Furthermore, the exhibit at the V&A, in particular, lent a sense of chronology and order to the story of McQueen’s work by focusing on the progression of his career, beginning with his earliest collection and ending with his final collection before his death in 2010 Unlike the exhibit at the Museum of Youth Culture, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty had a story which was strengthened by, a demonstrated, understanding of McQueen’s personal life and history, his inspirations and, importantly, of his work itself.

Of course, Savage Beauty had a pool of resources, staff and money that the Museum of Youth Culture’s exhibit did not – I cannot fault the curator for not being able to pull off the scale and spectacle that Savage Beauty’s curators were able to, nor can I deny that the curators almost certainly had more time, and certainly more funds, to research the exhibit. However, the ethos of the exhibit is one that is transferrable.

An exhibit does not need beautiful set pieces or soundscapes to tell a story, although they do add to the theatre of curation. What it needs is coherency and cohesion. Why are these objects being displayed together? Why are they being displayed in the order and manner that they are? Where do they come from? In the context of youth culture, it could have been a story of the rise and fall of different youth subcultures. It could have done a deep dive into a particular time in history. It could have focused on festivals, raves, punks, goths, mods, teddy boys, rude boys, northern soul. It could have featured more historical information, more context. It could have explained the reasons why any of these subcultures came to be. It could have been a study on the very need for a youth culture in the first place.

Images, artwork or items out of context mean very little to the casual observer, such as myself and my friend. It was as if we were shown individual frames of a movie and were expected to understand the story from that. Perhaps if we had come with a preexisting knowledge base, we could have made the connections about what the curator had been trying to tell us – as I don’t doubt that they understood the connections between the images they had chosen. Unfortunately, however, we didn’t have such knowledge, so instead of being taken on a journey, given a history lesson or, indeed, told a story, we looked at some pictures, shrugged, and then resisted the urge to buy overpriced artbooks as we made our way out of the gift shop and back onto Carnaby street to find something else to do with the rest of our afternoon.

[Grace Murray - they/them]

left image: expired film by Hannah Wylie theThe moon fills half the sky, yet seems smaller than usual. Perhaps it’s nearer. Through a translucent wall I can see myself; more a fraction than a true representation, face fuzzy, hair rendered in a single, solid block. Opposite me a woman is seated. She is far more detailed – short black hair contrasts with her pale face, around her glows a blueish hue. She seems to have been painted with a thick brush, all her features are strong, yet none dominates the other. My mind knows she’s important.