About Curating

Museum of Modern Art New York (MoMA), 1929.

Alexander Dorner & El Lissitzky, Kabinett der Abstrakten, 1927.

Raum der Gegenwart (Room of the Now), by Alexander Dorner and Lászlò Moholy Nagy.

“A historically important example for this discussion in regards to the collaboration of artists and curators in the organization of exhibitions within institutional frameworks was the collaboration between artist El Lissitsky and the visionary curator Alexander Dorner. Dorner desired a radically different curatorial mode, which would reintegrate cultural practices into everyday life. He was interested in the concept of a flexible museum, the equivalent of a power plant with its perpetual 24-hour activity. He believed that the only way to overcome the inertia of the curatorial practices of his time was to offer radical trans-disciplinary approaches. Dorner maintained that only these could provide an adequate context for the complexity of contemporary society, and reveal the diversity of the aesthetic practices it had produced. One of his main undertakings was the creation of the Abstract Cabinet, set up in 1927 in collaboration with artist El Lissitsky for the museum in Hanover, Germany where Dorner was working. Dorner’s and Lissitsky’s intention was to create a trans-disciplinary environment as an appropriate expression of the diversity of the artistic expression of their time by exhibiting paintings, drawings and sculpture.” [via]

André Malraux selects photographs for La Musée imaginaire (The Imaginary Museum, 1947)

Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), 1968. Designed by Lina Bo Bardi.

“Lina Bo Bardi’s famous glass easel hanging system for the Museum of Art Sao Paulo (MASP) was designed to enhance the experience of the viewer without determining it. A visitor could look at the work of art displayed on the front without mediation and then if they wanted refer to the label on the back. Bo Bardi believed that while the viewer should be able to encounter works of art in their own way, the museum also had a didactic function, and these labels included additional information in the form of images and texts. Made to the same scale as the artwork on the front the two were placed back to back so as not to impede the overall transparency of the installation.” [via]

Seth Siegelaub, “Xerox Book”, 1968.

“This project evolved in the same way as most of my projects, in collaboration with the artists I worked with. We would sit around discussing the different ways and possibilities to show art, different contexts and environments in which art could be shown, indoors, outdoors, books, etc.” [via]

“A gallery is constructed along laws as rigorous as those for building a medieval church. The outside world must not come in, so windows are usually sealed off. Walls are painted white. The ceiling becomes the source of light. The wooden floor is polished so that you click along clinically or carpeted so that you pad soundlessly, resting the feet while the eyes have at the wall. The art is free, as the saying used to go, “to take on its own life.” The discreet desk may be the only piece of furniture. In this context a standing ashtray becomes almost a sacred object, just as the firehose in a modern museum looks not like a firehose but an esthetic conundrum. Modernism’s transposition of perception from life to formal values is complete.” [via]