Expanding Internationalism - A Conference on ... - Mary Jane Jacob

THE VERB "CURATE"
Guy Brett
I speak as someone who wrote his statement before coming here, and
based it inevitably on projections of what kind of assembly this would
be.
I knew that this was to be an assembly of the visual arts world, and
I thought I could see from the list of participants that it would be an
assembly or a particular part of the visual arts world, namely the
directors of museums and curators of exhibitions. Although it is broad in
one way -- its multinationality -- it is narrow in another: it seemed that
the voice of the artist was not included.
I know that in some cases
curators are also artists, but they are here in their capacity as curators.
Such selectivity certainly becomes a cause for reflection. Why this
kind of assembly What others might be possible or desirable How does a
distinction, on a micro-level, an intemal level, an art world level,
between curator and artist, bear on the big, macro-level, questions of
power and politics, the division of the world into affluent and
impoverished This may seem an odd, perhaps oblique way of posing the
question, but I hope the way in which it could be related to a more just,
more transnational representation of the world's people as artists will
:become clear later. The question has another inflection which I would
like to introduce: what is the relation between the kind of discourse
conducted here -- a verbal discourse, probably leaning towards the
sociological -- and the production of meaning in art works We speak in
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