XII Young Painter Prize Book

48
The Painter and
Curator Union
In this section, I would like to discuss the
union of curators and artists that is taking
root in the contemporary art market. Although
art survived without a curator for
5000 years, the 21st century curator – independent
of the institution – has become
a figure of particular importance in the
modern art world. Harold Szeeman, one of
the first independent curators, contributed
to this by starting to organize exhibitions
that did not reflect the objective canon of
art history, but rather the individual gaze
of the curator. Dorothea von Hantelmann
observes that, like the artist, who from antiquity
to the 18th century was considered
a craftsman, only to later become viewed
as a creative genius, so the curator, seeking
a place in society, has moved from
their position of service provider to become
a creator of content and meaning 7 .
According to Georgina Adam, the curator
now has the tremendous power to decide
which artists are significant and which are
not. Furthermore, the curator’s conception
sometimes undermines the artist’s work
itself, which becomes an adjunct to the
curator’s vision 8 .
However, a curator, enveloped in the
knowledge of art history, can establish
the artist’s work in a contemporary context,
reveal the strengths of the works and
present it all to the public. In this light, it is
worth mentioning several personal exhibitions
of Lithuanian artists that were curated
by art critics. First of all, I would like to
draw attention to the creators of the middle
generation – Laisvydė Šalčiūtė and
Laima Kreivytė. Kreivytė, who had curated
a few of Šalčiūtė’s exhibitions, in 2019
invited to the space of the gallery “Left-
Right”, with the gate to the Melusian