Curation is experiencing a shift that I believe is well needed, a shift towards rethinking the bounds of the museum from just a place to put art on walls to a more experiential world, creating new, interactive and interdisciplinary ways to view art.

*Image Credit: National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Photo by Lillie Thompson.*

I am being haunted by the ghost of 500 photos of the same rock at Pompeii. And 30 panoramic nightmares of Monet’s Water Lilies taken on my Galaxy Note 5 circa 2014. I am haunted by a mirror selfie at the MCA. I am haunted by a decades long scroll through the Victoria and Albert photos taken just in case I needed them for an essay the next year (I didn’t). I am haunted, consistently, constantly, by photos in Art Galleries. This isn’t a Christmas Carol situation, but the ghosts of museums past are popping up in Apple’s AI memories section to remind me that yes, in 2017, I did in fact go see that sculpture/painting/photo/play/snow/bowl of ramen/dog. While in the 1810s we’d get on our horse and cart and trek to the museum for an afternoon of culture, I can now take a quick few clicks to Google Arts and Culture and zoom in to exceptional levels of detail on a decent chunk of today’s masterpieces. Nothing can replace the museum; I will never argue against it both out of principle and a healthy amount of nostalgia. But the museum is changing. We are living in a time where the museum’s cultural relevance, funding and societal stature is oscillating violently between abolition and protection above all else. We must ask ourselves the question: in this new world, what do museums mean, and what can they do?

Curation is experiencing a shift that I believe is well needed, a shift towards rethinking the bounds of the museum from just a place to put art on walls to a more experiential world, creating new, interactive and interdisciplinary ways to view art. However, I want to argue in favour of keeping a bit of the old. Museums house hundreds of thousands of artefacts, tapestries of the past, and some really quite nice looking old chairs that still need a home. Despite the medical nightmare, I’d personally advocate for curatorial whiplash: an in-between space where both old and new objects, and old and new curation can interact. A veritable palimpsest of curatorial eras, where the wall to wall hangings of the Parisian Salon, the White Cube of the avant garde 60’s and the contemporary exhibit mould together to create a familiar yet entirely new way to see art. In this murky time where curation is constantly changing, I can’t predict where the museum will go. What I can do is look into what happened to the museum, what we might do with it, and how you and I could maybe even shape it. So make a tea, and let’s indulge in some writing (or in your case, reading), and maybe by the end we would have learnt something, or at the very least, had a big old think. And who doesn’t love that.

But what if my iPhone 14 Pro Max really was a readymade?

When I set out to write this piece, I really did not want to go into the death vortex of talking about social media, but alas, we live in a world where Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerburg want to get into Youtuber boxing and we all somehow know about it, so we will have to talk (briefly) about the elephant in room. Luckily for you (and me), I only care for the hardware. We now live with this needlessly sophisticated device in our pockets at all times, with 4 cameras, a laser (somehow) and more data than what was needed for the moon landing. Photography in museums is now a given fact, and one of the most momentous changes in the museumgoers experience in the 21st century is the fact that you can see art, through your eyes, at any time, forever. It is curious to think about why we are so drawn to photography — an artistic expression in itself — while we look at art.

I would say that this new interaction we have with art is becoming an art form in its own right. Going to see art, and appreciating art is an identity in a way: a signal that you have appreciation for culture, random pretty things, political consciousness, and the time to go to the weird spots Sydney decides to put its museums. This is a stance that could turn out to be pretty bleak; if taking photos of art is just a way to show that you have some cultural awareness, then is the act of museum-going becoming a farce? There hasn’t been a single time in the last few years where I haven’t gone into a museum and had to tread lightly around a candid shot, and even I fall victim to posting art to show that I am indeed looking at art. Is this shallow or vain? Potentially. Even if the reason why we photograph the museum experience is just to portray an air of culture, the most superficial photos of you looking at art involve you looking at art. In that sense, there is still a significant interaction with art. In fact, the way that we use photography to express interactions with art adds personality, and a new layer of expression. Increasingly, or at least in the last 20 or so years, the mirror has become a new avenue for artists to encourage, condemn or reflect (haha, get it), on the interaction between artist and viewer. Mao Tongqiang’s ‘Order,’ presents the viewer with a mirror riddled with intricately placed bullets, that lodge enough that they make an impact but don’t shatter the mirror entirely. Instead you look at the mirror, and the distorted reflection you see simultaneously brings a message about mass shootings and the use of violence for state control, but also about our place in it. Apart from concept, the defining aspect of ‘Order’ is the mirror, and the photos that almost every person took in front of it. Myself, my friend Amy and the five other people in White Rabbit, on a rogue Tuesday morning all conducted an unconscious elaborate dance around the work, finding an angle that distorts our heads, outlines our reflection and then, not simultaneously but all in due time, we took a photo. Surely this is not just superficial but reflective of a change in our interaction with art itself.

Whilst I wouldn’t be writing R. Mutt on my phone and trying to get it into the Tate, our phones play a new and somehow exciting role in the experience of the museum. When we take photographs, we are not passive in the act of looking. We frame art and place it in our lives. When we post our photos, we again go through somewhat of a microcosm of curation itself. We select what art represents us, what we want the world to see, we write captions about it (even if that caption is, “lee bul is mother”), and we put it in the world. Our identity is intertwined with art. There is still an element of bleakness, and something remains to be said about mindful interactions with art that don’t exist through a camera, but the experience of photography in museums is most definitely not going away. However, in an article talking about the changing space of the museum, it might be worth actually talking about museums. Phones and photography have allowed us to take a step towards interacting more actively with the museum, but inevitably the most impactful and radical change will be how museums have changed to interact with us.

Curatorial Whiplash (neck injuries not included)

Museums are a space of many weird and wonderful feelings. Art has a transformative effect that can be uplifting, confusing, saddening, contemplative, and in the case of Barnett Newman’s Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue III, unbridled rage (look that one up, it is a hilarious story). Art brings forth emotion, but also logic, reasoning, appreciation and a sensory experience unlike any other. It has been like this since the Chauvet Cave Paintings, and unless we enter a full blown apocalypse it will remain like this for however many years we have left. Curation has moved through many eras during this time but what is most curious is our current era; the transitional phase between the White Cube, to the experiential curatorial practice of today.

From Bauhaus to de Kooning to Warhol to Picasso, the 20th century was dominated by the ‘White Cube’. The term White Cube was coined in 1976 by Brian O’Doherty, and described the white walled gallery where art exists in a white void: ripe for contemplation and reflection. The white spaces between artworks give both physical and mental space, and according to O’Doherty, the white cube acts as a border and container for art. This gallery style was and continues to be one of the most widely used designs to this day, especially in the canon of modern art. The white cube reminded viewers, “This Is Art. You are in the sanctity of the white cube, where Art lives” (this helped in the 70s when everyone seemed to reach obscene heights of experimental madness simultaneously and the general public freaked out). So what happened to the white cube and what will succeed it in the era’s of curation?

O’Doherty writes, “The ideal gallery subtracts from the artwork all cues that interfere with the fact that it is ‘art.’ The work is isolated from everything that would detract from its own evaluation… Unshadowed, white, clean, artificial - the space is devoted to the technology of esthetics.” The philosophy of the white cube is that art should exist in a space where you can contemplate each work in isolation, without interference. However, the white cube has been critiqued for its sterilisation of art, the elitism that it indicates, and the lack of information about the art you are looking at that ended up causing even more alienation between the public and the art world. The white cube still reigns as the most prevalent curatorial practice, but is no longer that the only practice. Art and design now intersect in the NGV’s exhibit on Pierre Bonnard’s paintings, designed by India Madhavi, where the white walls are discarded for technicolour aimed at enhancing Bonnard’s art. I mean, even HSBC, the Bonnard exhibitions primary sponsor, is saying (albeit via a Wynyard light rail stop ad), “when art and design intersect we experience something remarkable.” The V&A’s DIVA showcases light design that guides you from theme to theme, directing the viewer to an entirely new museum experience where art is displayed as a story through queer culture. Curation is seeing new and exciting developments aimed at highlighting and uplifting contemporary art through design, rather than exiling the viewer to their own contemplation.

But not all curation exists in this new space. For the most part museums display art on walls, with text beside it, and we shuffle from room to room looking. Art is remarkable and beautiful enough for this to be an incredible experience, but it would be a disservice not to talk about the other side of museums and the vast collections of knowledge from the past that are not displayed in such dynamic cutting edge ways. How do we reckon with a museum space where one turn takes us to a bright blue wall with an interactive phone guide, and another leads to a room full of forks sitting in a glass display case? Museums are in metamorphosis, the next generation of curators are in chrysalis and we are living in this unique world where the old is combined with the increasing new. To me, these moments encapsulate the experience that I call curatorial whiplash. The experience of being in the concentric circles of 17th century petticoat doom to suddenly seeing Lil Nas X’s Satan shoes being on display as a hallmark artefact of 21st century fashion. Seeing a watercolour workshop that projects your drawing onto a screen in the foyer of the AGNSW and then turning right and viewing 15 different landscapes of the Blue Mountains. While regular whiplash is (according to Google) painful, and associated with severe neck and back pain, I would argue that curatorial whiplash doesn’t need to be all that bad. Sure, it can be confusing moving between all these different experiences, and while there is a move to experiential museums where your phone can become a makeshift readymade in itself, there is still a worthy place for the white cube, the burgundy rooms of portraits and the vast halls of plates in the V&A.

It’s hard to think about where to end, in my rundown of curation. There are countless things missed, left out, cut for time, and fuzzy unformed ideas lurking about like primordial soup in my head, and maybe yours also. But apart from all of the seriousness in discussing museums, what I particularly love about these new changes is the interactivity that we now have with art. Instead of quiet contemplation, art is being displayed to enhance, not detract and place in isolation. It creates an experience that allows for new thoughts and inspiration and most importantly, fun. I resent the idea that going to see museums and art has to result in realisation, finding meaning, and “getting something out of it”. I think that going to see art is something innately fun. Something we do with our friends, our family, on holiday. Something for us. Something to celebrate what humans can do, can create. Feats of craftsmanship, conceptualisation, and creativity that is unimaginable until it is done time and time and time again. In my humble opinion, if art is even just chucked on a wall then there is already a wealth of knowledge to be gained. When art on its own is so impactful, the role of curation is merely to find an adequate way to show it. O’Doherty concludes in his afterword, “visual art does not progress by having a good memory… You can reinvent the past, suitably disguised, if no one remembers it. Thus is originality, that patented fetish of the self, defined.” I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few decades, or even a few months, we were to feel some new kind of whiplash again.

What will happen to the room of plates?

Museums are as unpredictable as art itself, and the art we create urges the museum to change as a space that will both physically and ideologically house it. Is there still a place for the room of plates in contemporary curation? Who’s to say? Maybe if I could look into a Year 5 classroom, there would be a kid, not yet remarkable in any particular way, but an avid fan of doodling and reading and handball. Maybe they would have an inkling of interest about art, maybe they wouldn’t, at least not yet. Maybe if we gave them a couple of years, they could be the one who finds a cutting edge way to curate 18th century plates in the V&A. Maybe this deeply underrated room would morph into the star event, and new books about these plates, forks and chairs would be written (rightfully so, honestly).

Simon Wu argues in his piece, ‘The Museum: A New Social Sculpture,’ that even if museums change entirely to encompass the best social, artistic and political practices, the changes museums will make are never ending, unpredictable and relentless. Just as one curatorial practice is created, another oversight pops up. Just as curation and museum design catches up to contemporary art, art changes again. He presents the museum as a post-aesthetic place, one where the museum morphs into not just a place to house art but an experiential arena for social and political action. A change that shifts the art museum entirely away from art and enmeshes it in our personal worlds, for better or for worse. Will this be the case, come 10 or even 1 year down the track? It’s hard to say. One of my favourite things about change, when I’m not trying my best to resist it, is that we will never know quite what will happen. Are museums moving to a good place? Or a bad place? Is it post-aesthetic? Is there even a place for the museum, given its upholding of an outdated, oftentimes prejudiced system? Wu concludes, “The trouble of thinking of anything in terms like ‘pre-’ and ‘post-’ is that time is rarely so linear. The post-aesthetic museum is over, it’s just beginning, it’s already here - if we know what to look for.”

These questions all exist, and I have tried to tease the answers out of some of them, but the only remaining thought I can think of is this: won’t it be so exciting to see where it will all go. Go to a museum, and go frequently. You never know what will happen on those walls.

Curatorial Whiplash!