While we were working together on a curatorial project, a friend  
recommended I look into Andreas's post and its replies.

I must say, I find it a fascinating conversation, and far from  
resolved--I doubt it can be resolved in any absolute way.

I have curated shows that included my work and ones that did not. The  
ones that did not were shows where where I had extensive institutional  
support. The ones that did were shows of peers where one person took  
responsibility for organizing the effort. Calling that person a  
curator was perhaps the best public face to put on the role, one that  
certainly could provide some further impetus to publicizing it. In one  
instance, an online exhibition, my curatorial work was itself an  
artwork--the design, engineering, and narrative that structured a  
virtual space. I think there is a time-honored tradition of this sort  
of effort, as various people noted. Perhaps, too, the opportunity for  
a curator to exhibit is part of the reward for hard work when there is  
no substantial financial support, as often happens with small museums  
and other non-profit venues that are not affiliated with larger  
institutions.

At the grass roots level, I think there is a lot of leeway in how  
people conduct themselves, as long as things are stated up front and  
the process is transparent.  Where there is substantial institutional  
support or prestige, I do not feel that artist/curators should include  
their own work. Although I have no idea of the exact circumstances to  
which Andreas was referring, it strikes me that a juror or curator  
working on a committee oversteps bounds that are widely understood in  
pressing for his or her own work to be shown. In jurying for Siggraph,  
for example, jurors were expected to step back if there was any  
possible conflict of interest (like selecting a colleague or partner's  
work).

I have been asked a few times why I curate shows, and have often  
answered that it's a matter of self-defense. I write about art for the  
same reason, at least in part. Back in the days when I was just  
starting to work in new media, Jud Yalkut told me that artists should  
concern themselves with creating art and let the critics decide what  
it meant. In new media, it turns out, you often have the sense that  
you must establish an acceptable theoretical value for your work in  
order to show your work. At Siggraph a few years ago, James Faure  
Walker criticized much "digital art" for seeming to make the wall  
label more important than the work. Of course, new media artists  
organized shows and wrote because the mainstream was ignoring them. If  
your conceptual framework as an artist is not well represented,  
whether in the mainstream or in alternative venues, organizing a show  
of like-minded people is one way to establish its validity. You can  
also write about work that has a bearing on your own. The aim is just  
to be visible--nothing is likely to happen in the grander institutions  
without that initial visibility. As Woody Allen puts it, "90% of life  
is showing up."

Caroline Langill and Simon Biggs both make good points about artist- 
run culture and the multiple roles an artist could take on. If there's  
anything I regret about all the roles artists assume, it's that  
scholarship can suffer. People who dedicate themselves critical  
theory, art history, or contemporary art criticism can acquire far  
greater depth than practicing artists usually do.

In this discussion, less has been said about the influence of the art  
market, though it seems to me to be a constant backdrop--conflicts of  
interest arise because careers and money are involved. When there  
starts to be more acceptance of new media work in museums and  
galleries outside of academia and media festivals, perhaps the stakes  
get higher and the ethical issues more acute. Not that we can't  
squabble all the better over low stakes.

I suspect that anyone who works any length of time as a curator for an  
institution will run into a circumstance where work is placed into a  
show because it happens to be part of the museum's holdings donated by  
an important patron. Like critics writing catalog prose for gallery  
shows for a fee, it's a standard but unpublicized practice. The money  
is probably not the principal reason for this sort of thing, but it is  
a contributing factor. The critic will make the effort to write,  
lending prestige, for a fee. The patron's collection will be enhanced  
because a donated work was shown. Such situations are one of the  
reasons why the gallery/critic/museum system is often charged with  
being incestuous. They are one reason to value independent curators  
and artist/curators, although I suspect that the museum system has its  
ways of influencing them, too.

Thanks for the interesting discussion.

-- Paul



On Dec 22, 2008, at 6:02 PM, NEW-MEDIA-CURATING automatic digest  
system wrote:

>
> Date:    Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:27:19 +0100
> From:    Andreas Broeckmann <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: artist curator ethics
>
> friends, a question:
>
> it sometimes happens that artists work as curators; it also
> occasionally happens that these curator artists choose their own
> artistic work for their exhibitions or programmes.
>
> in my view, this looks bad and should not happen, i personally wished
> that there was a 'code of conduct for curatorial work' that said: 'if
> you curate a project, you don't select your own work for it (not even
> if you are a member of a curatorial team'.
>
> i know that some practising artists (who also curate) see this
> differently, for them there is no ethical problem in selecting their
> own work if it fits into a specific project or conceptual framework.
>
> what do people think about this?
>
> regards,
> -a