Curators’ Voices: Curating as Collaborative Practice Available to Purchase

Editor’s note: This is a new installment of Curators’ Voices, following a series of essays initiated by JSAH’s previous exhibition review editor, Patricio del Real, to present the perspectives of curators on their work in exhibition conceptualization and implementation. This essay by Irene Sunwoo explores the creative dimensions and public responsibilities of curatorial practices for architecture and the built environment in a time of climate change, technological revolution, and political division. The contingencies of these concurrent challenges affect the very constitution of the communities that museums and exhibitions are supposed to serve. Part of the work of the curator of architecture is to steer cultural institutions and their programs in addressing these new contingencies, which also affect the practice, history, and theory of architecture. Sunwoo suggests that new approaches that foster greater inclusivity, accessibility, diversity, and engagement with marginalized communities may involve an open-ended framework for architecture as world making and a collaborative working method that enhances the experiences of museum staff, exhibition designers and producers, featured artists and architects, and museum visitors.

VANESSA GROSSMAN

Exhibition Review Editor, JSAH