Curatorial Team
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Conservators conserve, framers frame, installers install, and curators ... well, what is it exactly that curators do? People often ask, and, for many of them, the word 'curator' seems to suggest someone tweedy and bookish snuffling round in a dark storeroom – a fusion, perhaps, of 'curate' and 'caretaker'. That cliché has had some competition in recent years from the image of the curator as an Armani-clad orchestrator of mega-shows, racking up airpoints on the international art circuit.
I hope I'm not disappointing anyone when I say this, but neither stereotype appears to be thriving here in the east wing of the Christchurch Art Gallery, where the Gallery's five curators all work.
What do we do here? Despite the evidence of the photograph above, we don't spend a lot of time standing around striking poses in exhibition galleries. If you find us in the galleries, we're more likely to be talking about artworks, or looking at them, or making nervous requests – 'up slightly, a little to the left' – while a new exhibition is being hung.
Although there are now courses and indeed whole institutions devoted to training curators, one of the pleasures of being a curator in New Zealand is that the role is still open and interestingly various. In any given week, a curator may be part critic, part collector, part fundraiser, part lobbyist, part studio visitor, part researcher, part writer, and part fan.
At all times, though, the aim is to put the art at the heart of the equation. That means offering explanations, of course; those little patches of text called wall labels are one of the obvious ways in which curators try to drop a few hints and enlarge the conversation. But it also means knowing when to stop explaining and leave viewers to unfold the art on display in their own time and mental space. And since nothing a wall label offers can compete with a powerful point made visually, it means locating the very best artworks for the collection, and placing them beside each other in ways that amplify their meanings.
Today the word curator is under threat from jargon job-titles like 'concept developer'. I hope they never catch on here. 'Developer' sounds to me like someone who has just perpetrated a new shopping mall. 'Curator' has a richer genealogy. Follow it back to its Latin roots in the language and you'll come to a good word: 'care'.
Justin Paton
Senior Curator
