Book review in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Curatorial Studies

This week marks the Toronto launch of the new Journal of Curatorial Studies, co-edited by Jennifer Fisher and Jim Drobnick of the curatorial collective Displaycult and published by Intellect Books.

The Journal of Curatorial Studies launches its inaugural issue at Onsite [at] OCAD University. 

Join us in celebrating this occasion.

Onsite [at] OCAD University

230 Richmond Street West, Toronto

Thursday, March 1, 5:30-7:30 pm

The Journal of Curatorial Studies is a new international, peer-reviewed publication that explores the increasing relevance of curating and its impact on exhibitions, institutions, audiences, aesthetics and display culture. Inviting perspectives from visual studies, art history, museum studies, critical theory, cultural studies and other academic fields, the journal encompasses a diversity of disciplinary approaches on curating and exhibitions broadly defined. By catalyzing debate and serving as a venue for the emerging discipline of curatorial studies, this journal encourages the development of the theory, practice and history of curating, as well as the analysis of exhibitions and display culture in general.

The first issue features articles on the use of chance as a curatorial strategy, discursive interventions into art institutions, fashion exhibitions in museums, Haiti’s Ghetto Biennale, early exhibition experiments at London’s ICA, and reviews from around the world. Journal of Curatorial Studies publishes three times a year and contains original research articles on the subject of curating and exhibitions, as well as case studies, interviews and reviews of exhibitions, conferences and books.

The first issue, which you can download for free at Intellect’s website, contains a bunch of promising articles, exhibition and book reviews from international authors. I was fortunate enough to get to contribute a review of two books published in the last few years that attempted to address pedagogy and curating, Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson (2010) and Raising Frankenstein: Curatorial Education and Its Discontents, edited by Kitty Scott (2011). As I write in my review, though the two books treat education and pedagogy slightly differently, “Uniting both volumes is a concern for how artists, curators, and art intellectuals might maintain the sense of urgency and radicality that incited a turn to pedagogy as a model for curating and art-making in an environment that is increasingly standardized and regularized through commercial, governmental and institutional forces.”

I’m looking forward to seeing the first issue in-the-flesh. It seems like a promising space for curators to connect, discursively, and address the changing conditions we’re all facing in our practices.