As a first time attendee to the annual conference, I was particularly excited to consider my own curatorial practice—I work both independently and at a small, non collecting university gallery (Center for Book and Paper Arts, Columbia College Chicago)—relative to curators working mostly at collecting institutions much larger than my own. Would the issues be the same? Do all curators wear as many "hats” as I do? Can I adopt strategies of larger institutions for funding exhibitions or generating innovative programming?

I was pleased to find out: the conversations are the same. Most of the curators, museum administrators, and educators I met or listened to, from institutions large and small (and some working independently!) shared similar challenges:

¨ How do we engage audiences and quantify successful engagement? (Panel: Museums and Civic Responsibility)

¨ How does a curator represent culture and geography in non-Eurocentric ways? (Presentation: Kathryn Wysocki Gunsch, Associate Curator for Africa, Baltimore Museum of Art, "The Great Map Debate: Context and an African Art Installation”)

¨ How do "the curatorial” and "the educational” intersect in the gallery space? (Panel: Participation, Engagement and the Curator)

¨ What is the role of technology in relation to visitor participation? (Panel: Participation, Engagement and the Curator)

And if anything unites curators from all walks of life, it has to be the challenge of communications and public speaking. The conference ended on a high note, with a public speaking workshop led by Barbara Tannenbaum: there she taught us strategies for successful, confident public speaking—from presenting works for acquisition to a committee, leading a gallery tour or participating on a panel, to tips on successful email communication!

As I continue to build my curatorial value system (not to mention my career!) through work at my home institution as well as independent curatorial projects, I will continue to attend the AAMC annual meeting. Did I receive every answer I needed? No! But I learned that I was asking right questions…

Many museums have some collections of American Indian arts; although, few have staff with the knowledge and experience to assess these collections, identify cultural sensitivities, or how to handle repatriation issues. I come from a department with two curators, and both of us specialize in American Indian arts. We have a large collection and extensive experience working with this collection and collaborating with Native communities. Identifying and effectively communicating your skills, knowledge, and experience to your colleagues of other disciplines in other institutions through networking helps to integrate yourself at AAMC, but also provides a service to other member institutions.

From this conference and the various networking opportunities provided, I realized that one way I can serve the Association is to make myself known to others as a resource. Attending conference sessions is always a benefit you receive as an individual as the speakers share their knowledge and expertise; however, just because you are not a panelist does not mean you have nothing to provide to others. Taking the time to meet your colleagues, share ideas, and offering your assistance to those who could benefit from your skill-set is a vital resource you can provide and one that makes the AAMC conference such an important yearly event to attend.

In addition to the food for thought provided by the panel discussions, the mentor/mentee program has been very helpful. I spent a wonderful hour with a veteran in the field, asking many questions about my areas of interest (contemporary craft) specifically and how to grow as a curator. I’m encouraged to seek out more opportunities to develop my knowledge and credibility (i.e. getting papers published and delivering public lectures). While I have already had excellent mentoring experiences with my own supervisor, it was valuable to discuss the curatorial experience from another institution’s perspective. My mentor and I have continued to communicate and collaborate on ideas after the conference; this connection is enlightening and I’m looking forward to continuing as my career develops.

I also attended the Public Speaking workshop presented by Barbara Tannenbaum. Much of the information presented was not new, but I appreciated the fact that the program was tailored to curators. The idea that "all speaking is public speaking” is empowering and has made me consider my words and behavior very carefully. As I develop my career and build credibility, I now have more information to make a bigger impact on my audiences (whether at a public lecture, a board meeting, or a conference with colleagues), and feel confident that I will make an intelligent, professional first impression.

Because the focus of the Pecha Kucha section was on the presentation of an exhibition in planning stages rather than one already completed, I was given the motivation to consider the exhibition as a whole instead of the scattered piecemeal way I often begin the process. This greatly aided me in compiling resources and in determining layout.

The exhibition I presented, "Detroit: the abandoned city?” was one that I have been working on outside of my job as the Assistant Curator at the Boca Museum of Art, Florida, and so the competition took something over which I normally would have dawdled and forced me to really address the issues that come with an exhibition proposal: sourcing artists, images, and references.

The Pecha Kucha setup was also helpful in that rather than presenting a fully formed idea, a closed concept, it allowed for brainstorming from audience members. Following the talk, curators from the Philadelphia Museum, a Tokyo museum, the Peabody-Essex, freelance curators, and a previous curator from LACMA all offered helpful suggestions on artists to include in the show as well as the overarching narrative.

In fact, some of the artists that the other curators suggested for inclusion even dovetailed which was a sure sign that they should be added to the show. Besides the encouragement and helpful suggestions, simply chatting with the other curators during the reception was infinitely helpful and enjoyable.

In a matter of hours I took a poll on some registrarial concerns with which my museum has been wrestling, I got multiple opinions from experts in contemporary Latin American art on a possible donation we’ve been considering, and was extended the offer to visit a number of museums to continue discussions. It was so refreshing to spend time with other curators. Admittedly, curating can sometimes feel isolating despite the constant contact with docents, artists, and the public.

Meeting with hundreds of people who all are familiar with, and have opinions on, social practice art, the care of conservation, and philosophical issues in the arts can really hearten an individual in the creative field.

The AAMC session "Museums and Civic Responsibility” shared how some museums and curators have adapted their practices to build audiences. The Dallas Museum of Art’s simple yet elegant solution to switch from using the word "members” to "friends” to describe museum supporters represents a way in which museums can alter a seemingly insignificant practice and hope for big returns. Other museums, like the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, are testing labels for special exhibitions or reinstallations before installing them permanently. Such a practice ensures that labels are clear and accessible and offers curators the opportunity to modify their approach to serve better their constituency without sacrificing content. "Participation, Engagement, and the Curator” considered exhibitions from the perspective of the educator, and the panelists encouraged curators to incorporate participatory features into their plans to inspire visitors to connect with museums and their collections on a personal level. When accompanied by or founded upon scholarly or historical principles relating to the exhibition or art on view, participatory activities like those described in this panel can enhance the exhibition’s educational potential. As sites for learning and repositories of culture, art museums bear a responsibility to visitors both to educate and inspire, and the 2013 AAMC annual meeting focused curatorial attention on these important obligations.

The panels on Museums & Civic Responsibility, Innovative Conservation, and Participation, Engagement & the Curator all dealt, to some degree, with the profound challenges of collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting art in the name of the public trust while still fulfilling our profession’s high academic standards, standards that often seem to alienate the aforementioned public. There does not appear to be a singular approach that will bridge this gap. What became apparent to me as I tried to articulate an answer to this quandary for the sake of a blog entry was this; the answer starts with curators and then other museum professionals. It is the human element in our interpretations and how we articulate them that will make our institutions relevant both civically and academically. If both of these goals are taken into account when a project is in its gestational period, I think both will be more easily attained. This is more or less the tact Holland Cotter urged us to take in his Keynote Address, and I agree with him.

Thank you to all presenters for sharing your work with us and giving us all a great deal to discuss.

As a new curator, the encouragement to break new ground is of course exciting, and a major critic’s respect for art exhibitions that introduce topics outside of Europe or Euro-America is better still. Yet if it were not for the pressures currently facing Museums, the exhortation to ‘be bold’ would seem almost clichéd, the sort of bromide frequently heard during graduation addresses. Mr. Cotter’s keynote became more meaningful over the course of the conference, as it became clear that the embrace of testing, measurement and "Big Data” puts museum staff at a crossroads. The data-gathering efforts presented by Rob Stein’s discussion of the Dallas Museum of Art’s new Friends program, or Sebastian Chan’s tour of innovative museum efforts around the world, will certainly give us a better understanding of our audiences. Will we use this new knowledge to continue to challenge our audiences? Or will we wield the data in a way that blandly appeases some perceived majority of visitors? When Salvador Salort-Pons described the Detroit Institute of Art’s process of exhibition design, with the curator defining the "Big Idea” of the show and the education department developing the in-gallery delivery methods, I recalled Mr. Cotter’s definition of exhibitions as "materialized thinking.” Will we harness the considerable expertise of curators and museum educators to promote deeper thinking through exhibition practice? Or will the limits of audience testing (or funding for robust measurement methods) shift our focus to simpler narratives? Nina Simon’s discussion of audience art-making and participation made Cotter’s final words—that art should be seen in the context of life, and not in the context of art history—seem apposite in an entirely new way. In an increasingly connected and user-driven world, how will museums balance visitors’ desires to make art, and thus enter art history, with our commitment to preserve and present the historical tradition? Throughout the conference, the presentation of tools and theories of audience engagement prompted new ideas. Yet Mr. Cotter’s words recalled the end goal of all of these techniques—to surprise, inspire, delight and ultimately transport visitors.

A panel entitled "Museums and Civic Responsibility” proved to be about more and different issues than I’d expected. Audience engagement has been a hot topic in museums for several years, but institutions have met the challenge in very diverse ways. What I thought would be about visitor services, outreach to under-served communities, and possibly the use of technology to engage audiences on local issues took an interesting turn when Salvador Salort-Pons of the DIA shared his museum’s approach to education and curation. The relationship between educators and curators has long been complex and is changing rapidly. I and others that I spoke with later in the conference were quite frankly shocked to learn of the level of participation DIA educators have in the curatorial process. Whereas at my home museum, the MFA, Boston, educators enter the picture when labels and gallery text are written and after a show opens steering some related programming, at the DIA an educator is paired with a curator from a show’s inception and has a lot of say in the delivery of a curator’s project and also in its concept and approach. To learn that educators there write the labels and curators edit them, as opposed to the opposite tactic, among other such responsibilities caught me by surprise. Have educators overstepped their bounds? Is the traditional art of curating itself at risk of extinction? Will educators play an increasingly active role in shaping content itself? Very interesting indeed.

Another complicated and sometimes fraught relationship is that between curators and development staff. With funding growing increasingly scarce for all museums the few grants to be had are especially prized and the application process more competitive than ever. The workshop on grant writing hosted at the Museum of Arts and Design was illuminating and tremendously helpful. What do granting organizations want to see? What makes a successful proposal? James Bewley of the Warhol Foundation, an organization vital to the work of contemporary curators such as myself, strongly cautioned against allowing development staff to write proposals for curators revealing that his panelists could sniff out such applications easily and are inclined to dismiss them. How does the average over-taxed curator find the time to write these important documents? How would that affect the relationship with and role of their development officer(s)? I have plans to meet with one of my grant writers to review my notes in relation to an upcoming project.

Attending this year’s conference was an enriching experience, which provided me greater insight into the changing face of our field and lasing connections with great colleagues at intitutions across the country.

My favorite session was the Pecha Kucha (and I’m glad to finally know how to pronounce it). I love the fast-paced format that gave six curators the opportunity to present on a broad range of topics. This is a great way to share ideas and generate feedback for critical discussion. It is also a fabulous exercise on how to distill a topic to its most essential ideas, something that is good practice for curators who make regular presentations to funders, donors, board members, committees, among others.

I enjoyed Workshop One, Public Speaking with Barbara Tannenbaum. She was very entertaining while presenting the steps to becoming an effective and engaging communicator. I really like these types of hands-on workshops.

One of the main reasons I want to attend the AAMC conference each year is to gather with colleagues from around the U.S. and beyond. It is energizing to me (and sometimes intimidating) to be in the same room with so many who share similar issues, concerns, and challenges, whether from small, medium, or large institutions. This is a common thread that connects us as curators and provides a means for conversation. I enjoy these conversations the most. It is important to have the opportunity to step away from my day to day responsibilities for this much needed camaraderie. I must say though, that each year I return to my museum even more appreciative of the strong relationship I have with my director and staff. I realize does not happen everywhere.

I have been working in museums since 1999, but only recently, in the last 3 years, been working as a curator. So, because of my previous experience in the museum field, I came to the AAMC conference in NYC —my first—as both a participant and observer. In the keynote lecture, Holland Cotter’s admonition to curators to "be an artist yourself” and "put life in art,” I think, inadvertently captured the theme of what I took away from the conference: the need for creativity in curatorial work. In the Pecha Kecha talks, I heard how my fellow curators demonstrate an artistic practice by being creative in their research, organization, and execution of ideas. I also saw how creativity abounds in collaborative activities, such as conservators, educators, and curators working together to create memorable and engaging experiences for visitors.

Over and over again, I learned how curators must be "artistic” in how they overcome obstacles, be they bureaucratic and political at big museums, or financial and logistical at smaller museums. I enjoyed hearing from others "in the trenches” who face the same types of challenges that I do and who have come up with some new ways (or revived tried and true methods) of dealing with those issues. Those interactions over coffee or at the lunch table were invaluable to me, both as a means of encouragement and practical advice. I also participated in a mentoring session, which was very helpful and productive in a more in-depth way as I was able to pick my mentor’s brain about specific projects.

Lastly, having the conference in New York City afforded me the opportunity to add extracurricular activities to the conference, such as visiting the Met, the Guggenheim, the Frick, MoMA, the Neue Galerie, as well as other galleries, which was helpful in not only viewing really great works of art but also learning about other museums’ presentation strategies. In all, the conference underlined to me, what I believe Holland Cotter was trying to get across, that curators can (and should) be as artistic or creative in their practice as the artists who they study and present to others.

Of all the sessions at AAMC’s 2013 symposium in New York, I found "Museums and Civic Responsibility” and "Participation, Engagement, and the Curator” to be the most thought provoking. These presentations also generated a great deal of discussion post-panel. I was surprised by some colleagues who expressed unease or even felt threatened by the models presented. In my opinion, civic responsibility and participatory engagement does not intrinsically spell the end of the curator.

Exhibition ideas are typically generated by curators, but curators can and should be much more than just "content providers.” Exhibition design at my institution, and I imagine at most other museums, is a highly collaborative process. Educators help curators refine and focus interpretation in a way that will allow visitors to maximize their engagement with and connection to the art. Taking into account aesthetics and accessibility, designers help to create the physical environment in which the visitor will experience the artwork. The curator should be involved in every step of this process. Indeed, at many smaller institutions, the curator might play multiples roles.


My point is that curators should not feel as if they are in competition with educators, designers, marketing professionals, or any other museum colleagues. Ostensibly we are all after the same goal: to create dynamic and engaging exhibitions that inspire a love of art. In order to do that, curators must design exhibitions for visitors, not their fellow curators.

It goes back to the simple questions that occupy us on a daily basis: what are museum for? Why do they matter? The simple preservation of artifacts and dissemination of scholarly knowledge will not sustain museums into the future. As Stephen Weil remarked in his 2002 publication Making Museums Matter, "museums matter only to the extent that they are perceived to provide the communities they serve with something of value beyond their mere existence.” Museums must make themselves relevant. Otherwise, they run the risk of becoming obsolete.

Today’s museums cannot simply inform their audiences; they must inspire, engage, and challenge them as well. The digital age has profoundly changed audience expectations for participation. Today’s visitors demand a richer experience. And while some curators might fear that participatory models and crowd sourcing comes at the cost of the aesthetic experience, they in no way require a "watered-down” approach. Quite the opposite. The experience we offer visitors must correspond to the high standards with which we complete artistic research. I enjoyed Nina Simon’s advice to respect the power of what visitors have to offer. I agree with her suggestion to view visitors as scholars – people who engage in learning for the love of it – rather than novices. 

There are no hard and steadfast rules for how to organize a successful participatory exhibition. It is a topic we at the Carnegie have been grappling with increasing frequency and if the rich question and answer sessions after these panels are any indicator, so have our counterparts at other museums. But curators are uniquely poised at the center of this issue and I imagine our colleagues’ experimentations, shortcomings, and accomplishments will be the topic of AAMC discussions for years to come.