A Companion to Curation WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO ART HISTORY

These invigorating reference volumes chart the influence of key ideas, discourses, and theories on art, and the way that it is taught, thought of, and talked about throughout the English‐speaking world. Each volume brings together a team of respected international scholars to debate the state of research within traditional subfields of art history as well as in more innovative, thematic configurations. Representing the best of the scholarship governing the field and pointing toward future trends and across disciplines, the Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History series provides a magisterial, state‐of‐the‐art synthesis of art history.

1 A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945 edited by Amelia Jones 2 A Companion to Medieval Art edited by Conrad Rudolph 3 A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture edited by Rebecca M. Brown and Deborah S. Hutton 4 A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art edited by Babette Bohn and James M. Saslow 5 A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present edited by Dana Arnold and David Peters Corbett 6 A Companion to Modern African Art edited by Gitti Salami and Monica Blackmun Visonà 7 A Companion to Chinese Art edited by Martin J. Powers and Katherine R. Tsiang 8 A Companion to American Art edited by John Davis, Jennifer A. Greenhill and Jason D. LaFountain 9 A Companion to Digital Art edited by Christiane Paul 10 A Companion to Dada and Surrealism edited by David Hopkins 11 A Companion to Public Art edited by Cher Krause Knight and Harriet F. Senie 12 A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, Volumes 1 and 2 edited by Finbarr Flood and Gulru Necipoglu 13 A Companion to Modern Art edited by Pam Meecham 14 A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945 edited by Anne Massey 15 A Companion to Illustration edited by Alan Male 16 A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art edited by Alejandro Anreus, Robin Greeley and Megan Sullivan 17 A Companion to Feminist Art edited by Hilary Robinson and Maria Elena Buszek 18 A Companion to Curation edited by Brad Buckley and John Conomos

Forthcoming 19 A Companion to Australian Art edited by Christopher Allen A Companion to Curation

Edited by Brad Buckley and John Conomos This edition first published 2020 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Buckley, Brad, 1952- editor. | Conomos, John, editor. Title: A companion to curation / [edited by] Brad Buckley, John Conomos. Description: Hoboken : Wiley-Blackwell, 2020 | Series: Blackwell companions to art history ; 18 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019030491 (print) | LCCN 2019030492 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119206859 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119206866 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119206873 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Art museums–Curatorship. Classification: LCC N408 .C655 2020 (print) | LCC N408 (ebook) | DDC 708–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030491 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030492

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Set in 10/12pt Galliard by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Annette Michelson, in memoriam 1922–2018 For Paul Virilio, in memoriam 1932–2018 For Agnès Varda, in memoriam 1928–2019 For Okwui Enwezor, in memoriam 1963–2019

Contents

Series Editor’s Preface x About the Editors xi Notes on Contributors xiii Acknowledgments xvii Foreword xviii List of Illustrations xx Introduction xxiv

Part I An Overview: The Origin and Provenance of Curating 1

1 A Selective History of Curating in Pittsburgh: The Recent Story of the Carnegie International 3 David Carrier

2 Curating Curiosity: Imperialism, Materialism, Humanism, and the Wunderkammer 23 Adam Geczy

3 Professionalizing the Field: The Case of the United States 43 Andrew McClellan

4 The Emergence of the Professional Curator 67 Carole Paul

Part II Movements, Models, People, and Politics 87

5 Curating as a Verb: 100 Years of Nation States 89 Juli Carson viii ◼ ◼ ◼ CONTENTS

6 Curating without Borders: Transnational Feminist and Queer Feminist Practices for the Twenty‐first Century 111 Elke Krasny

7 Displacements and Sites: Notes on a Curatorial Method 134 Maria Lind

8 Africa, Art, and Knowing Nothing: Some Thoughts on Curating at the British Museum 143 Chris Spring

9 Curatorial Crisis 160 Martha Wilson

Part III The Curator in a Globalized World 169

10 “We Care as Much as You Pay” – Curating Asian Art 171 Thomas J. Berghuis

11 Museums Are Everywhere in China, There Is No Museum in China: (or, How Institutional Typologies Define Curatorial Practices) 193 Biljana Cirić ́

12 Curating the Contemporary in Decolonial Spaces: Observations from Thailand on Curatorial Practice in Southeast Asia 206 Gregory Galligan

13 Curated from Within: The Artist as Curator 232 Alex Gawronski

14 Decolonizing the Ethnographic Museum 262 Gerald McMaster

15 The Creature from the Id: Adventures in Aboriginal Art Curating 277 Djon Mundine

16 The Impact of Context Specificity in Curating amidst the Forces at Play in a Globalized World of Realms 291 Fatoş Üstek

17 The Neglected Object of Curation 306 Lee Weng‐Choy

Part IV Beyond the Museum: Curating at the Frontier 323

18 Parallel Processing: Public Art and New Media Art 325 Sara Diamond CONTENTS ◼ ◼ ◼ ix

19 Approach to the Curatorship of Virtual Reality Exhibitions 360 Arnau Gifreu‐Castells

20 Tracing the Ephemeral and Contestational: Aesthetics and Politics of The Living Archive 375 Eric Kluitenberg

21 Curating with the Internet 391 Sean Lowry

22 Arts and Science: The Intersection (Re)engineered 422 Melentie Pandilovski

Index 447 Series Editor’s Preface

Blackwell Companions to Art History is a series of edited collections designed to cover the discipline of art history in all its complexity. Each volume is edited by specialists who lead a team of essayists, representing the best of leading scholarship in mapping the state of research within the subfield under review, as well as pointing toward future trends in research. This Companion to Curation offers a new and insightful consideration of the role of the curator, curating, and the history of curation. Focusing on the last 30 years, this volume explores the many new forms of curatorial practice that have emerged during this time. These practices, which take place both inside and outside of art institutions, are considered in a global context and include contemporary indigenous art, contem- porary Chinese art since the 1980s, and the emergence of new curatorial strategies from beyond the Eurocentric art world. The essays combine the viewpoints of leading artist‐curators, curators, scholars, art historians, and theorists in the field of curating with newer voices to provide a genuine global cross‐disciplinary dialogue about perspectives and issues related to curating. The volume is divided into four sections: An Overview: The Origin and Provenance of Curating; Movements, Models, People, and Politics; The Curator in a Globalized World; and Beyond the Museum: Curating at the Frontier. These essays question the legacy of Western thought and culture on contemporary art and curatorship and argue that contemporary curating has different predicates. In this way we see interactions and innovations between art and curating in the contem- porary world. A Companion to Curation is a very welcome and timely addition to the series.

Dana Arnold, 2019 About the Editors

Brad Buckley born in Sydney, is an artist, urbanist, activist, and curator and a Professorial Fellow at Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, the University of Melbourne. He is also a foundation Fellow at the Centre of Visual Art (CoVA), the University of Melbourne. He was previously Professor of Contemporary Art and Culture at Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney. He was educated at St Martin’s School of Art, London, and the Rhode Island School of Design. He is the editor, with John Conomos, of Republics of Ideas: Republicanism, Culture, Visual Arts (Pluto Press, 2001), Rethinking the Contemporary Art School: The Artist, the PhD, and the Academy (NSCADU Press, 2009), with Andy Dong and Conomos, Ecologies of Invention (SUP, 2013), and with Conomos Erasure: The Spectre of Cultural Memory (Libri Publishing, 2015). His most recent publication, with Conomos, is Who Runs the Artworld: Money, Power and Ethics (Libri Publishing, 2017). Buckley has also developed and chaired, with Conomos, several sessions at the College Art Association, US. He has been a visiting professor and artist at the National College of Art and Design (Ireland), Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, the University of Tsukuba (Japan), and Parsons School of Design, The New School (US). He is the recipient of the prestigious MoMA PS1 Center for Contemporary Art Fellowship (New York 1990–1991) from the Australia Council for the Arts, an Australian Learning and Teaching Council grant (with Baker), and numerous other awards and research grants. His work, which has been shown internationally for over 35 years, operates at the intersection of installation, theater, and performance, and investigates questions of cultural control, democracy, freedom, and social responsibility. Buckley’s work has been included in the 3rd International Biennial (Ljubljana, [former] Yugoslavia), My Home is Your Home: The 4th Construction in Process (the Artists’ Museum, Lodz, Poland), Co‐Existence: The 5th Construction in Process, (the Artists’ Museum, Mitzpe Ramon, Israel), and the 9th Biennale of Sydney, and in exhibitions at Artspace (Sydney), Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney), Franklin Furnace (New York), the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), the MoMA PS 1 Institute for Contemporary Art (New York), the Dalhousie Art Gallery (Halifax), Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), the Tsukuba Art Gallery (Japan), and Plato’s Cave (New York). ABOUT THE EDITORS

John Conomos is an artist, critic, writer, and curator and Associate Professor and Principal Fellow at Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of the Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne. Conomos has also recently been appointed as a Fellow of the Centre of Visual Art (CoVA) at the University of Melbourne. Conomos has exhibited extensively both locally and internationally across a variety of media: video art, new media, photo‐performance, installations, and radiophonic art. He is a prolific contributor to art, film, and media journals and a frequent keynote speaker and participant at conferences, fora, and seminars. His video Autumn Song received an award of distinction at Berlin’s Transmediale Festival in 1998. In 2000, Conomos was awarded a New Media Fellowship from the Australia Council for the Arts and in 2004 he was awarded a Global Greek Award (Hellenic Ministry for the Arts and Culture) for his contribution to the visual arts and the Greek diaspora. Conomos is the author of Mutant Media (Artspace/Power Publications, 2008) and in the following year he edited, with Buckley, Rethinking the Contemporary Art School: The Artist, the PhD and the Academy (NSCADU Press, 2009), and in 2013 he was an editor, with Andy Dong and Buckley, of Ecologies of Invention (SUP). He is also the editor, with Buckley, of Erasure: The Spectre of Cultural Memory (Libri Publishing, 2015) and in 2017 of Who Runs the Artworld: Money, Power and Ethics (Libri Publishing). In 2008, his work was included in Video Logic at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and in 2009 his video Lake George (After Mark Rothko) was screened at the Tate Modern (London), where he also spoke on his art practice. In 2013, Conomos exhibited Spiral of Time, which was accompanied by a major publication, at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney (ACP). Also in the same year, Conomos exhibited in Etudes for the 21st Century at the Osage Gallery, Hong Kong with leading European media artists Robert Cahen and Kingsley Ng. In 2016, he exhibited a performance video Paging Mr Hitchcock at the Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney. Conomos has also exhibited at Cementa 15 (2015) and Cementa 17 (2017). And with Steven Ball in 2016, Conomos exhibited a multimedia installation, Deep Water Web, at London’s Furtherfield Gallery. He is currently writing a memoir called Milk Bar. Notes on Contributors

Thomas J. Berghuis is a curator and art historian, based in Leiden, the Netherlands. His monograph on Performance Art in China was published in 2006 with Timezone 8 in Hong Kong. Berghuis has further published on contemporary art, new media art, experimental art, and curatorial practices in China and Indonesia. Exhibitions curated by Berghuis include Wang Jianwei: Time Temple at the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2014) and Suspended Histories at the Museum van Loon, Amsterdam (2013). David Carrier is a philosopher who writes art criticism for artcritical.com, Brooklyn Rail, and hyperallergic. He has published books on the art museum, the art gallery, the world art history, the pictures of Sean Scully, the paintings of Nicolas Poussin, and the art criticism of Charles Baudelaire. His most recent books are Aesthetic Theory, Abstract Art, and Lawrence Carroll (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) and, with Joachim Pissarro, Aesthetics of the Margins/The Margins of Aesthetics: Wild Art Explained (Penn State University Press, 2018). Juli Carson is Professor of Art at UC Irvine. She is also Philippe Jabre Professor of Art History and Curating at the American University of Beirut, 2018–2019. Her books include: Exile of the Imaginary: Politics, Aesthetics, Love (Generali Foundation, 2007) and The Limits of Representation: Psychoanalysis and Critical Aesthetics (Letra Viva Press, 2011). The Hermenuetic Impulse: Aesthetics of an Untethered Past was published this year by PoLyPen, a subsidiary of b_books Press. Biljana Ćirić is an independent curator based in Shanghai and Belgrade. She was the co‐curator of the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial for Contemporary Art (Yekaterinburg, 2015), curator‐in‐residence at the Kadist Art Foundation (Paris, 2015), and a research fellow at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Høvikodden, 2016). Her most recent project was the Second Assembly, a seminar series related to the exhibition histories of China and Southeast Asia, with a focus on the 1990s, which was hosted by the Rockbund Art Museum in 2018. xiv ◼ ◼ ◼ Notes on Contributors

Sara Diamond is President of OCAD University, Canada’s, “University of the Imagination.” She holds a PhD in Computing, Information Technology and Engineering. She is an appointee of the Order of Ontario and a recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for service to Canada. She is the winner of the 2013 GRAND NCE Digital Media Pioneer Award, and Canada’s Leading 150 women. Her research includes data visualization, public art policy, and media histories. Gregory Galligan is an independent curator and art historian and director/co‐ founder of the nonprofit research platform THAI ART ARCHIVES™ (f. 2010), in Bangkok. He lectures on global modern and contemporary art histories for the International Program in Design and Architecture (INDA), and cultural management and the history and theory of contemporary curatorial practice for the MA in Cultural Management (MACM) curriculum at Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok). Alex Gawronski is an artist, writer, gallerist, and academic based in Sydney, Australia. Gawronski frequently focuses on the institutional dynamics that underwrite and determine how we see and consume art. He has founded and directed numerous independent artist spaces, currently KNULP in Sydney. In 2017, he participated in The National: New Australian Art, a survey of mid‐career and established artists at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Carriageworks, Sydney, Australia. Adam Geczy is an artist and writer who teaches at the University of Sydney. His Art: Histories, Theories and Exceptions (Berg, 2008) won the Choice Award for best academic title in art in 2009. Having produced over 16 books, recent titles include Artificial Bodies in Fashion and Art (Bloomsbury, 2017) and Transorientalism in Art, Fashion and Film (Bloomsbury, 2019). He is also editor of the JAPPC and ab‐ Original (both Penn State University Press). Arnau Gifreu‐Castells is a research affiliate at the Open Documentary Lab (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and part of the i‐Docs group (University of the West of England). He has published various books and articles in his research area, interactive and transmedia non‐fiction, and specifically on interactive documentaries. Eric Kluitenberg is a theorist, writer, curator, and educator working at the intersec- tion of culture, politics, media, and technology. He is the Editor‐in‐Chief of the Tactical Media Files, an online documentation platform for Tactical Media. He was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, and teaches cultural and media theory at the Art Science Interfaculty in The Hague, the Netherlands. His recent publications include (Im)Mobility (2011) and Acoustic Space #11, Techno‐Ecologies (RIXC, 2012). Elke Krasny, Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her research, writing, and curating connects feminist praxis, spatial economies, urban analysis, and curat- ing’s historiographies. Publications include the 2017 essays “Exposed: The Politics of Infrastructure in VALIE EXPORT’s Transparent Space” in Third Text and “The Salon Model: The Conversational Complex” in Feminism and Art History Now, edited by Horne and Perry. The volume Women’s: Museum. Curatorial Politics in Feminism, Education, History, and Art appeared in 2013. Notes on Contributors ◼ ◼ ◼ xv

Maria Lind is a curator, writer, and educator based in Stockholm. She is the director of Tensta konsthall, Stockholm, and the artistic director of the 11th Gwangju Biennale. She was director of the graduate program, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (2008–2010). Among her recent co‐edited publications are Art and the F Word: Reflections on the Browning of Europe (Sternberg Press, 2014). She edited Abstraction as part of MIT’s and Whitechapel Gallery’s series Documents on Contemporary Art. Sean Lowry is a Melbourne‐based artist, writer, curator, and musician. He holds a PhD in Visual Arts from the University of Sydney and is currently Head of Critical and Theoretical Studies at Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne. Lowry has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, and his published writing appears in numerous journals and edited volumes. He is also Founder and Executive Director of Project Anywhere (www. projectanywhere.net). For more information, please visit www.seanlowry.com. Andrew McClellan is Professor of Art History at Tufts University, US. He has written widely on eighteenth‐century European art and the history of museums and art collecting. His books include: Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth‐century Paris (University of California Press, 1999), Art and its Publics (Wiley‐Blackwell, 2003), The Art Museum from Boullée to Bilbao (University of California Press, 2008), and, with Sally Anne Duncan, The Art of Curating: Paul J. Sachs and the Museum Course at Harvard (Getty Publications, 2018). Gerald McMaster is a curator, artist, author, and professor and is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Visual Culture and Curatorial Practice at OCAD University, Toronto, Canada. McMaster has curated two international biennales: in 1995 he was Canadian commissioner to the Biennale di Venezia and in 2012 he was artistic co‐ director, with Catherine de Zegher, of the 18th Biennale of Sydney. In 2018, he was Curator for the Canadian Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2018 (Venice, Italy). Djon Mundine, OAM, is a member of the Bandjalung people of northern New South Wales, Australia and is a curator, writer, artist, and activist. He has held prominent curatorial positions in national and international institutions. He was the concept artist of the Aboriginal Memorial at the National Gallery of Australia in 1988. In 2005–2006 he was Research Professor at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan. He is currently an independent curator of contempo- rary Indigenous art. Melentie Pandilovski is an art theorist, historian, and curator. His research examines the links between art culture and science technology. He was previously director of Video Pool Media Arts Centre, Winnipeg, Canada and is currently Director of the Riddoch Art Gallery, Mount Gambier, Australia. He has curated more than 200 pro- jects in Europe, Australia, and Canada. He is the editor (with Tom Kohut) of Marshall McLuhan & Vilém Flusser Communication & Aesthetics Theories Revisited (Video Pool, 2015). Carole Paul is director of Museum Studies in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her current work concerns the history of museums and collections in the early modern period, espe- cially in Rome. Her various publications include The First Modern Museums of Art: xvi ◼ ◼ ◼ Notes on Contributors

The Birth of an Institution in 18th‐ and Early‐19th‐Century Europe (Getty Publications, 2012). She is now writing a book on the Capitoline Museum in Rome. Chris Spring is an artist, writer, and curator (www.chrisspring.co.uk). His research interests include contemporary African art and the machine‐manufactured textile tra- ditions of eastern and southern Africa. Exhibitions at the British Museum include A South African Landscape (2010), Social Fabric (2013), and South Africa, Art of a Nation (2016) with John Giblin. His award‐winning books include Angaza Afrika: African Art Now (Laurence King, 2008), African Textiles Today (British Museum Press, 2012), and, with John Giblin, South Africa, Art of a Nation (Thames & Hudson, 2016). Fatoş Üstek is an independent curator and writer based in London. She has recently curated Art Night 2017 in collaboration with Whitechapel Gallery, London; Art Fund Curator at fig‐2, ICA Studio, London; and Associate Curator of the 10th Gwangju Biennial, South Korea. She is a member of AICA UK, a founding member of AWITA, Trustee of Art Night, and a member of the advisory board of Block Universe. Recent editorial work includes Fusion of Horizons (Whitechapel/MIT Publishing, 2018) and fig‐2: 50 projects in 50 weeks (Black Dog Publishing, 2017), and other publications include Eva Grubinger (Sternberg Press, 2015). Lee Weng‐Choy is an independent art critic and consultant, currently based in Kuala Lumpur. He is president of the Singapore Section of the International Association of Art Critics and writes on contemporary art and culture in Southeast Asia. His essays have appeared in journals such as Afterall, and anthologies such as Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Art, Over Here: International Perspectives on Art and Culture, and Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985. Martha Wilson is a performance artist and founding director of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. in New York, US. Acknowledgments

The editors sincerely wish to thank the following people for making this book ­possible. Jayne Fargnoli, Catriona King, Jake Opie, Elisha Benjamin, and Richard Samson of Wiley‐Blackwell for their unwavering professionalism and dedication in seeing our manuscript through from its conception to its realization. To Helen Hyatt‐Johnston for her professional advice, encouragement, and assistance over the previous four years. And to Carolyn Symonds also for her encour- agement and support over many years. During the final preparation of the manuscript, Brad Buckley is also very grateful to Professor Jon Cattapan, Director of the Victorian College of the Arts and Professor Su Baker, AM, Pro‐Vice‐Chancellor (Engagement) and Director of the Centre of Visual Art (CoVA), Victorian College of the Arts, the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne for the residency at the Norma Redpath Studio. Also, to the Bruny Island Foundation for the Arts and the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service for the residency. We are, of course, especially grateful to all of our contributors who gave their time and expertise in helping us to materialize our editorial intentions and objectives. Many heartfelt thanks to all of you in sharing our critical interest for the concerns and direction of contemporary curating in our society. It is hoped that A Companion to Curation in its own way contributes to a better conceptual, cultural, and historical understanding of contemporary art discourse and its impact on our individual and public lives.

Brad Buckley and John Conomos Foreword

The role of the curator has always evolved, as the definitions and institutions of art have changed. It is not only the role that has transformed, however, but also the expectations of what curators should do, not unlike what is now required of educators (and the roles are becoming more and more intertwined): to be highly productive and mobile; to be a consummate communicator, diplomat, scholar, and maybe fundraiser; to be at the forefront of emerging developments; and to be accessible to broad and diverse audiences. As exhibitions become absorbed into the mass entertainment industry, with institutions compelled to ever extend their visitorship, curators increas- ingly need to also move beyond the confines of the museum and into the public sphere – both physical and virtual – as facilitators, collaborators, advocates, and entertainers. While the situation sketched here is by no means universal, it reflects the great diversification of curatorship in the twenty‐first century. We can attribute this to numerous factors: new technologies, shifting demographics, globalizing artistic net- works, the addressing of racial and gender biases in art history and museums, and the “educational turn” in the making, presentation, and communication of art toward research and knowledge production. Each has challenged the traditional institutions of art, opening them up to new histories and audiences, as well as building new models and alternative systems. Artists and curators, often from outside the dominant power structures and centers of modern art, have challenged how exhibitions are made, putting forth positions that have begun to dismantle what seemed unassailable only a few years ago. If we go back to the communicative role of the curator, it is now starkly evident that a close consideration of who speaks, to whom, and for whom, is fundamentally important to curatorial work. To understand how these developments have brought us here, a wide‐ranging and historically grounded anthology such as this is enormously useful. There have been numerous publications on curating in recent years, many coming out of the proliferating courses and conferences on the subject, as well as the rapidly growing scholarship on exhibition histories. This book adds substantially to the field by Foreword ◼ ◼ ◼ xix bringing together a number of these research streams, enabling us to connect mul- tiple perspectives and methodologies that have emerged over several centuries in different locations. The chapters here trace the transformation of the curator from a keeper of curiosities in seventeenth‐century Europe, to a builder of collections and a maker of exhibitions, to a multifaceted cultural agent in a global, virtual world. Such a long, broad view brings into focus how complex and dynamic the curatorial field is. While deeply informed by history and the responsibilities that carries, it is contin- ually being invigorated and challenged by the conversations taking place between individuals in the present. This publication affirms that in making our way through this vastly expanded arena – where we are often in danger of forgetting or getting lost – it is this willingness to keep the conversation going that is our surest guide.

Russell Storer Deputy Director (Curatorial & Research) National Gallery Singapore List of Illustrations

3.1 Map of the United States showing distribution of Museum Course graduates. Design by Jeanne Koles. 3.2 Paul J. Sachs teaching in the Naumburg Room, Fogg Museum. Photograph by George S. Woodruff, 1944. Harvard Art Museums/ Harvard Art Museums Archives, Fogg History Photographs, ARCH.0000.265. Photo: Imaging Department (c) President and Fellows of Harvard College. 3.3 Students studying an early Italian fresco painting at the Fogg Museum. Photograph by George S. Woodruff, 1944. Harvard Art Museums/Harvard Art Museums Archives, Fogg History Photographs, ARCH.0000.1100. Photo: Imaging Department (c) President and Fellows of Harvard College. 4.1 Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in His Picture Gallery in Brussels, c. 1651. Oil on copper, 104.8 × 130.4 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Photo: Scala/Art Resource NY. 4.2 View of the Stanza degli Imperatori. Palazzo Nuovo, Musei Capitolini, Rome. Photo: Archivio Fotografico dei Musei Capitolini. 4.3 Belvedere Palace, Imperial and Royal Picture Gallery. Plan and arrangement of first and second floors. From Christian von Mechel, Verzeichniss der Gemälde der kaiserlich königlichen Bilder Gallerie in Wien (Vienna: Christian von Mechel, 1783), plate bound into end of volume. Courtesy of the author. 6.1 Precarious Art: Protest & Resistance, Alpha Nova & Galerie Futura Berlin, 2015. Walls painted black following the instruction of artists Melody LaVerne Bettencourt, Karina Griffith, and Lerato Shadi. Photograph of the installation view. Courtesy: alpha nova & galerie futura. 6.2 Show Me Your Archive and I Will Tell You Who is in Power, Kiosk Ghent, 2015. Photograph of the installation view. Courtesy of the author. List of Illustrations ◼ ◼ ◼ xxi

6.3 More Than One Fragile Thing at a Time, Victoria & Albert Museum London, 2015. Photograph of the installation view with new tables designed by muf art/architecture. Courtesy: muf architecture/art. 6.4 Queering Yerevan’s Collective Happenings In The Garden On Zarubyan Street 2008–2010. Installation view of Suzanne Lacy’s exhibition International Dinner Party in feminist curatorial thought, curated by Elke Krasny, Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK, 2015. Courtesy of Elke Krasny. 6.5 Mapping The Everyday. Neighbourhood Claims for the Future, Audain Gallery, 2011–2012. Photograph of the installation view showing text‐based horizon line and the archive of desmedia collective. Courtesy of Kevin Schmidt. 7.1 T.451, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, 2012. Courtesy of Tensta konsthall. Photo, Robin Haldert. 7.2 T.451, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, 2012. Courtesy of Tensta konsthall. Photo, Robin Haldert. 7.3 T.451, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, 2012. Courtesy of Tensta konsthall. Photo, Robin Haldert. 7.4 T.451, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, 2012. Courtesy of Tensta konsthall. Photo, Robin Haldert. 8.1 Tribute to Magdalene Odundo, ink and pencil on paper, 1996, H 60cm, W 42cm, Chris Spring. Courtesy of the author. 8.2 Drawing of a ‘throwing knife’, pencil on paper, 1993, H 38cm, W 51cm, Chris Spring. Courtesy of the author. 8.3 A silk weaving loom in Tunisia, oil pastel on paper, 1997, H 11cm, W 30cm, Chris Spring. Courtesy of the author. 9.1 Martha Wilson. Courtesy of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. 2005. Photo credit: Christopher Milne. 9.2 (Reading) Versus (Reading Into), Dara Birnbaum. Courtesy of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. April 11, 1978. 10.1 Redza Piyadasa and Sulaiman Esa, Empty Bird Cage After Release of Bird (1974). View of Mystical Reality exhibition held at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Kuala Lumpur. 10.2 Lee Wen, “World Class Society”. Installation, video, soft sculptures, survey, Nokia Singapore Art 1999, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, September 1999 to February 2000. 10.3 Charles Lim, SEA STATE 6 – capsize (still), 2015, Single‐channel HD digital video, c. 7 min. Courtesy of the artist. Venice Biennale Arsenale and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. 10.4 Cai Guoqiang, “Bring to Venice What Marco Polo Forgot”, 1995. At the Grand Canal, Venice. For the exhibition Transculture, 46th Venice Biennale, 1995. Installation, wooden fishing boat from Quanzhou, Chinese herbs, earthen jars, ginseng beverages, bamboo ladles, porcelain cups, ginseng (100 kg), and handcart. Museo Naval di Venezia, Venice, Italy. 10.5 DGTMB by Eko Nugroho, We Care as Much as You Pay, manual embroidery patch on black cotton underlay, white MDF frame, 26 × 36 cm, 14 × 24 cm (embroidery). Purchased at Komunitas Salihara, arts shop, Jakarta, January 2016. xxii ◼ ◼ ◼ List of Illustrations

12.1 Bangkok Biennial opening ceremonies, 1 July 2018, Bangkok. Photo: Courtesy of Bangkok Biennial and May Thatun. 12.2 Bangkok Art Biennale co‐founders Apinan Poshyananda (right) and Thapana Sirivadhanabhakdi, CEO and President of Thailand Beverage Public Company Limited (“ThaiBev”) [artwork: Choi Jeong Hwa (Korea), “Love Me Pink Pig”], September 2018, Bangkok. Photo: Courtesy of Bangkok Art Biennale, 2018. 12.3 Assistant Curator Vipash Purichanont (second from right) on a site visit for the Thailand Biennale at Krabi, 2018. Photo: Courtesy of the Thailand Biennale. 12.4 Apinan Poshyananda announcing the inaugural Bangkok Art Biennale 2018 at the 57th Venice Biennale—“Viva Arte Viva!” (2017). Photo: Courtesy of Bangkok Art Biennale, 2018. 12.5 Sawangwongse Yawnghwe, Yawnghwe Office In Exile–Platform To Dissent. Bangkok Biennial Pavilion: Cartel Artspace, Bangkok 3 August–2 September, 2018. Photo: Preecha Pattara. 12.6 Myrtille Tibayrenc, SIC–TRANSIT. Bangkok Biennial Pavilion: Quid Pro Quo, Liv_Id Collective Bangrak Bazaar, Bangkok. Photo: Courtesy of Toot Yung Gallery, Bangkok. 13.1 Installation view of exhibition First Papers of Surrealism showing Marcel Duchamp’s Sixteen Miles of String, 1942. Gelatin silver print. © John D. Schiff. Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library & Archives, Gift of Jacqueline, Paul and Peter Matisse in memory of their mother, Alexina Duchamp, 13‐1972‐9(303), Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 13.2 Martin Kippenberger, Museum of Modern Art Syros (MOMAS), 1993–1994. MOMAS sign by Christopher Wool, Syros, Greece, 1994. © Christopher Wool. 13.3 Thomas Hirschhorn, Musée Précaire Albinet, d’Aubervilliers: Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers; Paris (detail), 2004. Courtesy of http:// www.leslaboratoires.org/en/projet/musee‐precaire‐albinet/musee‐ precaire‐albinet. 13.4 NEAR/AFAAAR (Mitchel Cumming), High Street by Shane Haseman, work executed on French Doors of the curator’s kitchen, Redfern, NSW, Australia, 2014. Photo: Alex Gawronski. 13.5 Exhibition poster, the Institute of Contemporary Art Newtown (ICAN), Sydney, Australia, 2010. Courtesy of the author and ICAN (Carla Cescon, Scott Donovan, Alex Gawronski). 15.1 Ramingining artists. Raminginging, Northern Territory, Australia The Aboriginal Memorial 1987–88 natural earth pigments on hollow logs height (irregular) 327 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased with the assistance of funds from National Gallery admission charges and commissioned in 1987. 15.2 Bungaree the First Australian: and Bungaree’s Farm, Mosman Art Gallery’s T5 Camouflage Fuel Tank. Courtesy of the Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney, Australia 2015. Photo credit: Djon Mundine. 15.3 Four Women (I Do Belong) Double, Courtesy of Lismore Regional Gallery, Australia 2017. Photo credit: Carl Warner. List of Illustrations ◼ ◼ ◼ xxiii

18.1 Constant Dullaart, High Retention Slow Delivery!!, 2014. Still from video essay. Courtesy the artist and Upstream Gallery. 18.2 Tamiko Thiel, Gardens of the Anthropocene, 2016. Commission for the Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park, Courtesy of the artist. 18.3 David Rokeby, Calgary Scroll, 2017. Courtesy of the artist. 18.4 Diana Domingues, Biocybrid Fables: Borges’ Fantastic Creatures, 2010, Urban intervention in Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) and Installation in AR, Buenos Aires. Courtesy of the artist. 21.1 #exstrange Live Now on Ebay (Featuring Anke Schüttler), 2017. Internet‐based work. Image courtesy of Rebekah Modrak and Marialaura Ghidini. 21.2 #exstrange Archive, 2017 ‐ present. Internet‐based work. Image courtesy of Rebekah Modrak and Marialaura Ghidini. 21.3 The Gallery of Lost Art, 2013. Online gallery view. Image courtesy of Damien Smith and ISO Design, 2012. 21.4 The Gallery of Lost Art, 2013. Page devoted to John Baldessari, The Cremation Project (1970). Image courtesy of Damien Smith and ISO Design, 2012. 21.5 Project Anywhere, Screenshot of 2018 Global Exhibition Program. Courtesy of the author and Project Anywhere. 21.6 The Ghosts of Nothing, Screenshot of YouTube channel for The Ghosts of Nothing—In Memory of Johnny B. Goode—World Tour— 2014–2018. Courtesy of the author and The Ghosts of Nothing. 22.1 Trust (series), Niki Sperou, Medium: glass Petri dish, gel medium seeded with E.coli, antibiotic, paper, light box. Created for the Toxicity exhibition, Plug‐In ICA, Winnipeg, Canada, 2013. Courtesy of Niki Sperou. 22.2 Man A Plant (series detail), Niki Sperou, Medium: glass Petri dish, plant tissue culture, agar medium, drawing, on lightbox plinth. Produced via aseptic technique. Produced in 2006 for the Man‐A‐ Plant exhibition, at the Flinders Medical Centre, Adelaide. Exhibited at Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide for Biotech Art – Revisited in 2009, and The Apparatus of Life & Death – SEAFair, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, Macedonia in 2010. Courtesy of Niki Sperou. 22.3 The Colonised Body (detail), Niki Sperou. Mixed media installation 2016. Exhibited at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) in 2016, and The Rise of Bio‐Society, Riddoch Art Gallery, Mount Gambier in 2017. Courtesy of Niki Sperou. 22.4 Preserves, Niki Sperou. Mixed media installation. Created for the Domestic Science Exhibition, Royal Institution Australia in 2012. Courtesy of Niki Sperou. Introduction Brad Buckley and John Conomos

This book, A Companion to Curation, fills a crucial and longstanding need in the ­literature on the curator, curating, and the history of curation. This comprehensive collection is a clear, engaging, and timely addition to the field. The main objective, as with all volumes in the various Blackwell Companion series, is to provide a reference work for the field of curatorial studies and curating in the visual arts that is at once comprehensive in scope and context, comprehensible to the non- specialist, and representative of the diversity of current approaches within the discipline and profession. One of the key concerns of our book is to discuss how and why curating has become such a central critical and practical concern within the “global contempo- rary” art world and how it will be imagined and manifested in the future. Essentially, we have examined a number of crucial developments since the late 1980s and early 1990s that have placed curating at the center of our present hyperinflated art system. This situation is characterized, according to Paul O’Neill, Mick Wilson, and Lucy Steeds, by a defining tension between curating as display‐making (the exhibition) and curating as an expanded practice (the curatorial) (O’Neill, 2016). Relatedly, as these authors and others have recently observed, the rapid and pervasive changes to curating have been significantly predicated on the huge expansion of curatorial and educational platforms and programs in our tertiary educational and museological sector. This is evident in the contemporary literature on curating, which underscores how the current international focus on educational curating programs has produced problematic under- standings and Eurocentric professional practices and perspectives. A Companion to Curation primarily addresses the unprecedented interest in con- temporary art curating during the last 30 years and how the curatorial discourse has changed during this period. What new forms of curatorial practice have emerged? Among the changes in the international art world is that the number of curators of various kinds, in and out of the art museum, archive, and other institutional contexts, including those who are embedded, adjunct – and who are also artists (as defined by Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook, 2015) – has exploded. Also, many artists have, in that period, in their practices, focused on international biennales, triennials, and docu- menta (Green and Gardner, 2016). And since the 1960s, when Harold Szeemann Introduction ◼ ◼ ◼ xxv became the first star curator, in particular with his spectacular documenta 5 (1972) and biennales suggesting cultural and political change emerged, curators became also essentially fundraisers. This mainly occurred in the latter half of the century. We emphasize as well, throughout the book, how the emergence of a globalized curatorial discourse since the late 1980s has occurred alongside the biennale culture of the same period. This indicates the contextualization of curating within the biennales and large‐scale exhibitions of the last three decades or so, and the rethinking of curating as a medium of artistic practice. In short, this period has seen a radical ­convergence of art and curatorial practice for the first time. This rapid explosion of biennales, the so‐called biennialization of international contem- porary art, can be examined in the context of globalized neoliberalism. Critic Peter Schjeldahl once described this as “­festivalism,” where art simply reinforced the neocolonial norms and currents of international capital, politics, and power (Green and Gardner 2016: 197–198). For the influential curator Hans‐Ulrich Obrist, biennales, triennales, and large‐scale exhibitions, and archives, represent the notion of the exhibition space itself being a laboratory where ideas, knowledge, and cultural forms are articulated and distributed throughout the larger culture (Obrist 2011). This allows, to quote Obrist, “the unex- pected, the spontaneous, and the unplanned” to take place in society (Obrist 2011: 177). In such key exhibitions as Cities on the Move, curated with Hou Hanru (1990), Laboratorium, curated with Barbara Vanderlinden (1999), and do it (1993), we encounter Obrist’s distinctively expansive knowledge and strategies. These strategies are based on a collaborative form of curating, treating it as a toolbox, so that curating itself can learn from urbanism, for instance. Curators, for Obrist, are responsible for the critical information that is transmitted between and through the objects of a given exhibition. Here the spectators themselves become the essential decipherers of the objects of an exhibition. Exhibitions should be curated based on understanding and accepting that there is no knowing exactly where they may lead. The classic example of this is the monumental exhibition Les Immatériaux that the philosopher Jean‐ Françis Lyotard curated in 1985. Curators had been defined, since the seventeenth century, as people who take care, preserve, and classify objects worth caring for: as the German artist Tino Sehgal reminds us, in a word, “a specialist of things.” Nowadays, in an era of hyperspecializa- tion and globalized technocracy, Obrist stands out as someone who is a generalist in many fields. He speaks with erudition and inventiveness, and is interested in curating as a means of articulating the intersubjective, the dynamic, and of transcending the static of the art world (Obrist 2011: 11). Ironically, in the mid‐1990s Obrist was ­contemplating leaving the art world, but then applied his speculative curatorial objective to locating and cross‐fertilizing the elements of an exhibition, treating it as a laboratory of ideas that will impact on society in a much broader context than the art world. He has problematized the very moral authority of the modern‐day curator as a specialist who can alone decide on the validity of something. In his quest to rede- fine the role of the curator as a dynamic, intertextual, transdisciplinary agent in the contemporary info‐scape, Obrist’s questioning of the static human–object interaction in the art world has been markedly affected by his belief in what he terms “infinite conversations” as the basis of critical knowledge (Obrist 2016: 9–13, 173–95). Obrist’s long‐term concern with fluctuating and transformative exhibition structures and formats is predicated on (a) the recognition that curating is a subject lacking a xxvi ◼ ◼ ◼ Introduction valid history, a field where cultural amnesia has played a significant role, and (b) the understanding that oral history is vital to its acceptance as a field in our post‐computer era. In fact, what matters to Obrist in terms of curating is this very idea of its capacity to allow disparate elements of our world to connect to each other:

the act of curating, … at its most basic is simply about connecting cultures, bringing their elements into proximity with each other – the task of curating is to make junctions, to allow different elements to touch. You might describe it as the attempted pollination of culture, or a form of map‐making that opens new routes through a city, a people or a world. (Obrist 2015: 1)

Tellingly, today the very noun “curator” and verb “curate” have become viral outside the art world, and are used to cover most aspects of our lives. Even the his- toric New York department store Brooks Brothers now “curates” its latest collection of shirts and the once humble cookbook has now morphed into a collection of “curated” recipes. Even in sport, the cricket pitch is managed by a curator. We now curate playlists, fashion, events, food, film, and rock concerts, all of which clearly sug- gests that the curator’s practice has bled into all aspects of our culture. The Canadian critic and writer David Blazer deftly dissects the cultural, semiotic, and political dimensions of curating having become a cult thing in his book Curationism. He argues that curationism is the fashionable acceleration of the curatorial impulse, since the mid‐1990s, into “a dominant way of thinking and being” (Blazer 2014: 2). Blazer’s opening pages describe his encounter with curator Carolyn Christov‐ Bakargiev and her explanation of why for documenta 13 she refused to call her team curators. Instead she referred to them as “agents” and claimed that curationism itself can be explained in terms of our overall sociological alienation, where rather than being perceived as individuals we see ourselves as an anonymous multitude, all becoming the same. Hence one of the basic objectives of A Companion to Curation is to demystify the ideological, cultural, historical, and professional aspects of cura- tion’s intricate relationship with late capitalism or post‐Fordist society. Although curating is considered a relatively new profession, it can in fact be traced back to ancient Rome. All of its distinct defining functions, such as preservation, selection, contribution to art history, and creating exhibitions for galleries and museums, are encapsulated in its Latin etymological root, curare, meaning “to take care of” (Obrist 2015: 15). These values are reflected in our popular understanding of curating as a direct expression, according to Blazer, of “taste, sensibility and con- noisseurship” (Blazer 2014: 2). Essentially, in ancient Rome, curators were actually civil servants whose main responsibility was the caring and overseeing of public works, including the empire’s aqueducts, bathhouses, and sewers (Obrist 2015: 24–25). In medieval times, as Obrist points out, the emphasis shifted to a more metaphysical and religious aspect of human life, as the curatus (or curate in English) was a priest concerned with the caring of the souls of a particular parish. Significantly, by the eigh- teenth century, curators became more concerned with museums and their collections but importantly, as Obrist reminds us, different kinds of caretaking emerged over the centuries (Obrist 2015: 25). What quintessentially matters now is how the contempo- rary curator still remains connected to the concept of curare, in the sense of culti- vating, growing, and pruning and trying to help citizens with their shared concerns (Obrist 2015). Introduction ◼ ◼ ◼ xxvii

One of the fundamental objectives of A Companion to Curation is to bring together in one publication, for the first time, leading artist‐curators, curators, scholars, art historians, and theorists in the field of curating to consider curating in the context of this broad historical arch, and so to allow a global cross‐disciplinary dialogue about perspectives and issues related to curating. Our contributors come from north and south, east and west of the equator, and can speak of new frameworks, angles, con- cepts, and experiences of contemporary curating. We have therefore included a number of newer voices, as well as established commentators in the field. Importantly, A Companion to Curation discusses the global developments in ­contemporary indigenous art, the ascendancy of contemporary Chinese art since the 1980s, and the emergence of curators and new curatorial strategies from outside the Eurocentric and Anglosphere art worlds, particularly across Asia. It also focuses on a genealogical critique by tracing the concept of “curating” from its primary context in the northern hemisphere to the southern one, outlining its different meanings, inflec- tions, and issues over the centuries, to the present day. A Companion to Curation is divided into four broad conceptual parts:

Part I: An Overview: The Origin and Provenance of Curating Part II: Movements, Models, People, and Politics Part III: Curating in a Globalized World Part IV: Beyond the Museum: Curating at the Frontier.

Part I: An Overview: The Origin and Provenance of Curating

This section begins with a focused study of the changing attitudes, tastes, and fashionable interests of a series of curators who directed the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, United States, in particular the problems and challengers they faced in selecting contem- porary artists who represented a particular moment in contemporary art and whether in the selection process it is possible to choose who will endure beyond the exhibition. This section continues with a short chronology of the curator as the role emerged in the Middle Ages, when a curator was a keeper or guardian. It addresses how and why the first collections in the late Renaissance were not so encumbered by morality or dogma. As the name suggests, the “cabinet of curiosities” or Wunderkammern, which began to appear in the early seventeenth century, consisted of a random variety of objects and images that reflected the fascination of the collector. What was commissioned and collected followed choices, made by the patron to reflect his or her taste and wealth. Since then the curator has typically been the custodial mediator between an art col- lection and its modes of display. This section then explores the way in which the curator, at times, operating outside the established salons and academies, became a force and influence that shaped modernism at the turn of the twentieth century. Interestingly, the artist‐curator is often misunderstood as only a recent phenomenon in the contemporary art world. However, several of the most significant exhibitions during this period, starting with the Salon des Refusés held in Paris in 1863, were curated by artists as a reaction to their rejection from the Paris Salon and the implica- tions this had for their careers and potential patronage. With the expansion of art museums in Europe and the United States, the profes- sionalization of the curator quickly followed, with the establishment of courses in xxviii ◼ ◼ ◼ Introduction museum studies and curating. Most notable and influential was the course founded at Harvard by Paul J. Sachs in 1921. This section continues by placing in a broader ­context the professionalization of the curator from the Renaissance to the present and the general acceptance of standard practices by curators and directors of museums. Importantly, museums historically transformed during the nineteenth century from places of “enlightenment – inspired iconoclasm – into places of a romantic iconophilia” in the twentieth century. Central to this has been Marcel Duchamp’s exhibiting of a urinal in 1917, which significantly altered the exhibition’s basic role in the art world’s symbolic economy. Fundamentally then, twentieth century curato- rial discourse, as it was traditionally articulated in the patrician museums of mod- ernism, emanated, as earlier suggested, from its original Latin etymological root curare. Paradoxically then, curating embodies the twin tropes of being iconophilic and iconoclastic at the same time. David Carrier’s “A Select History of Curating in Pittsburgh: The Recent Story of the Carnegie International” is an engaging critique of the Carnegie International that was first established in Pittsburgh in 1896. It is, therefore, the second oldest interna- tional art survey exhibition. Carrier focuses on the Carnegie International from 1979 to the present and discusses the changing styles of curating as manifested in nearly 30 years of exhibition history. He describes in detail the history of the host institution itself, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the vital relationship it has to Pittsburgh, and in so doing provides us with insight into the roles and ideas of the many curators involved, including John Caldwell and John R. Lane, Mark Francis, Laura Hoptman, Lynne Cook, Madeleine Grynsztein, and Richard Armstrong. Carrier acutely delin- eates the many issues and problems of such a large international exhibition in a ­provincial city. He discusses the expectations and claims such an international art exhi- bition can pose to us in the context of the changing contemporary art world. He analyses how these various curators individually contributed to our understanding of contemporary art and, relatedly, how one can identify those artists who will endure in such a turbulent zeitgeist. Adam Geczy’s chapter, “Curating Curiosity: Imperialism, Materialism, Humanism, and the Wunderkammer” delineates the fundamental genesis of the museum in the context of secular humanism, imperialism, and the very early stages of modern science.­ Crucially, Geczy illustrates that, despite their actual grounding in scientific enquiry, the earliest museums were essentially collections gathered by individual collectors and thus expressed their tastes, preferences, fantasies, and geographical location. To probe these early collections is, by definition, to also focus on the centrality of the qualities of curiosity and wonder that inform both art and science. Wunderkammer, Kunstkabinett, Schatzkammer, guardaroba, and studiolo are all, Geczy contends, implied in the English “cabinet of curiosities” and are the defining terms of the arrangements, settings, organizational principles, and philosophies that came to be the museum. Etymologically speaking, the first museums were named after the Greek word museion, signifying “seat of the Muses,” and they were undoubtedly sites of wonder before ideas such as taxonomy and science began to play a role in the development of the museum. Geczy demonstrates that the original museums were not only store- houses of vast riches, but also sites for reflection on our world and the next one, illus- trating the vastness and impulses of the world and how the metaphysical was placed in relation to the material. For Geczy, the word Wunderkammer continues to define a