What Skills, Etc. Should Emerging Curators Focus on?
Dear Curators,
If you were hiring someone new with little technical experience, what qualities would you look for?
What do you consider the most important skills and professional considerations for emerging curators looking to break out?
The skills required will really depend on the type of exhibitions you want to create, as well as what institutions you want to create them at/on behalf of. If you don’t know the answer, your first step is to figure that out. Find people in the industry you admire or wish to emulate in some way, curators and/or critics, content creators, academics, authors, etc—and study their trajectory; where they studied if they even went to school, where they worked early in their careers, and all the experiences that help shape them into the person they are today, and see if that doesn’t inspire you to explore different avenues on your own journey.
Personally, the most important skills I consider when hiring someone is passion, integrity and an ability to problem solve. Arguably, those are things that can’t really be taught, but I advocate cultivating them inside yourself regardless of your profession.
Traditionally, curators for major institutions will hold a PhD in art history or have a comparable academic background. There are also many curators with MA’s in art history or museum studies, or even MFA’s, who have a background in art making themselves.
Take a look at the emerging curators who are making a name for themselves, and you’ll see they have one thing in common regardless of their academic background: critical thinking and an ability to critique institutions while bringing to light artists or artworks that have been neglected.
If this is your passion and you want a seat at the table, I’d advise living and breathing the genre for which you want to work. There is more media than ever before; read books, listen to podcasts, watch documentaries, Youtube videos, whatever is out there.
If you’re obsessed with German Expressionism, or art European Art from the early part of the 20th Century, research every museum, secondary-market gallery/dealer, curator and historian who specialize in the subject. Know their names. Go to their exhibitions, openings, etc. Do whatever you can to make them your peers, or at least know who they are and what they do. If Contemporary Art is more your thing, go to every art fair, biannual, triannual, museum show, pop-up in the back of a box-truck, whatever the case may be.
And get specific. Define yourself, your interests, and understand by proxy how the world works and who the players and stakeholders are. And then once you know as much as you can about it, think about what’s missing. Are women and POC not represented? (the answer is yes.) Is money, rather than cultural importance, driving the market? (yes.) Is society too obsessed with money in general, you bet. Is late-capitalism a real issue? Absolutely. Are some of us grabbling with the never-ending trauma of colonialism while others chose to stick their head in the sand pretend it doesn’t exist? Sigh.
I fear I digress.
What I mean to say is this: figure out ways that YOU can be a positive force for the change you wish to see. Because the art-world needs changing, and the next generation of curators like yourself will be the ones to make that change a reality.