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SUE SPAID, Revisiting Ventzislavov's Thesis: “Curating Should Be Understood as a Fine Art”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 74, Issue 1, February 2016, Pages 87–91, https://doi.org/10.1111/jaac.12252
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I. VENTZISLAVOV's THESIS
Rossen Ventzislavov has stated that his thesis “is simply that curating should be understood as a fine art” (2014, 83). He claims that those who reject this view typically cite division of labor as the means of distinguishing curatorial work from artistic work. I too reject his thesis, though I heartily accept his characterizing curators as no more “institutionally, ethically, and financially encumbered” than artists, leaving neither profession's duties inherently normative nor in need of protection (84). Despite my sharing his assessment that the divisions of labor between artists and curators are quite porous, his thesis overlooks those features that actually differentiate artworks from their exhibitions, thus distinguishing the radically different products resulting from artistic and curatorial work, however indistinguishable their modes of production may be.
While I agree that “curatorial ideas” offer (though only temporarily) a “genuine contribution to the life of the artworks involved,” I consider curatorial ideas to contribute cognitive value, not artistic value (83). Ventzislavov's exclusive focus on the curator's contributing artistic value seems to be a version of George Dickie's institutional theory of art, whereby the curator grants artistic value through the “art of selection and through the introduction of new custodial narratives” (83). However inordinate the curator's creativity, it is illogical to consider “new custodial narratives” or resulting exhibitions artworks as does Ventzislavov, who recommends that philosophers reconsider “curatorship and its stake on a place among the rest of the fine arts” (83). The fine arts concern the production of artworks, not their public presentations, so claiming as he does that “selecting art should be thought of as a fine art” suggests that the curator's selected set succeeds on its own merit as an artwork (83). This is akin to claiming that an orchestra's particularly exceptional performance succeeds on its own as the conductor's artwork due to his or her brilliant conductorial ideas. Finally, Ventzislavov's mistaking exhibitions for artworks overlooks the fact that exhibitions are performances of artworks and are always in presentation mode, unlike artworks in storage awaiting frames, assembly, or exhibition possibilities (Spaid 2015). Exhibitions routinely travel, but no one considers their later manifestations to be presentations of some original artwork, the way exhibitions are viewed as artist‐sanctioned presentations of artists’ artworks (Irvin 2005).
