- Title Pages
- List of figures
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- Introduction: conceptualising Curatopia
-
1 The museum as method (revisited)1 -
2 What not to collect? Post-connoisseurial dystopia and the profusion of things -
3 Concerning curatorial practice in ethnological museums: an epistemology of postcolonial debates -
4 Walking the fine line: From Samoa with Love? at the Museum Fünf Kontinente, Munich -
5 Curating across the colonial divides -
6 Thinking and working through difference: remaking the ethnographic museum in the global contemporary -
7 The times of the curator -
8 Baroque modernity, critique and Indigenous epistemologies in museum representations of the Andes and Amazonia -
9 Swings and roundabouts: pluralism and the politics of change in Canada’s national museums -
10 Community engagement, Indigenous heritage and the complex figure of the curator: foe, facilitator, friend or forsaken? -
11 Joining the club: a Tongan ‘akau in New England -
12 ćəsnaɁəm, the City before the City: exhibiting pre-Indigenous belonging in Vancouver -
13 The figure of the kaitiaki: learning from Māori curatorship past and present -
14 Curating the uncommons: taking care of difference in museums -
15 Collecting, curating and exhibiting cross-cultural material histories in a post-settler society -
16 Curating relations between ‘us’ and ‘them’: the changing role of migration museums in Australia1 -
17 Agency and authority: the politics of co-collecting -
18 He alo ā he alo / kanohi ki te kanohi / face-to-face: curatorial bodies, encounters and relations -
19 Curating time -
20 Virtual museums and new directions? - Index
What not to collect? Post-connoisseurial dystopia and the profusion of things
What not to collect? Post-connoisseurial dystopia and the profusion of things
- Chapter:
- (p.29) 2 What not to collect? Post-connoisseurial dystopia and the profusion of things
- Source:
- Curatopia
- Author(s):
Sharon Macdonald
Jennie Morgan
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
A key – some might even say _the _key – curatorial role is to decide what to collect. What, that is, should be preserved for the future? In this essay, we present ethnographic research with curators of contemporary everyday life. As we show, these curators struggle with a profusion of things, stories and information that could potentially be collected. Moreover, they widely report the struggle to be intensifying. Exploring their perceptions and what these mean in practice in their work, we argue that while neo-liberal and especially austerity politics has an important role in intensifying their sense of anxiety, their experience cannot be reduced to this. On the contrary, their intimation of dystopia is as much a function of other – in some ways utopian – aspirations and politics, as well as of a relativisation of value. These all contribute to transforming the nature of curatorship more widely.
Keywords: Curator, Collecting, Everyday life, Future, Value
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- Title Pages
- List of figures
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- Introduction: conceptualising Curatopia
-
1 The museum as method (revisited)1 -
2 What not to collect? Post-connoisseurial dystopia and the profusion of things -
3 Concerning curatorial practice in ethnological museums: an epistemology of postcolonial debates -
4 Walking the fine line: From Samoa with Love? at the Museum Fünf Kontinente, Munich -
5 Curating across the colonial divides -
6 Thinking and working through difference: remaking the ethnographic museum in the global contemporary -
7 The times of the curator -
8 Baroque modernity, critique and Indigenous epistemologies in museum representations of the Andes and Amazonia -
9 Swings and roundabouts: pluralism and the politics of change in Canada’s national museums -
10 Community engagement, Indigenous heritage and the complex figure of the curator: foe, facilitator, friend or forsaken? -
11 Joining the club: a Tongan ‘akau in New England -
12 ćəsnaɁəm, the City before the City: exhibiting pre-Indigenous belonging in Vancouver -
13 The figure of the kaitiaki: learning from Māori curatorship past and present -
14 Curating the uncommons: taking care of difference in museums -
15 Collecting, curating and exhibiting cross-cultural material histories in a post-settler society -
16 Curating relations between ‘us’ and ‘them’: the changing role of migration museums in Australia1 -
17 Agency and authority: the politics of co-collecting -
18 He alo ā he alo / kanohi ki te kanohi / face-to-face: curatorial bodies, encounters and relations -
19 Curating time -
20 Virtual museums and new directions? - Index
