Reference no: EM133033878

Virtual Exhibition and Curatorial Essay Instructions

Curatorial Essay Guidelines

In this Curatorial Essay you will pull together or 'curate' an exhibition of eight to ten (8-10) works of art by one (1) Canadian artist from the list below. These artists' works of art can be found in the CCCA database (Canadian Centre For Contemporary Art) at:

For instructions on how to use the CCCA website to search, click on "How to Use CCCA" available under "Resources for Assignments" on the course homepage.

Please look at ALL of the following artists before choosing which one you will curate:

Wanda Koop Edward Burtynsky
Shary Boyle Evergon
Max Streicher Joyce Wieland Agnes Martin Jin-Me Yoon Rebecca Belmore
Pudlo Pudlat

As one might find if one visited a real life gallery, art exhibitions are usually accompanied by an exhibition catalogue that discusses at length the work in it. For your virtual exhibition, you must choose and discuss eight to ten (8-10) images by one artist. After selecting the work to include in your virtual exhibition, you - the curator - will then write a catalogue essay the purpose of which is to unfold the works in terms of the artist's intentions, themes and ideas based on the research you have done about the artist and her/his work.

THIS IS NOT TO BE A CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE ARTISTS WORK NOR IS IT TO BE A BIOGRAPHY. Instead, you should attempt to find an 'umbrella' theme that allows you to place all the works you have chosen under it. THUS, ALL IMAGES SHOULD BE THEMATICALLY RELATED. (However, they need not be visually related.) Your job is to 'tie together' the images you have chosen via your curatorial essay. As each work will be different image to image, you can and should discuss each image but you also must discuss how it fits under the 'umbrella' you have chosen. That is, discuss the theme and then discuss how the works fit into or are examples of the theme. Remember that the images the artist has created throughout his/her career are 'evidence' of the ideas and issues the artist is interested in.
*Please use MLA formatting for this essay.

- External research must be done for this assignment.
- The essay MUST be 2000 words, minimum.

A good place to begin this assignment is from a position of appreciation of the artist's work. That is, it is important to choose an artist from the list above whose work you somehow respond to or are curious about, for whatever reason. While you must respond to the images, you must more importantly respond to the artist's ideas as well. It is those ideas you are to write about.

Your role here is as curator: you are selecting and choosing from among numerous works of art by one artist. Your imaginary curated exhibition here will not be a chronological career 'survey' of an artist's whole body of work, nor will it include a biography of the artist, nor an analysis of the work in formal aesthetic terms.

The Problem of Representation Mass Media
Consumer Culture
Class, Power and Politics
Place
Postmodernism
Spirituality(s)
Life, Death and the Body
Gender/s and/or Sexualities Sex and Desire
Language
Identities/Subjectivities
Ethnicities/Racialized Subjectivities Cultural and Personal Histories History and/or Time
Science and Technology
The Environment
Art as Social Practice
[Please note that beauty is not included as a theme in this list. Beauty is, rather, a condition, an ideal, etc.. Please do not deviate from the above list of themes without prior permission from the instructor.]

The catalogue essay must stipulate at some point which thematic lens(es) you are examining the artist's work through. It will address and analyze the ten works relative to those themes, all the while understanding that each of the artist's works embodies his or her themes. First, this will require research on your part. Some thoughtfulness is required in deciding not only which is the best thematic lens through which to view the particular artist's work, but also which are the most appropriate images to choose in order to discuss that theme. You will refer to the images you have chosen in order to 'make your points' about the theme you discuss. You might, at some point, also briefly connect and compare your artist to another who is working in the same vein.

In general: write about the theme itself AND then write about/fold in how the individual works of art you have chosen relate to that theme (not necessarily in that order).

You can not rely solely on the textbook and the online lessons to fulfill this assignment. There already exists a body of analytical, interpretive and critical writing on all of the artists named in the list above. It is REQUIRED that the student will do appropriate external research around their subject, and in the body of the essay refer to books, essays, articles, criticism, previous exhibition catalogues on the artist and even by the artist. You must quote from these in the body of your essay to reinforce your argument or ideas about the artist an his/her themes. This does not mean that your essay is only quotations. The majority of words are your own; the quotes are simply to reinforce them. You must include a bibliography of all the external works you researched at the end of the essay.

What you need to be clear on is that this assignment is not to be your personal interpretation of the works of art but a thematic overview of the ten works you have chosen, as seen and interpreted through the eyes of the artist, critics, theorists and other experts.

All reference material MUST be academic in nature or voice: high school level encyclopedias, etc. are not acceptable reference materials nor are articles found on the internet written by non-art amateurs rather than by serious curators, serious critics, serious art commentators or recognized art galleries. Try to avoid encyclopedia and Wikipedia references, although at the end of each Wiki article is in fact a list of references that might be valuable to you. Search those out on the UR e-brary. You MUST have at least THREE legitimate external references including neither the text (which you can quote) nor the online lessons (which you can not quote).