Why Good Curation Matters

I hadn’t been to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) since I left NYC for Arizona at the end of the Sixties. Before that, however, I had been a frequent visitor and quite knowledgable about the contemporary art scene, since I was food friends with the son of Harry N.Abrams the art book publisher. Abrams had brunches at his house on 70th and Madison to which he invited upcoming artists to meet potential investors; in retrospect, they were like VC pitches:-) I got to go to some of them as a wide-eyed onlooker. They were Warhol, Rauschenberg, Oldenburg and Jimmy Dine. And then I went out to the desert, where I collected the work of artists I liked, but lost track of what was happening in the big art world.

Imagine my surprise when I stopped at the Contemporary Gallery of MOMA this afternoon and found a collection that encompasses everything from political statements to re-working the rules of drawing to rope bridges made of steel wool, to artists who question whether art has a purpose in today’s world. Artists are more courageous than ever, and I LOVED the exhibition. But how would i have felt if I had come upon some of these works “in the wild,” without the wall plaques that told me that this artist was part of the Fluxus School, or showing found objects from New Orleans after Katrina, or combining tradition with industrial materials?

Curation provides context. It tells me why I should invest my time in understanding this work, in trying to learn about the artist, his influences, his preoccupations. It doesn’t have to be professional, but it does have to be thoughtful.

And that’s why I don’t admire Flipboard. I don’t find it’s curation to be up there with MOMA’s. That may be a stretch, but you know what I mean.

Francine Hardaway, Ph D
GV: 816.WRITTEN

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