I am a Curator was a process-based exhibition project by artist Per Hüttner that took place at Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK, 5 November – 14 December 2003. During the period individual or groups of people with no experience of exhibition making created 36 exhibitions and briefly got to experience the process putting together a contemporary art show. They had artwork by 57 artists to interact with. The project stirred a lot of controversy in the art world at the time. The most common critique was that the project suggested that curation and exhibition making is easy Hüttner responded to this by writing: "the goal of the project was to inspire a more diverse and profound discussion about the meaning of artworks, exhibitions and the role of the artist." Over the years, the project has gained recognition and has been hailed as being ahead of its time and has been widely appreciated for its visionary qualities in readers on curation and research on the subject of art and exhibition making.
Background
Hüttner carried out a series of exhibitions that democratized or investigated the curatorial process in the late 1990s and in the early years of the new millennium. Many of these were collaborative and took place at the Gallery Konstakuten in Stockholm, The Hood Gallery in Los Angeles but also in galleries and public spaces in London, New York City and Vancouver and involved artists from different generations and included Geoffrey Farmer, Brian Jungen, Lenke Rothman, Neil Goldstein and curators like Reid Shier and Tone O Nielsen. In 2001 he created the curatorial framework for an exhibition at Nylon in collaboration with Goshka Macuga and Gavin Wade. and in 2002 at Curatorial Market at Cuchifritos and various public venues including Essex Street Market in New York. In these projects he developed ideas and practices that pointed towards a new way of relating to the art object and exhibition making that eventually became manifest in I am a Curator.:
"Despite its populist ideals, the Curatorial Market raises complex, insider issues about the relationship between artist and curator. ‘These two disciplines are beginning to mix and merge in ways that some people find appalling and others see as a powerful new development in the history of art making,’ Paul Clay explains. However, abandoning the idea of the autonomous piece of art can be problematic. ‘Having art that relates very strongly to the market context can fuck up the commodification process in an interesting way. It both points it up as an object to consume, and at the same time makes it harder to effectively remove from its context in order to be sold.’ Furthermore, ‘There is a danger that when curators have too strong an vision, the artists' works can end up simply as building blocks used to construct the curator's point. On the other hand if the curator's point is weak then the works can get stranded totally out of context’."
Hüttner has since developed these strategies both in projects like Repetitive Time, Democracy and Desire, (In)Visible Dialogues and in the international research network Vision Forum.
Basic structure
During six weeks people or groups of people with no prior experience in exhibition making undertook 36 investigative exercises into the process of putting together an exhibition. From the outset, the idea was to create an exhibition each day, but quickly the focus moved to investigate the 57 artworks as a resource. In order to realize this strategy the artist developed some basic concepts:
Curator of the Day: The daily slots were administered through an application process through which we tried to give as many different people as possible, in relation to occupation, age, sex, social and ethnic background. More often than not, the Curator of Day was a small group. Meaning that in the end roughly 70 people were curators.
The Gallery Crew: The Gallery Crew was the Curators of the Day's aid in developing their ideas and the project that they wanted to realize during the day. The Curator of the Day was not allowed to touch the artwork, except in those cases when this was an integral part of the piece. All the handling and mounting of the work was carried out by the Gallery Crew. The crew was also responsible for informing the visitors to the gallery about the project and answering questions.