Curatorship as Social Practice vs Introduction to the Special Issue: Discursive Space

Both texts describe how museums are nowadays reflect more the connection with culture rather than focusing on the actual itself. Curators are not anymore simple care taker of the artifact but actual designers of stories and narratives building up for an educational experience.

The actual artifact is not anymore treated as a freestanding object but more of a social construct. Cash Cash’s argument in relation of the curatorial world as a direction for people’s orientation. The general predominant idea of decontextualization of the object to be displayed in an environment outside the culture where it belongs in order to fit within the frame of the museum to be displayed in is stripping a lot of the conceptual strength.

This decontextualization of artifacts creates conceptual distance between the object and the people actually going through the exhibit which transform the experience into a skimming activity rather than an immersive activity.

This fact is actually mostly experienced with a lot of the historical artifacts that are exhibited especially when they are displayed outside the culture where they belong to.

The concept of “Discursive spaces” as platforms for social dialogue, aligns with the shifting of the role of curator towards provoking educational insights in launching this discussion.

One of the latest exhibitions I visited was at the USS Constitution in Boston where the main experience involves visiting an exhibition space in addition to the boat. The main exhibit was mainly built around the actual making of ropes around the boat. I think that the fact of focusing on one element and dive deeply in the making process why explaining the relation to the life on the boat is an interesting approach.