Anne Nielsen – PhD student and co-leader of CDH research strand ‘Museums, Archives and Exhibitions’ – reflects on our recent ‘What is Curating?’ roundtable

Reflecting on “What Is Curating?” roundtable session (Mithras House, 27th September 2024)

Anne Nielsen, University of Brighton/British Museum AHRC Techne collaborative CDP student

This event provided the opportunity to showcase the work of four museum and archives practitioners, offering their thoughts and approaches on curation based on their professional experiences in the sector. The short presentations were followed by a roundtable discussion to further explore and interrogate the scope, potentials and current limitations of curation. The session, organised by Dr Claire Wintle, offered a wide range of insights and gave the new cohort of MA Curating Collections and Heritage students the chance to pose questions and challenges to the speakers.

Claire introduced the session by encouraging the participants to problematise and query the term “curation.” Claire noted how far the term had come from its Latin origin ‘to care’, with the curation now being applied to a wide range of contexts, including a packet of crisps (“The Curators” range in case you were wondering).

Presentations were then held by Anthony (Tony) Sirya Kalume a.k.a. BeKuto waSirya (curator and activist, The Obsidian Collection), Jenny Mearns (Marketing & Membership Officer, The Salisbury Museum), Sue Breakell (Archive Director, University of Brighton Design Archives), and myself.

Tony Kalume’s presentation focused on his experience of curation before, during and after the completion of his MA in Curating Collections and Heritage (2021). Tony (below) introduced the students to multiple successful examples of co-curation and collaborative projects that he has led/consulted on, with Tony reflecting on the benefits and pitfalls of co-curation in the museum context.

 

 

This was followed by Jenny Mearns’ talk (above) which highlighted her experience of community curation as a tool to bring in new perspectives and to ‘decentre’ the authoritative voice of curators in exhibitions. Jenny, also a graduate of the MA in Curating Collections and Heritage (2022), completed a placement at the Salisbury Museum’s Fashioning our World project which led to an exhibition of the same name earlier this year.

Sue Breakell provided students with plenty of food for thought by reflecting on what it means to be a curator today, the rise of high profile curators (with reference to artists Gilbert & George’s criticism of the use of curators in museums), navigating the challenges of hierarchical structures in larger institutions and the curatorial turn in archives where interpretation had not been previously viewed as part of an archivist’s remit.

My talk completed the round of presentations, focusing on my work at the British Museum as Project Curator (2019-2024) on the Blythe House Decant Project, a significant storage moves project. The presentation provided insight to curation ‘behind the scenes’ on collections moves projects, highlighting two of the curatorial areas that I was responsible for (replicas and unregistered world cultures collections). The talk provided students insight into the processes of provenance research on unregistered and undocumented collections (detective work involving deciphering the meaning of stickers and labels on objects combined with archival research) and introduced students to the concept of ‘duplicates’ in museums (the latter is the subject of my PhD).

 

The subsequent roundtable discussion with all the speakers touched on multiple issues including undertaking decolonising work when impacted by institutional barriers and perceptions, artistic creativity and curatorial practice, ownership and replicas, knowledge sharing and free labour expectations when it comes to co-curation and community curation.

The roundtable was supported by Belong at Brighton and the Centre for Design History, part of its ‘Museums, Archives, Exhibitions’ research strand. The MA Curating Collections and Heritage is a collaborative masters programme between the University of Brighton and Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove, led by Dr Harriet Atkinson.