the last place on earth you probably want to beart + space + audience

The recent proliferation of university-level curatorial programs inspires Gabrielle Moser to interrogate the necessity of curatorial training in the latest issue of C Magazine. Although Moser dedicates most of her essay to graduate-level programs, I thought I’d post some of my thoughts as an undergraduate student of OCAD’s Criticism and Curatorial Practice (CRCP) program.

Here is one of Moser’s comments that is most in line with how I feel about being a CRCP student:

Although each of Toronto’s university curatorial programs includes some sort of methodology course aimed at teaching the theoretical frameworks of art history and curation, the ways in which students apply this knowledge are not uniform.

I didn’t apply for CRCP in the hopes of becoming a curator, per se. The job interested (and still interests) me, and I had some curatorial experience when I applied. What attracted me most, however, was the opportunity to have an arts-focused education without having to make art. I’ve always known that I wanted to work in the arts sector, but for just as long I’ve known that I am no artist, and that no art school would magically transform me into one. In fact, my application to receive Advanced Standing was granted after I said, in a review, “I’m not a star artist, and OCAD won’t turn me into one after a year [of foundation studies].” The range of ambitions amongst my colleagues is quite vast. There are people who think they will be curators upon graduating, but there are also many of us who want to be teachers, conservators, writers and artists. There are also a number of us who have no bloody clue, and hope that grad school might help us figure it out.

Although the program is called Criticism and Curatorial Practice, I can’t say that I’ve learned much on the curatorial front. At OCAD, undergraduate CRCP students do not have a space. We have not hung work, or experimented in a gallery, or encountered challenges in presentation. Any curatorial projects assigned by instructors are hypothetical, meaning, we are not required to curate work that we could actually acquire to show. Meaning, budgets are never an issue, timelines are never an issue, artists’ availability is never an issue. Basically, reality is never an issue. I could curate a Caravaggio retrospective if I wanted to. To me, curatorial work is much more about working with limitations than having a boundless imagination. Of course, imagination plays a strong role and curatorial practice is nothing without it. But when it comes to what kind of curatorial skills I’ve developed in school, striking a balance between limitations and imagination is not one of them. I have made a concerted effort to use my school work as an opportunity to develop projects that could be implemented and installed in a real space. But there are so many hazy lines that school has not prepared me for.

The most beneficial aspect of my education has been, to me, the Criticism component, which accounts for approximately 99% of my course schedule. Learning about history, philosophy and criticism contextualizes a great deal of the art that I am familiar (or becoming familiar) with. This was one of my primary reasons for going back to school — I wanted to be able to look at works of art and know where they came from. OCAD has been spectacular in this regard, but it is only because of the freedom being a CRCP student allows. I am able to fill my schedule without any studio requirements, meaning my entire school career has been saturated with history, philosophy and theory. If I was in a studio program, I would only have the opportunity to take two or three history or theory classes a year, as opposed to the 10 I can take as a CRCP student.

I never dreamed it would happen, but learning about history, philosophy and theory has also provided a context in which to build my own artistic ideas and projects. As I said before, I never went to art school to become an artist. But being in CRCP, for me, has widened the scope of what it is to be an artist, and the prospect of being one (or not being one) is no longer predicated on my (in)ability to draw or paint. School has also provided me with an understanding of the systems and institutions that I need to know and work with in order to manifest my ideas.

I would also like to address Reid Shier’s question about artist-run centres. Shier asks, “If artists stop running artist-run centres, will they still need them?” This is a heavy question but in many ways I feel it is irrelevant. ARCs are hardly what their title implies anymore and besides, most of them don’t have curators, but boards and committees that determine their programming. Any CRCP grad thinking they’re going to strike it big with a creative curatorial gig at an ARC has been misguided by their own education.

While there is a place for questioning the need of the professionalization of curatorial practice, I would like to point out that a very small percentage of studio graduates go on to become successful, or even working, artists. There may not be room in the field for hordes of CRCP graduates, but I would argue that the likelihood of employment is about the same for any BFA graduate.

But to answer Moser’s rephrasing of Shier, “Do curators really need university curatorial programs?” The answer, ultimately, is no. No, you don’t need a formal education to be a good curator. The same way you don’t need a formal education to be a good artist. But am I better off in my own personal practice for having one? Yes. Without question, yes.