Project text

co-organizer

May 4-5 2024. Giorno Poetry Systems, 222 Bowery, New York.

Speakers: Elena Filipovic, Nan Goldin, Pati Hertling, Julia Tolention, Edit Sasvári, Alex Fialho, Zana Gilbert, 

Natalie Musteata

In her 2017 anthology titled The Artist as Curator, the curator and art historian Elena Filipovic asks a seemingly simple question: what happens to exhibitions when artists are the curators?

When artists curate, not only do they share their perspectives on the work of their peers, but they tend to propose different ideas about what an exhibition is for and what it can do. A closer look at a history of artist-curated exhibitions could bring significant insights to the field. 

How do these exhibitions differ from ones curated by curators? Do shared typologies or strategies emerge? What is the value, and the risks, involved with an exhibition that centers an artist’s perspective on other artists? What is the artistic expression of an artist-curated exhibition? Why do museums invite artists to curate? What are some of the agendas, motivations, and expectations involved? What can curators, and museum professionals more generally, learn from artist-curated exhibitions? How does that history affect or inform a broader history of curatorial practice? 

Everything at GPS is about artists supporting and engaging with the work of other artists—whether it’s by hosting an event about someone’s work, selecting tracks for an LP, or jurying a small grant. What emerges is an artist’s perspective on the work of another artist, poet, or musician.

And so every year, GPS convenes a two-day conference about artist-curated exhibitions. A different selection of case studies provides an annual forum for new scholarship about this under-studied and under-historicized curatorial form.