The curator, a considered term, is a recent addition to the institutional and business vocabulary of cultural practice in India. Within the discipline of Museology, analogies between the church and the museum have long been something of a cliché. The manner of the parish curate, who looks after the parishioners and fosters their spiritual well-being, is strikingly similar to that of the gallery curate [curator] looking after the artifacts of the museum, and perhaps also the cultural well-being of its visitors. In this analogy also lies the most rudimentary similarity between the curator and the pedagogue, the two social actors at the centre of this programme.
Curatorship, which entails the selection and representation of cultural artifacts by organising and promoting exhibitions, is not only about spotlighting individual or group praxis. It also includes questions of institutional infrastructures and institutionalized pedagogies that inculcate values. These values are associated with culture, history and cultural history on the one hand, and with the method and forms of spectatorship, on the other. Consequently, curating an exhibition, to build and define an audience, is not only about selection and display, crucial as they are, but foregrounds changing notions of culture, and processes of dialogue that are influenced by a range of individual and social factors.
In the past, within the context of arts exhibition in India, questions about the legitimacy to select and represent on behalf of others were rarely asked, as curatorial positions simply rested on bureaucratic and commercial assertions. The rigidity of such an institutionalized authorial construction of meaning has started to wane on account of the explosion in media technology and the widening of financial accumulation. These changes have facilitated curatorial ventures by non-conventional social actors and, often consequently, in non-traditional social settings. Websites and other electronic publications have enabled curatorial decision-making to be disseminated beyond casual visitors, potential consumers and buyers of expensive catalogues. This has contributed to the traditional, liberal dictum of ‘everyone is an artist’ now being superseded by ‘everyone is a curator’. However, and perhaps paradoxically, the very factors that led to the waning of longstanding curatorial constructions have also led to creating fragmented curatorial sensibilities which are mostly borrowed from western theoretical constructs. There is a dire need therefore, to steer these curatorial sensibilities towards more rooted, and yet dynamic, understandings and representations of Indian art and culture. Ultimately, curating is both a profession and a way of thinking about and understanding art and artistic practice.
India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) recognizes its role as a significant facilitator within the arts in India. It has therefore designed a pioneering Curatorship programme that is focused on the next generation of young curators and addresses issues in the current curating context, builds an academic discourse around the practice of critical curating, while keeping institutional development at the foreground of the programme. Over a period of three years, IFA will strategically support curatorial projects and initiatives across the country. The financial support for the IFA’s Curatorship programme for 2009-2013 is from Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (SDTT).
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