curating doubt

Art critic JJ Charlesworth writes in ‘Curating Doubt’: “If critical approaches to curating today draw on the radical legacies that in their day opposed the hegemony of bourgeois cultural elitism and its discursive and institutional orthodoxies, simply do not hold sway today. Recurrent expressions of reflexive speculation about the nature of curating, the artwork and the institution by those who constitute it become ritual observances, not radical contestation, inasmuch as they might, in reality, only signify this: that uncertainty, provisionality, open-endedness and deferral are now the preferred orthodoxies of contemporary culture. [… In conclusion,] the self-reflexive preoccupation with the identity and status of the artist, curator and institution plays on the symbolic negation of these positions, but paradoxically can only do so only by sustaining them in practice. [… And, therefore,] a less self-reflexive discussion about institutional power, cultural freedom and artistic value is essential (Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance, p.98.).”