Abstract
Participation is an umbrella term used in the museum world promising to enhance inclusion, democratization and social responsibility. Co-creating projects, such as co-curating exhibitions, require a high level of visitor involvement and engagement, providing opportunities and challenges regarding decision-making and power transition from the institution to the public. In the frame of the museums’ reflexive and participatory turn and given that curation has rarely been used as an inclusive practice, the program ‘Together We Curate’ initiated by the MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts (Thessaloniki, Greece) after the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic gave to non-professionals the power to co-curate an exhibition. The project has served as an attempt to break with established theory and practice and to question mono-dimensional approaches to authorship, to authority and to power relations. The paper reflects on how a radical shift in the institution’s received practices can serve as a vehicle for togetherness, and discusses the possibilities of co-curating projects in opening new dimensions in the process of democratizing art and culture.
Presenters
Theoktisti MisirloglouDirector, MOMus-Experimental Center for the Arts, Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki (MOMus), Thessaloniki, Greece Niki Nikonanou
Assistant Professor, Department of Preschool Education, University of Thessaly, Greece
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Participation, Art institutions, Co-curating, Communities, Democratization
